Amazon Labor Union Leader Chris Smalls Meets with Workers in Portland

PHOTO: Moderator Taifa Smith Butler & Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls.

Labor activists from across Maine turned out last week for a discussion about union organizing with Chris Smalls, founder and president of the Amazon Labor Union, at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. At the event, sponsored by Maine Center for Economic Policy, Smalls discussed the struggle to gain a first contract with Amazon following the workers’ surprise election victory at the company's  JFK8  warehouse on Staten Island in April, 2022.
 

In January, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed Amazon’s challenge to the ALU’s election and required the company to bargain in good faith, but it has yet to do so. In July, the NLRB found merit in ALU’s complaint that Amazon violated labor laws by refusing to bargain with the workers. Internal divisions between ALU leadership and a dissident faction has also roiled the union. The company still has not received a bargaining order from the National Labor Relations Board, which Smalls blames on underfunding and understaffing at the agency.
 

“For us as laborers and people of the working class my fight is your fight and your fight is mine,” Smalls told the audience in Portland. “You have to understand how Amazon is exploiting the entire working class of America. And not just in America. It’s worldwide.”
 

Smalls grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey in a working class household as the oldest child of a single mother. After some college, Smalls dropped out to pursue his dream to become a rapper, but as he told the crowd, “life hit me really hard" and he “became a family man at 22 years old.” He took a job at Amazon working 12-hour shifts to support his young family.

In addition to the grueling work schedule, Smalls spent two and a half to three hours a day commuting, taking public transit to Manhattan, a ferry and two separate buses to get to the facility. Such long commutes are typical for Amazon workers due to the difficulty in reaching the center by public transit.

“I used to tell my new hires, if you’ve got a gym membership you might want to cancel it,” said Smalls. “You’re about to be doing twelve more hours of calisthenics. You’re bending, you’re reaching, you’re pulling, you’re standing on your feet all day. Working at Amazon was 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical because you mentally have to prepare yourself for what you’re putting your body through every day, otherwise you wouldn’t last.”

In 2022, Amazon warehouse workers suffered serious injuries at more than twice the rate of comparable facilities, according to a recent report. Smalls said an ambulance would come to the facility every day to assist workers with serious medical issues like injuries and heat exhaustion.

“Even worse, I’ve seen people die,” he said. “And during COVID 19 you can imagine it being an eerie situation where you’re dealing with something that is silently killing people.”

As a supervisor working 50 to 60 hours a week, Smalls said his coworkers were like his extended family. So when Amazon refused to take proper health measures after workers tested positive for the coronavirus in March, 2020, Smalls said he did what he thought was “right for my family” and led a walk-out in protest. He was fired for his action and, fearing the threat of a union drive, company executives later met to plot a racist campaign to smear Smalls as “not smart or articulate.”

The experience motivated Smalls to take on the massive feat of organizing the facility. Using his strong people skills, Smalls stayed nearly every day for the next year at the bus top in front of the warehouse talking to workers and convincing them to join the union. Smalls and his allies also protested outside all of Amazon’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezo’s mansions in New York, Washington D.C. and Seattle. In 2021, he also helped found the Congress of Essential Workers, a “collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world.”

Since winning the union election in 2022, Smalls said the ALU helped draft and pass the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, legislation that provides new protections for warehouse workers. The union is also working on legislation to prevent heat exhaustion and to allow card check in union elections.

When asked for advice to new worker organizers, Smalls said it’s important to be personable and available and to steer clear of politics that divide workers.

“I always tell my organizers, ‘befriend them first. What do you know about their family, about where they come from, about their community, about the issues at home that they’re going through?” Said Smalls. "If you’re not befriending them first, you’re not earning their trust and you’re not building a relationship, how the hell are you going to sign them up for a union?”

He said that a major part of organizing is explaining to workers what being part of a union means. One attendee said she felt demoralized after losing a union election due to interference from the employer and its anti-union consultants. Smalls replied that ALU has also failed to win some elections at various warehouses, but he said he doesn’t consider them losses because “you only lose when you give up.”

“People want to count wins and losses and I’m like ‘how do you call workers taking on corporations losers?’” Said Smalls.

Jess Czarnecki, who was involved in the union organizing effort at Little Dog in Brunswick, was among the small group of labor activists who met with Smalls before hand.

“It was truly an honor to chat with him in such an intimate setting — talking about our shared struggle and finding hope in our conversation,” said Czarnecki. “Chris doesn’t shy away from the truth surrounding union organizing, the highs and the lows. He’s not afraid to say exactly how he’s feeling and I admire that in any labor leader.”

Nik Brocchini, a member of the UMaine Graduate Workers Union, said he was also “stoked” for the opportunity to meet with Smalls.
 

“I was really impressed with the intensity of his focus and the clarity of his vision about what labor actually needs in this country,” he said.