Union is an examination of Chris Smalls’ effort to organize the Amazon Labor Union, which faced serious backlash from warehouse leadership. Although Smalls first joined Amazon in 2015 to provide support for his family, he inspired a walkout at a Staten Island warehouse due to the inadequate safety procedures related to Covid. Smalls was fired, and grew radicalized through the formation of The Congress of Essential Workers, a body of activists and workers that eventually became the Amazon Labor Union. Smalls’ supporters came from a diverse background; single parents, recent college graduates, and military veterans were involved in the union’s leadership committee.
Smalls comes under fire for his communication skills, but Union is largely a lionization. Although Small had given up dreams of becoming a professional rapper by the time he joined the New York warehouse, he still proclaimed himself to be “the N.W.A. of the organizing world.” Beyond his drive to improve dehumanizing circumstances, Smalls has an aura of charisma; between the organization of food stands outside warehouses to cluttered zoom calls with dozens of passionate supporters, Union makes it evident that Smalls’ success is due to his ability to connect with people on a human level. Among the most crushing aspects of Union is how Smalls’ idealism fades away; every victory achieved in Union is a minor one, as there’s no indication that Amazon has faced any legitimate consequences. The film may be more cynical than he is, but Union does imply that Smalls lost a sense of youthful innocence after exposed to Amazon’s swift move to suppress any of its critics.
Union made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024. Although Sundance has historically succeeded in the promotion of non-fiction projects, a film as combative as Union presented a complication for any potential buyers. Amazon’s not only one of the most powerful companies in technology and retailing, but among the most significant players within the entertainment industry. Smaller distributors that would’ve normally taken a chance on a small, acclaimed documentary about current events may have been dissuaded from the acquisition of a film that directly criticized Amazon. Amazon’s marketing, streaming, and commerce arms give it leverage over any studio that it enters a partnership with, and are easily weaponized in the case of a public relations crisis.
That Union was released in any capacity is a minor miracle. After a brief, self-distributed run in New York theaters that qualified it for critical prizes during award season, Union was made available for free for a brief period on its official website. Despite endorsements from many major publications and critics’ circles, Union has been largely absent from public discourse. It’s an entertaining documentary that finds its greatest success in the identification of compelling characters. Unfortunately, the film’s greatest flaw is its optimism; any notion that significant change would occur was easily proven too idealistic, and deemed potentially impossible in the aftermath of November’s election.
Union takes on daring subject material, but the documentary isn’t as radical as skeptics may have assumed; Amazon has an unhealthy workplace culture, and employees should be able to earn a living wage. The issue with Union is that the story is ongoing. Months after Union’s Sundance screenings, the Amazon Labor Union officially became affiliated with Teamsters in an alliance that was largely seen as a victory among Smalls’ supporters. Nonetheless, the movement grew more significant than any one Robin Hood-esque hero, and Smalls was replaced as union president by Connor Spence in July. Events within Spence’s reign included a targeted protest on Black Friday, as well as a target strike in December that became the largest in history.
The moment in which Smalls’ story became a microcosm of a larger movement would’ve offered a greater perspective, as Union never could’ve addressed the many reasons why the ACU took so long to come to fruition. This year saw the debut of many “activist” documentaries that succeeded through their specificity; Daughters examined the prison-industrial complex through a series of paternal relationships, and Sugarcane explored Canada’s historic mistreatment of indigenous people through extended conversations with individual families. Although Union may have cut moments that examined Smalls’ family life for the sake of his protection, the identification of his traits unrelated to employment and activism may have created a more well-rounded documentary.
The most interesting aspects of Union are the moments the capture Amazon at its most totalitarian, including footage of PowerPoint presentations held to dissuade workers from participation in the union. Beyond the blatantly misleading information, which evokes similarities to the military propaganda satire in Starship Troopers, it becomes evident that Amazon’s goal was to wage a silent war. The company would never acknowledge the legitimacy of the union in public, and instead forced its more powerful employees to offer half-truths to tormented employees. It’s bleak stuff, as Union has offered just enough incidental proof that none of these incidents are anomalies.