Fired Amazon Worker Chris Smalls & Co Organizes Amazon Labor Union in JFK8 Staten Island
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Chris Small is the big man in New York City tonight. Even Ye would have to give this Black man a bow.
Small and his team left the office of a federal regulator on Friday, greeting the crowd in a Yankees hat and then popped a bottle of champagne in triumph. A single fired Amazon worker had assembled a closely-knit launch team, who then organized workers at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. The union they joined wasn’t the Teamsters or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
After Mr. Smalls and his best friend Derrick Palmer, an Amazon employee, watched the union vote in Alabama fail, they decided to form a new union, called [simply] Amazon Labor Union. Because they are independent current and former Amazon workers, the ALU leadership is not bound by an old-school union rule book. Additionally, these organizers know Amazon inside out — exactly how Amazon operates.
In his position as interim president and lead organizer of the Amazon Labor Union, Smalls first joined Amazon in 2015 and moved to JFK8 {Amazon’s Staten Island facility in 2018. In March 2020, Smalls organized a strike at the warehouse, arguing the Amazon was doing far too little to keep his co-workers safe as COVID ran rampant throughout NYC. Amazon fired him that day, on the grounds that he had violated social distancing rules.
“It’s really a jaw-dropping result,” said John Logan, chair of the Labor and Employment Studies department at San Francisco State University. “There really is no bigger prize for unions than winning at Amazon, and the fact that no one thought the ALU had a chance really makes it even more incredible.”
Follow the press: Amazon Workers on Staten Island Vote to Unionize in Landmark Win for Labor New York Times
Amazon Workers in New York Voe to Form Tech Giant’s First U.S. Union Wall Street Journal [It’s a paywall, but AOC’s link should work,]
Amazon workers in New York voted to unionize. Here’s what to know. The Washington Post
Images are from the Amazon Workers Union Instagram.
