Sam Allard / Scene
Amazon Labor Union's Chris Smalls, in conversation with the North Shore Federation of Labor's Dan O'Malley
Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls electrified a Cleveland crowd Thursday evening as he preached a message of solidarity and union mobilization and chronicled his David vs. Goliath campaign to unionize a Staten Island Amazon fulfillment center.
Smalls became the face of a resurgent American labor movement after he was fired from Amazon in 2020 for leading a parking lot protest to demand safer working conditions during the early stages of the Coronavirus pandemic. He then spearheaded the union drive at the JFK8 warehouse, which became the first Amazon location to win a union election on April 1.
In a wide-ranging conversation with North Shore Federation of Labor President Dan O'Malley at the UAW Local 1250 Hall in Brook Park, Smalls said Cleveland was the third stop on his self-proclaimed "Hot Labor Summer" tour. After a court battle in Arizona next week — Amazon is contesting the union victory at JFK8 — Smalls said he intends to travel the country with a "super team" of organizers to build union momentum at Amazon locations across the United States.
O'Malley asked Smalls how many warehouses had contacted the ALU to join the fight after the momentous Staten Island victory.
"The whole damn country," Smalls said. He confirmed that he'd been in contact with two Northeast Ohio locations.
Smalls relayed how a tech giant like Amazon, the nation's second-largest private employer, pits workers against each other in the workplace as a permanent bulwark against worker solidarity. Amazon knows, Smalls said, that solidarity leads to agitating for improvements in the collective best interest: things like workplace safety measures, more humane quotas, wage increases.
Smalls said employees are encouraged to "snitch" when they see groups of people congregating or when popular workers galvanize others. In a bombshell story in April, Amazon was found to have blocked words like "union" and "plantation" on its worker chat app. And the opening speaker Thursday night was local worker Joey Desatnik, who was fired from Amazon's North Randall fulfillment center (CLE2) in April after his outspoken efforts to drum up union interest there.
But Smalls said the same high-tech advancements that have made Amazon such a ruthless workplace surveillant also crystallized the pro-union message by comparison.
"Number one for us was building and earning trust," Smalls said, "and that's something that Amazon fails at miserably. There's no real conversation there. It's all a system. You talk to a computer, you make your complaints in an app. They tell you to call a hotline, put in a ticket, deal with a third-party case manager in some other country. We added a human aspect to our campaign. That meant bonfires and barbecues. Smoking weed and breaking bread. Bringing in musicians. We were doing things Amazon would never do. And the biggest thing was love. We showed that we cared, that we loved one another."
Smalls, who said he previously rallied outside the White House with Black Lives Matter and was donned in his trademark "Eat the Rich" bomber jacket Thursday, articulated a labor message divorced from partisan politics.
"It's not about being left or right," he said. "We're workers, and we need to build off the commonality of our issues." When asked during a Q&A whether or not workers should seek or build a new political party, as national Democrats and Republicans are both controlled by corporate interests, Smalls conceded that "sometimes new is definitely necessary," and reminded the audience the power of labor in society.
"I know people don't want to talk about it," he said, "but a general strike could change this country in one fucking day."
Smalls' message was ultimately one of hope and encouragement, and he cited the regional efforts at local Starbucks locations as sign of pro-union energy nationwide.
For those not yet unionized, he urged a more robust and holistic labor education. (He said middle schoolers should not be worshipping billionaires like Jeff Bezos, for example, and that workers should bring their friends and families to rallies and learn about historic labor struggles.) He closed with a powerful reminder, one he shared with congress as well.
"Remember that workers are the ones that generate revenue for these companies," he said. "You are worth something. Your labor is worth something."
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