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Christian Smalls, the union leader who is shaking up Amazon
Audio 04:04
Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, speaks during a rally outside an Amazon facility on Staten Island in New York, Sunday, April 24, 2022. © AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File
By: Ariane Gaffuri Follow
4 mins
Portrait of the American Christian Smalls, founder of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), in New York, the first union of Amazon, the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos.
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At 33, this black American with the look of a rapper, achieved a feat at the height of the health crisis:
organizing and winning union elections
within the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island.
"
Amazon did not protect us,
" says Chris Smalls on the American television channel CNBC.
We had no masks, no sanitary gel, no social distancing, nothing.
I tried to alert my superiors.
Two hours later, I was fired.
From there, I went all over the country to warn about our rights.
I didn't give up, especially after the campaign that Jeff Bezos launched, calling me
an "unintelligent and unspoken" person
, to stop me from forming a union.
»
An attitude that says a lot about the e-commerce giant, reacts Eric Frumin of the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), which brings together a coalition of four unions in the United States representing 4 million employees.
"
It shows phenomenal arrogance that the leaders of such a wealthy company would think that someone who doesn't look like them, doesn't talk like them, isn't capable of being a powerful, highly intelligent and able to stand up to them.
It's also arrogant to treat your employees so badly, to pay them so little when they have so much, and to think it's okay to do so
.
»
120,000 dollars raised to organize the union fight
Christian Smalls grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey.
His mother works in a hospital and raises him alone.
As a teenager, he went to municipal high school, then did odd jobs.
A good basketball player, he aspires to turn professional, but his hopes are dashed when he is knocked down by a driver who flees.
He became a rapper for a while
and went on tour for a while with the Meek Mill group, then found a stable job in the big distribution to raise his children.
He went through Walmart, FedEx, among others, before joining Amazon in 2015.
► To read also: "A historic day": a first union is born at Amazon in the United States
At first, he packs parcels, then becomes assistant manager.
Nearly 50 times, he asked for a promotion which he was refused, a reflection, according to him, of the racial discrimination that reigns in the company.
The exhausting and dangerous working conditions outrage him.
With a handful of colleagues, he raised $120,000
via
an internet fundraising site and the sale of T-shirts to organize the union fight.
For its part, Amazon is spending more than 4 million dollars to block any mobilization.
Chris Smalls testified in the Senate in early May: “
Amazon has hundreds of
'union busters'
across the country and around the world.
They go into the warehouses, they isolate the employees, intimidate them, bombard them with questions to supposedly improve their working conditions, while probing them to find out who is pro-union and who is not.
And they inform management.
Some of us have been threatened, arrested by the police, others like me fired unfairly and with total impunity.
»
“
There is no law here that obliges employers to meet with staff representatives
”
This tenacious man, however, succeeds in gathering where the official union of the Amazon site in Bessemer, Alabama fails.
But it is not won yet.
“
They won the election, but they don't have an official union,
” explains Eric Frumin.
There is no law here that obliges employers to meet, listen to, staff representatives, unlike France or elsewhere in Europe, unless the interested parties have first requested the organization of a supervised election. by the government, that they win it and succeed in overcoming the obstacles set up by the employers.
In half of the cases, these initiatives fail.
What ALU managed to accomplish is very important,
(crucial for workers in the United States and around the world),
but this is only a first step.
»
Things could, however, move forward, because Chris Smalls caught the attention of the American president who received him at the White House.
"
When I ran for president, I pledged to be the most pro-union president in American history,
" Biden said.
Everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and as my father said, you have to demand it, and if that doesn't work, the way to demand it is to organize and involve everyone .
»
Chris Smalls intends to continue to involve everyone.
Employees of more than 100 Amazon sites have called on him.
Elsewhere, Starbucks, Apple, and Google are also facing unionization efforts.
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