Union Review
When Amazon employees on Staten Island successfully voted to unionize in the spring of 2022, becoming the corporate retailer’s first American workplace to do so, it was hailed as one of the most significant labor triumphs in the United States in almost a century.
It was a David vs. Goliath moment for the age of globalization when the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) organized workers at the JFK8 warehouse to vote in favor of union representation. It was also a powerful reminder that worker power can still be built despite management intimidation, massive employer concentration, and other obstacles. Even though the vote to unionize took organizers into uncharted territory and sparked a lengthy legal battle with Amazon, which has since refused to recognize the ALU or negotiate a contract, the fact that an independent, worker-led coalition led the drive at this facility with over 8,000 employees rather than an established union made its victory all the more impressive.
Telling the story of how the ALU reached this historic moment, “Union,” a new documentary co-directed by Brett Story (“The Hottest August”) and Stephen Maing (“Crime + Punishment”), takes a detail-driven, ground-level approach. It follows current and former Amazon employees in Staten Island as they mount a grassroots worker-to-worker campaign, standing their ground against one of the world’s powerful corporations all the while.
“Union” is a sharply observant history of the union movement and its aftermath rather than a talking-head documentary. Because of its astute, clever editing rhythms, it frequently feels like a thriller. It captures the unfathomable scale of the company’s operations while bringing to light the human scale that is frequently hidden by breathless (but unavoidably compromised) reporting of Amazon’s empire-building plans. Story and Maing begin by juxtaposing Jeff Bezos blasting off into space on a rocket built by his Blue Origin company with Amazon employees trudging wearily into work.
Made over the course of three years, Story and Maing’s film explores the human cost of the convenience economy and illuminates oppressive working conditions in Amazon’s factories. From constant surveillance to high injury rates and a lack of breaks, the pressures of working in Amazon warehouses compound to create punishing environments for workers, ones Amazon has steadfastly refused to address or even accurately report. And the threat of retaliation against workers who organize is ever-present; in addition to pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into union-busting campaigns that include mandatory “captive audience” meetings (which have since been banned in the state of New York), Amazon issues warnings of possible termination to workers involved with the union drive.
Story and Maing’s film is clever in how methodically it lays forth barriers to the union’s success, with shots of enormous cargo ships moving commodities at either end serving as a reminder of the sluggish, never-ending motion with which the gears of contemporary capitalism grind. It also incisively portrays ground-level communication among employees as a potent instrument for overcoming them. ALU organizers successfully push back against Amazon managers long enough to present their case to workers, disrupting the company’s anti-union propaganda (one reads: “We’re asking you to do three simple things: get the facts, ask questions, and vote no to the union”). Some of the most striking footage is captured inside Amazon headquarters during one of those captive audience meetings.
One of the ALU organizers, Chris Smalls, takes center stage in “Union,” though the documentary largely sidesteps the temptation to cast him as a conquering hero. (That’d be an easy trap, given that he became the organization’s public face across the period “Union” depicts.) Smalls, fired from Amazon after protesting inadequate PPE provision during the pandemic (and besmirched by the company’s general counsel as “not smart or articulate” in an internal meeting of executive leaders), is a father of three who was moved to activism by the flagrant injustice of the company’s abusive labor practices. As a leader, he’s at once charismatic and hard-charging, dedicated to his fellow “comrades” but ever driven to push forward even in the face of inter-union dissent.
One of the film’s great strengths is its ability to surface the multiplicity of tensions between organizers working toward a shared cause. Take the world of difference separating the experiences of two subjects: Maddie, a white college graduate using her campus activism experience to help the cause, and Natalie, an older Latina woman living out of her car for years. In one charged exchange, Natalie pushes back on the suggestion, made by white male organizers, that Chris intentionally gets himself arrested by New York police officers to draw attention to the unionization drive. Ultimately, Natalie’s dissatisfaction with the ALU—due to her disagreements with leadership and her desire to wait for larger union support—leads her to leave the organization. It’s a testament to the complexity of individual motivations and the absence of easy triumph in this type of effort.
The internal arguments and conflicts over leadership, organizing, and governance tactics that split the ALU before its successful unionization vote and were exacerbated by its unsuccessful attempt to unionize a second warehouse are chronicled in “Union.” The film meticulously portrays this as a group triumph, even though Smalls’ charisma, fervor, and resolve propelled the struggle to unionize JFK8. It makes it apparent that Smalls’ leadership style also contributed to internal divisions within the ALU, which at different times may have hindered the union’s ability to further its purpose, and it rarely succumbs to the temptation to single him out for praise at the expense of others.
This is especially crucial in the second section of the movie, following the unionization vote, when the grim reality of the arduous task ahead becomes more apparent. There will never be any doubt about the ALU organizers’ bravery. However, “Union” ends on a note of exhausted fortitude rather than a resounding success because the fight for workers’ rights has only seen one victory. Amazon is still contesting or undercutting its outcomes using all means at its disposal. The suffering and strength of those at the bottom of a global infrastructure are both depicted in the movie. Story and Making highlights the real nature of their campaign by staying on the front lines of the battle against Amazon’s labor abuses,
