Jeff Bezos’s Worst Enemy Is Chris Smalls
Chris Smalls is leading an independent union drive outside the Staten Island Amazon warehouse known as JFK8. (@Shut_downAmazon / Twitter)
by Alex N. Press
It’s been a year since Amazon fired Chris Smalls for organizing a rally to protest COVID-19 conditions. Now, he’s trying to unionize his former warehouse, and he won’t stop until there’s worker justice at Amazon.
ast April, Christian Smalls, a supervisor at an Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York City known as JFK8, was fired for organizing fellow workers. Chris was a leader, someone who trained other workers; he’d been at Amazon for years when the pandemic hit. When he felt the company wasn’t taking the necessary precautions to keep his coworkers safe as COVID rampaged through New York City, he helped stage a rally outside of JFK8 to protest the unsafe conditions. The company responded by firing him, claiming it was for violating social-distancing rules. New York State Attorney Tish James has charged Amazon with unlawfully firing Chris.
After Amazon fired Chris, Vice obtained a memo from the S-Team (the highest-level Amazon executives) relating to a meeting the team held about the situation. In that meeting, at which Jeff Bezos was present, Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky said Chris was “not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position.” Chris has been focused on making Amazon regret that ever since.
In April of this year, Chris helped launch an independent union organizing effort. He is seeking nothing less than the organizing of Amazon’s thousands of warehouse workers at JFK8 and nearby warehouses. The New York Times recently published an investigation focused specifically on JFK8. It details the incredibly high rates of turnover at the warehouse, the firings-by-algorithm, the inability of workers who have been fired to even reach a human being who could explain their termination. It shows a company that is driving its workforce to despair and desperation.
Chris’s organizing effort is a long shot. Established unions with money and infrastructure haven’t organized any US-based Amazon warehouses; Chris is doing it with a few of his former coworkers and a shoestring budget. It’s about as uphill a battle as it gets.
In a recent episode of Jacobin’s new podcast on Amazon, Primer, Alex N. Press sat down with Chris to discuss his experience and recent organizing efforts.
ANP: What have you been up to over the past couple of months? I know it involves you sitting under a tent outside of JFK8, which is the Amazon warehouse where you used to work in Staten Island.
CS: For the last two months we’ve been outside of JFK8, my former facility, organizing workers to create their own worker-led union, called ALU, Amazon Labor Union. I’ve been on the ground as the lead organizer, telling my story to the workers who just got hired this year and may have not heard what happened last year.
I’m there trying to help the organizers on the ground talk to workers and get workers to sign union cards. Right now, we’re in the beginning phase. We have to get at least 30 percent of workers to sign cards before we can file for a NLRB election — and once we get there, Amazon will probably dispute it. But I think that we have a great chance here in New York, a union town, to not only get to our election, but actually win this time around.
ANP: The Amazon Labor Union is an independent union that you and coworkers started. Tell us about it. A lot of people are familiar with what happened in Bessemer, Alabama, which was an organizing drive undertaken by an established union, the RWDSU, but this is a very different type of effort.
CS: This is worker-led, meaning all the organizers are current workers of JFK8. I’m the only one that no longer works with the company. The rest of them are still current employees and they decided, along with myself, that this is the best route to take instead of going with an established union.
We know the ins and outs of the company. A lot of the lead organizers have been around Amazon for three-plus years — some of them even four, five, six, or seven years. They’re all seasoned Amazon workers. They’re veterans. They have a lot of influence in the building. Not only are they my former coworkers, but some of them are my closest friends. This is a different energy and we felt that this route is the easiest way to become successful after watching Bessemer
Chris Smalls and Amazon workers at an organizing event for the Amazon Labor Union on the 4th of July. (@SethGoldstein13 / Twitter)
ANP: You say it’s the easiest way. Now, obviously, this is a massive battle. Can you take us through the process? To start, these warehouses are inconveniently located, so a lot of your organizing involves you and the other organizers sitting under a tent next to the bus stop by JFK8. What does that environment look like? Obviously, people at Amazon are tired and want to go home before and after shifts.
CS: We’re at the public bus stop right across the street. It’s actually a great location because you have to pass us when you’re taking public transit, and around 80 percent of the building takes public transit. We see a large majority of the workforce. A lot of the workers that we see used to be the employees directly beneath me, so it’s sort of like a reunion.
That’s what I mean by our approach being the easiest way. I was in conversations with a lot of these workers before I was terminated, and that helps get them on board. As far as the bus stop, it’s not like Bessemer, Alabama where the bus stop was down and around the corner. This is literally across the street. We’re visible every day. I think even management can see us from their front windows. It’s kind of fun because it’s a different energy.
ANP: A lot of Amazon warehouse workers bring up a sense of exhaustion and even at times shame about this job, because it feels useless. Those things are serious obstacles to organization, and yet you’re doing it anyway. You’re talking to workers every day now. How are people feeling and how do you overcome this sense that it’s too big a fight to win and instead inspire people to join this effort?
CS: Small victories matter, and we’ve had plenty of them beginning last year, before we began the union campaign. We connect people with the victories we had over the year — Amazon vice presidents resigning in solidarity with workers, media attention, the public opinion of the protests we’ve held against Jeff Bezos. We’ve filed about five Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) already. Workers are seeing firsthand the strength of what a union does.
Workers organizing for the Amazon Labor Union at the booth outside JFK8 in Staten Island, New York. (@Shut_downAmazon / Twitter)
We’ve already had several different changes in JFK8 in the last two months since we’ve been there. The New York Times article that came out a few days ago was substantial because they had to remove all the anti-union stuff in the building. There was no anti-union literature inside for the last week and a half because Amazon was afraid of what was going to be in that article. We put this information into workers’ hands and they see that the strength of the union exists and is beneficial for them. It’s easier for them to sign and it’s easier for us to have that conversation.
ANP: You mention anti-union messaging. You launched this organizing effort in late April and almost immediately, Amazon started rolling out that messaging. For example, the televisions in the warehouse say “Do you know what you’re signing when you sign an authorization card?”
You’ve previously mentioned a couple of other things. For example, the fire department showed up to check permits for you outside of the facility. What has Amazon’s response been to the union effort — both at the company level but also among individual JFK8 managers? What are they saying to workers?
CS: They are definitely not wasting any time with us. They brought the same union-busters that were in Alabama up here. One in particular, Brad Moss, has been in the building. He’s the president of TBG (The Burke Group), a labor firm. They’ve also called the cops on us. They’ve called the fire department on us. They’ve effectively tried to get us removed from the property.
It all failed because the fire department, the police, the bus drivers, and the construction workers building the Amazon facilities are all unionized. Amazon is surrounded by unions and none of them want to intervene against our efforts because they know what we’re doing is the right thing for these workers. They know the horror stories of Amazon. They know the horror stories of these workers.
It plays in our favor and backfired on the company. We were able to prove that it was a victory because unions pretty much stick together and all of them have been pretty supportive. As far as the workers being exhausted and overwhelmed by management, that’s also backfiring.
Amazon hit the ground hard drilling anti-union messaging into workers, bringing in union-busters right away. We’re only two months in, and all the things they did in Bessemer six to eight months into the campaign they’re doing to us now. The workers are asking, “Why are they doing this? If it’s really something that they don’t want it’s probably something we need.” That’s why we’re able to continue to get signatures and go in the right direction because Amazon is going too hard at the workers and we’re just taking the cool, calm, collected route. We know that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
ANP: You mentioned a specific union-buster. You visited Bessemer during the lead-up to the union vote. Is this someone that you saw there?
CS: I didn’t see them down there, but one of the ULPs that we’ve filed is from a witness who is a part of our organizing committee. She had a conversation with Moss and he was bragging about what he did in Alabama. He said that he was the one who stopped it.
He called us black organizers a bunch of thugs and said we’re nothing but “Black Lives Matter protesters” and that in Alabama the workers didn’t want the union. He’s dividing the workers. We know that he was down there. So, another victory that we’ve had already is that we were able to sue based on the racial rhetoric he’s been spreading. Now, we believe his contract has been terminated.
ANP: You mention this guy making racist comments. When we’ve talked in the past, one of your complaints has been about racist discrimination in the warehouses, not only at JFK8. As that New York Times article shows, it’s a company-wide problem. When you were still at Amazon, what were your complaints about what you were experiencing?
CS: Besides the working conditions, it’s definitely been the systemic racism. I was a supervisor for four years there and it was very revealing to read that article because it hit a tough spot for me. It’s frustrating because I was robbed. I applied to be a manager forty-nine times and never got it, and could never figure out why when I had all the qualifications. I did my job well, opened up three buildings, put in the work, spent so much time away from my family and kid. So, for them to have a system designed to stop black and brown people from moving up is disheartening.
It starts at the top, with Jeff Bezos himself. We already knew that there was racism in the company. Just look at the smear campaign that they wanted to wage against me last year, calling me “not smart or articulate.” This is why I have to continue to fight. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, they’re not going to do it for us. They’re not going to stand in solidarity with the black community. We’re going to have to expose all of these things and hold them accountable. That’s what we’re trying to do as well as unionizing these facilities.
ANP: People who work at Amazon have sent me stuff like “Black Power” pins that the company gave them to suggest its support during the uprising last summer. But this is a heavily black workforce that is being paid very poorly for the work they do and being managed largely by white people. It’s an egregious hypocrisy at play at Amazon.
CS: That’s also, once again, playing into our favor. When this New York Times article came out, we were immediately putting it into workers’ hands. One of the biggest barriers when it comes to organizing is that the working class is disconnected from all the controversy. They work ten, eleven, twelve hours a day, go home to their families, have to eat, wash, rinse, and repeat. There isn’t time to tune into the media or find the labor movement. So we have to educate, give them the articles, and let them know that what they’re working for is against them.
ANP: That New York Times article was a year-long investigation specifically into JFK8 and the findings are upsetting: intentional high turnover, perpetual accidental firings, and people just being left totally in the dark and unable to talk to a human being about their job. How are people at JFK8 responding to that?
CS: When the article came out, it was amazing because there were people who read it on the way to work and when they passed our tent, they didn’t hesitate to sign a union card. We had the article sitting on the table and had made some copies to give to workers, but they had already read it! I was passing it to people and they said “Nope, we got it!”