Amazon Labor Union & Chris Smalls: Sadly, Many Red Flags
Indie collaborated with INN Members to publish an in-depth piece about organizing and political influence. This project took over a month to assemble.
Let’s talk about Chris Smalls, the Amazon Labor Union President. We LIKE Chris. We deeply admire his tenacity, his care for the health and safety for the workers of JFK8 (the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island he was fired from), and for the relentlessness he’s sustained for more than two years as he became a national figure, which he clearly never sought out. He just wanted to work somewhere that didn’t put his life at risk and took a stand. Over the past two plus years, he’s become a lightning rod, he’s been positioned by many as representative of the entire labor movement, and, frankly, may be in over his head at this point.
Let us start by saying that we never wanted to write this piece. It was our utmost hope that what is happening would not play out this way; however, we both warned against it early and have continuously pointed out the warning signs as a collective network since early April 2022, when workers at the JFK8 Amazon Facility voted to become the first Amazon warehouse in the country to unionize behind the newly formed Amazon Labor Union.