please welcome chris smalls the man who took on amazon and won chris smalls welcome to the daily show thank you thank you what an insane story like i remember when this first started you know the pandemic was happening amazon was ramping up production the workers were struggling people were complaining and then your story popped up as an idea and everyone said the same thing and said this guy's crazy this is going to fail you cannot beat amazon and you did let's start at the beginning did you think you stood a chance i know you did
what you did but did you think you stood a chance i knew the whole time you knew you were gonna the reason i asked you that is because amazon like people have tried to form unions in some of amazon's other warehouses they fail dismally like amazon's got a really good marketing program inside you know what they do as an amazon worker talk me through that process so you were you were inside amazon you're working right um well i was fired two years ago after i let a walkout but i worked for the company for almost
five years i started in 2015 in new jersey um so i was promoted up to a supervisor level i was in that position for four years up until my termination and i did i definitely learned the ins and out of the warehouse in operations i trained thousands of their employees hundreds of their management that are now upper management to this day so um for me organizing was just i'm playing for a different team and i'm with the people i love that when you when you thought of organizing obviously there was a reason you know every
one of us reads about amazon from the outside we hear these stories people don't get enough breaks some people are peeing in bottles some people are you know stressed out because they have to meet random quotes that amazon imposes on them just the other day for instance i think it was on easter you know there was a sign up that said if you thank you for working on easter and if you meet your quotes are you going to get like a bag of chips or something it feels dystopian from the outside but how much of
that is actually true what is it like to work in an amazon warehouse it is true um you know as an amazon worker we're disconnected from outside you know we work 10 to 12 hours a day um if you work in new york and you're going to staten island um your commute is two and a half hours three hours depending on where borough you live in i lived in new jersey so my commute is definitely a long commute and i used to tell my new hires if you got a gym membership you might want to
cancel it wow you know because you're working 10 to 12 hours you get a 30 minute lunch you're doing calisthenics all day when you're in the warehouse what is the thing that you're fighting for the most because you know some people hear the fights against amazon they think about wages you know they think about time off they think about the way people are treated within within the warehouse you know obviously everyone wants a better workplace altogether but when you looked at the hierarchy of needs what was the top priority and then as you came down
that pyramid what were you looking to get well i i've noticed that amazon is ran completely completely off metrics you know there was no human aspect to it you know you get fired by email or our app a to z app wait are you serious yeah you know um people didn't have an interaction they didn't know their managers uh and there was a system in place to hire and fire and um you know it was uh before colbert when i realized that there's a system that's not only in place to fire people but it was
also discriminatory you know i applied to be a manager a salary manager over 50 times in five years and i was only interviewed twice so it wasn't uh it wasn't fair wasn't consistent with uh everybody in that work there and i knew before colby that something had to be done and when colbert hit it was a life or death situation i decided to take further action when you when you look at how to start a union one of the hardest things is if i understand correct me correct me if i'm wrong is you you need
30 of the signatures of the workers to begin the process yeah one of the hardest reasons you you can't do that at amazon is because they higher end fire so quickly so how did you get around that obstacle of getting people on board and then having them be around long enough to be part of the beginnings of a union yeah well education is key you know we had to educate them on what the union provides educate educate them on laws that protect them without a union so certain protections we do have that workers don't even
know um so we had to make sure that we educating the workers to get to a point where they start organizing themselves and once we got to that point we said okay you know we're not gonna go for there's four facilities over there we're not gonna go for all four we're gonna break it down and go one by one by one and um i think amazon was caught off guard by that they thought that we were gonna go for all four which we did try and we had to withdraw but then we changed up our
strategy and started doing it one by one we were able to get to our threshold they came for you as well you know i i saw one of the emails that circulated from you know you never know where it comes from but inside amazon where they they came after you you know they they would disparage you to the other workers one of the worst things i saw they wrote about you is they said um he's unintelligent he's not well spoken enough to to start a union no one should follow this guy i mean basically they
were like he's a rap black man essentially was what they were saying about you and so they're telling people don't trust him and they were saying he can't do this now obviously you proved them wrong yeah well they said it yeah they said they said and i wondered like because because you you were a rapper before you started working you know in in in warehouses and i wanted did you did you take this as a wrap before you like oh okay we're doing this was there a piece of you was like all right amazon we
doing this diss track coming no you know what i haven't rap i haven't rapped in so long i haven't rapped since uh you know my college years but i guess it just keeps resurfacing yeah you know media they they dig into your past oh yeah they do definitely so so um you know i haven't rapped in so long but um you know my my mom would tell you you know my voice is meant for something else so yeah this this is it i really love that so then let's talk about the future you're in an
interesting situation now where so you are the alu president right you've done something that no one thought was achievable um the vice president as i understand still works at amazon which was a smart move because you wanted someone on the inside what are you looking to do now because i know this is not the end this is the beginning of the story you know and and when when the the union was formed you even you know sent a message out to jeff bezos it was like pretty direct where you were going like this is this
this is the beginning this is only the beginning and you thanked him that was interesting to me you thanked him for flying in his penis-shaped rocket no i'd love to know why you think that was so significant why do you think that that actually helped with the unionizing efforts well you know we while he was up there was true you know we were outside i was outside signing workers up so i was just telling the truth you know um and he needed to know that you know he thought he thanked us when he came back
you know we paid for that trip so you know in this case we wanted to remind him that you keep going to space we're going to continue to unionize i love that damn what are you trying to be going forward now so you know many people out there this is something i've really enjoyed about about watching how you work you've censored the union around the workers and the workers alone you know politicians will always try and make it like the union is theirs you know they'll go like oh this is the democrats the republicans and
you've gone like no no this is the workers union you know because unions help all the workers it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is you're fighting for the workers i'd love to know why or how you you thought of doing that where so many would have aligned themselves with politicians you've gone no i i'm choosing not to do that yeah you know we want to represent all people you know you're working whether you're left right up down middle red yellow green we don't care we want to make sure that um it's all inclusive and
putting workers in the driver's seat that's the ultimate power you know um if you start to align with certain groups then uh amazon uses that against you you know all right this union president from this uh established union salary is half a million dollars yes with me they can't do that i'm unemployed so it's different you know it's different you know and um and having the workers in the driver's seat um and having them at the negotiating table and putting the putting together a contract that protects them especially the ones that work for the company
and know the ins and out of the company that's the best thing ever and now i want to give the power back to them by this union and that's exactly what we're trying to do what do you hope to achieve with the union so give me give me some of the things that you you know need to change now in an amazon warehouse that that all of us watch because everyone we use amazon people love the service but at the same time you know it's conflicting because people go like wait how are they being treated
other people you know what i mean it's a weird position for many people to be in so what what would you say to everyone going like hey this is what needs to change in amazon this is this is why we're trying to do this right you know well customers need to know that just because you hit one click buy it doesn't it's not magic you know these are real people being affected you know we want you all to stand in solidarity with these workers they come from your community they're your neighbors and we're customers too
as workers and the first thing we're fighting for is job security like you mentioned they hire and fire people all the time um you know there's people that are homeless working there people in shelters working there that we help we're fighting for 30 000 with higher wages um better medical leave options making everybody a shareholder again who they stopped in 2018 bringing back the monthly bonuses amazon workers know what i'm talking about vcp which was for productivity and attendance we used to get that they stopped that in 2018 as well um bringing back hazard pay
they think the pandemic is over people are still working catching cover still being sick and also you know providing a better quality of life a pension free college for themselves and their children as well um everything a union can provide we want to provide with this union you're a legend thank you so much for being here for real man everything you've done for smalls everybody [Music]
