They were buoyed by a tightened labor market, a reckoning over what employers owe their workers and a National Labor Relations Board emboldened under President Biden, which made a key decision in their favor.
Amazon spent more than $4.3 million just on anti-union consultants nationwide last year, according to federal filings.įor all their David-versus-Goliath disadvantages, the Staten Island organizers had the cultural moment on their side. “We started this with nothing, with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he recalled. The union spent $120,000 overall, raised through GoFundMe, according to Mr. They set up signs saying “Free Weed and Food.” Palmer brought homemade baked ziti to the site others toted empanadas and West African rice dishes to appeal to immigrant workers. They made TikTok videos to reach workers across the city. Along with a growing band of colleagues - and no affiliation with a national labor organization - the two men spent the past 11 months going up against Amazon, whose 1.1 million workers in the United States make it the country’s second-largest private employer.Īt the bus stop outside the warehouse, a site on Staten Island known as JFK8, they built bonfires to warm colleagues waiting before dawn to go home. Smalls and his best friend from the warehouse, Derrick Palmer, had set their sights on unionizing after he was forced out. Smalls, saying he had violated quarantine rules by attending the walkout. Smalls as “not smart, or articulate,” in an email mistakenly sent to more than 1,000 people, recommended making him “the face” of efforts to organize workers.
In the end, there were more executives - including 11 vice presidents - who were alerted about the protest than workers who attended it. The company named an “incident commander” and relied on a “Protest Response Playbook” and “Labor Activity Playbook” to ward off “business disruptions,” according to newly released court documents. In the first dark days of the pandemic, as an Amazon worker named Christian Smalls planned a small, panicked walkout over safety conditions at the retailer’s only fulfillment center in New York City, the company quietly mobilized.Īmazon formed a reaction team involving 10 departments, including its Global Intelligence Program, a security group staffed by many military veterans.
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