‘A marathon, not a sprint’: how Chris Smalls defied Amazon to form a union
“The revolution is here,” said an exuberant Chris Smalls on a cloudy morning via a Google Meet call last week.
Clad in a black baseball cap and air pods, Smalls spoke with the Guardian less than a week after winning a historic victory over Amazon, the second largest US employer – and establishing the company’s first ever union.
For more than two years, Smalls and his co-organizer Derrick Palmer led a campaign to form Amazon’s first union at a Staten Island warehouse.
Hosting cookouts, bonfires and other small gatherings with Amazon employees, Smalls and Palmer signed up over 4,000 workers for the union vote, with staff voting to establish a union by a wide margin of more than 500 votes.
While the quest to form a union at Amazon formally began in March 2020, when Smalls led a workplace walkout over pandemic working conditions, Smalls told the Guardian that problems with Amazon started earlier, with no resolution in sight.
When staff complained of low pay, unsafe working conditions and short breaks, management at Amazon were complacent.
“Amazon doesn’t really know their own workers,” said Smalls. “They think we’re all stupid, they think we’re kids,” he added, noting that Amazon would sometimes give workers small treats like lollipops or cupcakes rather than meaningfully addressing their complaints.
Things came to a head when Smalls, an assistant manager at the time, staged a walkout over Amazon’s lack of personal protective equipment, social distancing guidelines and other pandemic protections. Amazon fired Smalls the same day as the protest, alleging that he had broken quarantine orders. Smalls asserts that he was fired in retaliation, and figures such as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York attorney general Letitia James
Read more on theguardian.com
