TRUE GRIT
Christian Smalls Amazon Union Activist By Stephen G. Hall, Ph.D. If you are in the mood for a David vs. Goliath story, look no further than an unemployed black male warehouse worker challenging Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man in the world, creator of the online retail colossus Amazon.com. Not only that, he beat him. His name is Christian Smalls, and he is the embodiment of True Grit. Chris Smalls’ improbable journey begins in Hackensack, N.J., where he was born in the late 1980s and raised by a single mother, a hospital administrator. A prolific athlete at Hackensack High School, Smalls had hoped to play in the NBA until a hit-and-run car accident ended that dream. Next, he tried rapping, even toured with Meek Mill, before he had to give it up to find steady work to raise his kids. He worked several jobs for Big-Box retailers and FedEx, mainly in the warehouse, before landing at Amazon in 2015 as a picker, where he made his rendezvous with destiny. Amazon is right behind Walmart as the largest private employer in the U.S., with 1.6 million workers on the payroll. Like Walmart, the online retail website is notorious for altering the business and geographic landscape of America. Many a momand-pop store has succumbed to these two behemoths, unable to compete with their rock-bottom pricing and near-endless inventory. Neither corporation has been an especially friendly place to work. Amazon in particular has been known for its unpleasant work environment in its numerous warehouses, where safety and health issues and discrimination based on race, sex, age and caregiving are said to run rampant. Both companies have crushed all previous attempts to unionize. Such was the environment that faced Chris Smalls, who by 2018 had risen to an assistant manager at Amazon’s new JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y. Though he was
Bavual.com
personally satisfied with his job at first, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which caught many business establishments off guard, created a perfect storm that would engulf Smalls—and re-energize the U.S. labor movement. On March 30, Smalls staged a walkout at Amazon JFK8 to protest what he deemed was a lack of proper safety protocols around the deadly coronavirus. Senior management responded by immediately firing Smalls, citing as the reason his violation of the company’s policy to socially distance during a required, paid quarantine. However, Smalls had been exposed to COVID-19 on March 11 but was not notified or required to quarantine until March 28, after the incubation period had ended. For this reason, Smalls and the state of New York subsequently sued Amazon for unlawful termination. (Smalls’ suit was dismissed and is currently in appeal; New York’s suit is still pending.) Smalls’ next move beyond the courts would make him a modernday badass. After his termination, Smalls founded a worker-activist group called The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW), which helped to organize a nationwide May Day strike at several major corporations, including Amazon, Target and Walmart. In April 2021, Smalls launched an accompanying labor group, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), citing job security, living wages, paid time off and
medical leave as its goals. Amazon had always been resistant to union organizing, making it especially difficult due to its constant surveillance by security cameras in the warehouse. Said Smalls: “Who wants to be surveilled all day? It’s not prison. It’s work.” Undaunted, Smalls began his assault on Amazon’s union-busting tactics and to promote the benefits of belonging to the union, such as the extra $11,000 in annual pay that unionized workers receive over nonunionized employees, on average. To gather signatures for a union authorization vote, Smalls set up a tent alongside a public transit stop near JFK8 with a sign that read, “Sign Your Authorization Cards Here.” On January 26, 2022, the ALU announced they had reached enough signatures to petition a vote with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Try as it might, Amazon’s scare tactics against its employees failed. On April 1, the workers at JFK8 voted 2,654– 2,131 in favor of the union. Smalls told a crowd that “We did whatever it took to connect with these workers. … I hope that everybody’s paying attention now because a lot of people doubted us.” In May 2022, Smalls met President Joe Biden at the White House. Biden told him, “I like you. You’re my kind of trouble. … Let’s not stop.” Smalls was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2022. We agree.
13
