Amazon’s Union Win and Organizing for a Better Democracy

FEATURING ERICA SMILEY – Two years ago, Christian Smalls began organizing for a union at the Amazon Staten Island warehouse in New York. Smalls just celebrated a hard-won victory as workers at the state’s largest Amazon warehouse voted to join the newly formed Amazon Labor Union.

The Staten Island warehouse became the first ever Amazon location to successfully unionize and it is notable that it did so via a brand new union. Last year workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against joining the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RDWSU). Smalls, explaining the Staten Island victory to The Guardian, said, “Established unions had 28 years to unionize at Amazon and obviously that didn’t work.”

The Amazon labor victory comes at the same time that 17 Starbucks locations around the country won union representation since late last year.