Lessons from Amazon Workers Union Victory on Staten Island

Last week, Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island shocked the nation when, against all odds, they voted 2,654 to 2,131 to form a union despite the company’s multimillion dollar anti-union campaign. The workers in the Amazon Labor Union pulled off this shocking victory without support from an established union and only a shoestring budget from a GoFundMe campaign.

Much of the media attention has focused ALU’s charismatic interim President Chris Smalls, who helped launch the organizing drive with a core group of workers after being fired for leading a walk-out in 2020 over the company’s lack of COVID safety protocols and getting arrested for the crime of serving workers grilled chicken and pasta in the warehouse parking lot. However, as Smalls himself is quick to point out, “I’m just the interim president. I’m temporary. It’s not my union; it’s the people’s union.” 

Writing in Labor Notes, ALU organizer Justine Medina explained how the organizers transformed from a small group of four to a multi-national, multi-gender, multi-ability organizing committee of 20 members and a workers’ committee of over 100 employees. The key was identifying leaders in each department and bottom-up organizing with workers talking to workers.

"We just did the thing you’re supposed to do: we had a worker-led movement,” she wrote.

The workers studied the history of how unions were built and found inspiration in the methods of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and William Z. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry. There were also “salts,” workers who got jobs at Amazon with the primary goal of organizing but still followed the lead of workers who had been working there longer.

“Really, you just follow the classic playbook. Do not be afraid to fight, to get as dirty as the bosses will, to match or beat the energy they’re bringing," she continued. "Do not be afraid to agitate and to antagonize the bosses, as a union should. Use every tool in your toolbox; file those unfair labor practice charges, every chance you get. Protest and do collective action. Keep building."

Now the workers have to negotiate a first contract, which is often the greatest challenge for a new union. Still, the ALU’s victory is a shot in the arm for the labor movement as it shows what is possible when a determined group of workers stick together and fight like hell. As Harold Meyerson wrote in the American Prospect, “so many of the standard rules, both of unionizing and union-busting, have been broken with this victory,” which may be an indication that we are in a truly profound moment in the labor movement.

“Staten Island tells us that something has changed,” he writes. “Take the long-simmering grievances of a generation and the political sensibilities of some of its members, add the friendly (for now) job markets of American cities, and the power equation that has governed American workplaces and American lives for the past 40 years could be altered. For the nation’s sake, let’s hope it is.”