A new documentary on the formation of the Amazon Labor Union – the first union at America’s second-largest employer and one of the most significant organized labor victories in decades – premiered on Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, a major distribution festival at which Amazon will be bidding.
Union, directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing, tracks the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) from its early organizing efforts at the JFK8 warehouse on New York’s Staten Island in spring 2021, through a contentious vote to establish the union in April 2022. The approval by a two-thirds majority, considered a watershed victory in the nascent new labor movement, made JFK8 the first unionized Amazon workplace. The mega-corporation, which currently employs 1.5 million people in the United States, disputed the terms of the election. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dismissed the complaint, which the company has since appealed.
The 102-minute film, made over of the course of three years, combines verité footage of union activity on Zoom and outside JFK8, as well as footage of Amazon-led mandatory “trainings” to discourage workers from supporting the union, covertly filmed by organizing employees. In one such session, known as a “captive audience” meeting, an anonymous Amazon manager instructs workers: “We’re asking you to do three simple things: get the facts, ask questions and vote no to the union.”
The videos serve as evidence of Amazon’s vigorous anti-union efforts; the company spent $4.2m on anti-union consultants in 2021, and another $14.2m in 2022.
Workers in the film testify to numerous issues at the JFK8 facility, which employs over 8,000 workers. Among them: lunch breaks too short to allow workers time to walk across campus to the cafeteria; minimal vacation time; inhumane treatment such as refusal of bathroom breaks; lack of PPE equipment during the Covid pandemic, resulting in worker illness or death; lack of job security; racial and gender discrimination; and low pay, particularly given the multibillion-dollar company’s wealth. (The film opens with footage of the Blue Origin rocket paid for by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of about $206bn.)
The ALU organizers sought longer breaks, paid time off for injured employees and an hourly wage of $30, up from a minimum of just over $18 per hour offered by Amazon. The estimated average wage for Staten Island is $41 per hour, according to a US Census Bureau analysis of the borough’s $85,381 median household income.
The documentary particularly focuses on the union founder and president, Chris Smalls, a former JFK8 warehouse employee who was fired in 2020, shortly after he helped organize a work stoppage in protest over the warehouse’s lack of protective gear and hazard pay. The film opens in spring 2021, as Smalls was beginning to gain media attention and campus notoriety for his organizing work.
At the time, the ALU was in talks with more established national unions about a partnership. During a closed-door meeting with one major union, the aftermath of which is caught on camera, ALU leaders grew frustrated by what they described as condescension and infantilization by the union representative and decide to go on their own. “I’m tired of people assuming shit – ‘I want to make sure you’re doing it for the people.’ We are the fucking people!” says a fired-up Smalls, imitating the union representative.
The bulk of the film tracks the ALU’s efforts to win legal legitimacy. First, through collecting enough petitions via grassroots campaigning, including soliciting workers with free pizza and cannabis and phone-banking all 8,000-plus employees. Next, winning an NLRB-conducted election without establishment union support, organizing or funding. According to the organizers, the company responded to the election by escalating anti-union propaganda, the personal denigration of Smalls and harassment of unionizing employees, such as writing them up for infractions and threatening to withhold pay. (A judge later found Amazon guilty of illegal anti-union tactics.) In one scene in the spring of 2022, Amazon management call New York City police to arrest Smalls and supporters still employed at Amazon when they refused to leave the warehouse’s visitors’ parking lot. “They’re out here hitting us with 100-year-old techniques. It’s actually hilarious,” says one organizer of the messaging.
The film also touches on internal divisions over future strategy and Smalls’s leadership style, which favored holding elections at other Amazon facilities rather than focusing on a contract at JFK8. (The ALU victory at Staten Island was followed by two resounding losses at other facilities in New York.) In one standout scene, a former ALU organizer named Natalie, who left the union over disagreements with its direction and advocated waiting for an established union with a “no” vote, voiced her concerns to a union leader. “I wanted to be a part of other organizations that actually appreciated what I could bring to the table instead of constantly feeling like I was being fought with every single day or ignored or dismissed or disrespected,” she says. “I can’t leave one boys club at Amazon and work for another boys club in the union.”
Union does not include any interviews with Amazon management or with employees actively fighting the union, a decision Story attributed to the film’s verité mandate. “It was really important to offer this really intimate view of a group of organizers in an observational mode,” she told Variety at Sundance. “We didn’t want to break up that intimacy with interviews that would feel like they were just outside of the vocabulary of the film.”
Despite the ALU’s victory at JFK8, the film ends on a muted note, given the tenuous cohesion of the union, which has led to independent factions within it, and the failure of unionization efforts at other Amazon facilities. Amazon is still appealing the NLRB to dismiss the union’s election, and has refused negotiate with the ALU for a contract at JFK8.
The film is searching for distribution at Sundance, with a potential release date to be announced.
