Union Power — with Brett Story and Chris Smalls

Below the Radar

Filmmaker Brett Story and labour organizer Chris Smalls join us this week on Below the Radar. Brett is the co-director of UNION, a documentary film that follows the efforts of the Amazon Labor Union and their campaign to unionize the first Amazon warehouse in American history. The movement was spearheaded by Chris, a former Amazon warehouse supervisor who was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against Amazon’s lack of COVID-19 safety protocols. Brett and Chris chat about the process of making the film, the state of organizing in the contemporary moment, and the international reception of UNION. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Resources: Brett Story: https://brettstory.ca/ Chris Smalls: https://www.instagram.com/chris.smalls_/?hl=en Amazon Labor Union: https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/ UNION: https://www.unionthefilm.com/ DOXA Documentary Film Festival: https://www.doxafestival.ca/ Bio: Bretty Story: Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including at CPH-DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She is the director of the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America. The Hottest August was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and was called one of the ten best documentary films of 2019 by over a dozen publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch. In 2020 she was nominated for a Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto. Her most recent film, UNION, co-directed with Stephen Maing, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024. Chris Smalls: Christian Smalls is the founder of the Amazon Labor Union, an independent, democratic, worker-led labor union at Amazon in Staten Island. He is also the founder of The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW), a nationwide collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world. Smalls was formerly an Amazon warehouse supervisor, helping open three major warehouses in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut during his five years with the company, but he was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against the company’s unsafe pandemic conditions. Smalls has been profiled by media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CBC Radio, Salon, and Jacobin. He lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “ Union Power — with Brett Story and Chris Smalls.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 5, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html.