Chris Smalls is spitting about real estate while I stand next to the ground-level Staten Island apartment that serves as the operational headquarters of the Amazon Labor Union. The leader of the first successful union drive in Amazon history is wearing Air Jordans and sunglasses, surrounded by half-empty pasta boxes and a pot of mac and cheese, talking with the ALU's field director. Mitchell-Israel thinks that the union's next headquarters could be in a bodega.
Smalls shook his head with the smallest shake of his head. Not a bodega union.
The Amazon Labor Union is just a year old and less than 10,000 members strong. Its unions have hundreds of thousands of members. That was part of the reason why it was so audacious to beat a company that was so anti-union.
Smalls helped the ALU win the vote to unionize at the Staten Island warehouse JFK8 almost two years after he was fired by Amazon. It was the first crack in the armor. Smalls and Palmer did it without any professional organizing experience, no formal affiliation with established organized labor, and no big money behind them. The union raised $120,000 on the website, compared to the $4.3 million Amazon spent to beat them.
A triumph like this would not have been possible in the past. The Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University says that unionization efforts never win against Amazon.
There were glaring inequalities that were exposed by the pandemic. Starbucks workers across the country have voted to unionize over the past few months, New York delivery drivers are forming a labor coalition, and Apple Store employees in Atlanta demanded a union for the first time. The Amazon Labor Union's victory over one of the world's most formidable companies is the most significant yet.
The triumph was the result of a different way of thinking about labor organizing.
In the general sense, smalls means people employed by Amazon, but not in the specific sense. This is just one of the ways that Smalls deviates from the well-worn progressive rhetoric that may encourage college-educated liberals but not Amazon employees.
Smalls may be organizing out of a black Chevy Suburban packed with iced tea bottles and rolling papers, but it's clear that Amazon underestimated his savvy. In a memo that leaked shortly after his firing, Amazon lawyers said that Smalls was not smart or articulate, but that he understood what it was like to work at Amazon. The biggest labor drive in the company's history was defeated by Amazon last year, after the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union tried to unionize a facility in Alabama. The union challenged the decision with the National Labor Relations Board. A final result is pending.
Amazon won the vote in Alabama.
The campaign was all wrong from the beginning, according to Smalls. Alabama's right-to-work laws presented challenges, but the plant was new enough that workers weren't as upset as at JFK8.
Most importantly? A third party that doesn't know Amazon organized the drive.
You have to build from within in order to get it done.
Chris Smalls would be the David to Amazon. He was raised by a single mom in New Jersey and didn't pay much attention to the plight of the working class. He dreamed of becoming a hip-hop artist while he was playing basketball and football. The mother worked as an administrator at the hospital and was a member of SEIU 1199. Smalls says that she didn't realize that she was a part of the rank-and-file at one point.
When his ex-wife got pregnant with twins, Smalls decided to stop pursuing his music career and look for more stable income. Smalls was hired at JFK8 after working at Amazon facilities in New Jersey and Connecticut. He oversaw customer items being picked to be packed and shipped. He liked his job at first. The general manager was invested in helping him and other Black workers advance at the company.
The culture changed over time. The small facility ballooned to thousands of workers, management changed, and what had felt like a workplace full of human beings soon began to feel like a team of industrial athletes according to a leaked company memo.
It was all about metrics. They don't care if that person breaks down.
Smalls were frustrated during the early days of COVID-19. JFK8 employees were required to work in person even though the rest of the city was shut down. Amazon said it was taking extreme measures to keep workers safe. Smalls says that people worked shoulder to shoulder inside the facility, and that colleagues were coming to work sick.
He and Palmer staged a walk out. He was fired later that night. Palmer received a warning. In a statement, Amazon said that Smalls had been fired for violating social distancing guidelines.
Andy Jassy is figuring out what's next for Amazon.
Smalls and Palmer decided to stage demonstrations to advocate for workers rights. They protested outside of Jeff Bezos mansions. When the union drive in Alabama failed, we decided to unionize.
They began with a two-pronged approach. Smalls would organize at bus stops to give food to workers who were hungry. Smalls says that the campaign was more about educating workers and explaining what.
The Amazon Labor Union was called in April of 2021. One organizer used TikTok to spotlight the company's anti-union propaganda, and posted videos of them outside in the cold. The union made a point of emphasizing human connection. Smalls gave out free weed and food along with pamphlets and books, and organizers set up bonfires to keep people warm.
Smalls says that they had a compassionate, humanizing, caring type of campaign.
The months went on. Bezos traveled to space, thanking Amazon customers and employees, because they paid for all this. It helped the union stay in touch with workers on the inside when some organizers got jobs at Amazon specifically to unionize.
The tortoise was moving. Amazon forced employees to attend mandatory meetings with anti-union rhetoric. They told workers that dues would come out of their paychecks, and that unions were trying to get between workers and their employer.
Organizers say that the ALU's approach made it hard for Amazon to portray themselves as outsiders.
On the day JFK8 voted to unionize, Smalls was thrilled but not surprised. He says he never doubted it.
On a windy April morning, ALU organizers greeted workers coming out of LDJ5 for their break, which is about to begin voting on unionizing on April 25. Chicken wings were offered by the organizers. The food was stacked on tables with posters of a sweating robot and the words "We are not machines, we are human beings."
According to Smalls, every Amazon facility in the country contacted the Amazon Labor Union after the JFK8 vote. The first test of whether the dam has broken will be the LDJ5 vote. The vote to stand in solidarity with the union has drawn significant political attention.
If the prospects are uncertain, it is clear that Smalls and the ALU are moving forward with worker-led unionization outside of organized labor.
Many of the labor unions are not connected to the workers they serve, according to Medina.
There is a slightly different class composition.
The activism of the past few years has seen it's way into organized labor. The new model is young people organizing young people, it is non-white people organizing majority non-white workforces, according to Wilma Liebman, who served as chair of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama.
The Amazon Labor Union is getting a lot of support. An adviser said that Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers promised a six-figure donation which could help the ALU get better office space. Sean O Brien of the Teamsters Union told Time that organized labor needs to rally around this victory and that it opens the door for a broader labor offensive against Amazon.
The role of our organization is to provide them as much support and resources as they need.
While Smalls is grateful for the help, he made sure that the other unions knew who felled the giant.
Charlotte Alter is at charlotte.alter@time.com.
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