It was March,
the start of the pandemic.
We didn't know anything.
It was jam packed,
business as usual.
People coughing,
sweating,
Some people even vomiting that their workstations,
but we just kept working.
Because that's what we were told to do.
My name is Chris Smalls
former Amazon employee
fired on March 30th for holding a protest.
It all started when one of my colleagues got sick.
She was sneezing and had rosy cheeks.
As a fellow supervisor,
I told her to go home.
She did.
Two hours later we had our daily sync meeting.
In this meeting I was told not to tell my employees that somebody tested positive for COVID-19, two weeks prior.
After hearing that, that's when I took my stance.
I went to tell my employees, what was really going on.
I also took action.
On my own freewill I returned back to the building, sat in the cafeteria for 10 hours a day,
telling all day employees, the truth.
[Smalls] Giselle, we six feet away?
here, put your foot out.
(scoffing) We're two feet away.
[Smalls] Social distancing at it's best.
From there, we marched into the general manager's office every morning
voicing our concerns to have our demands met.
We wanted the building to be closed down, and sanitized.
Just days after organizing,
I was placed on a quarantine.
Not my friends,
not my colleagues,
not the person I ride to work with...
just me.
It was time to organize a real walkout.
[CNBC Anchor] At amazon.com's Staten Island fulfillment center in New York City,
known as JFK8, plan to walk off-
walk out
Amazon workers walked out of the fulfillment center warehouse on Gulf Avenue
workers claim that the company-
is mishandling its response to the covid 19 outbreak.
We just want the building to be sanitized.
Honestly it's not safe. It's nowhere near safe.
This building needs to shut down.
I saw people getting sick every single day.
I've been sending people home for differnet symptoms.
We are the heart and soul of this building.
And they're going to treat us with respect.
Two hours after the protest, I was terminated,
over the phone, for violating the quarantine policy
[PIX Anchor] 8:14 and this story getting a whole lot of attention.
Amazon under fire this morning.
[Inside Edition Anchor] This assistant manager who organized a mass walkout
at a distribution center on Staten Island, New York was fired today.
Amazon said it was for allegedly breaking quarantine,
not to get rid of a whistleblower.
[John Oliver] But leaked notes from an internal meeting days later,
which Bezos himself was present,
show the company's leadership discussing plans to make Smalls, the face of the entire union organizing movement,
since he is not smart or articulate.
rven within the company.
That memo pissed a lot of people off...
Well my name is Tim gray and my title is unemployed bum, because I quit my job last May 1st.
I used to be over at Amazon Web Services, my title there was vice president and distinguished engineer
[News Anchor] Big business headline at home this morning a Canadian vice president of Amazon
has resigned in protest over the company firing whistleblowers
[Reporter] saying the company culture is just too toxic,
When it came to firing whistleblowers,
you know, the COVID came along,
Amazon was spending huge amounts of money and effort trying to make warehouses safer,
the workers were still scared about dying as a result of their work
I had no trouble believing, two things at once
that Amazon was working on it but it's still a big problem.
And then they fired the activists who are trying to do something about it.
You can't argue about firing activists
it's just malevolent and unethical.
And it's not a thing that I think, one should be asked to live with.
And, you know, I had a VP rank
and as a VP rank you sort of stand for the company
and I just couldn't be in tune with that.
[Reporter] He said he's quiting in dismay
He said that Amazon fired whistleblowers.
And he's paying the price for it too.
He says he's gonna lose a million dollars in salary and stock options by making this move.
And he says that if he didn't do anything, he would be complicit.
At the moment we're doing the arithmetic of costs and benefits.
The costs borne by the workers in the warehouses are just I don't think, adequately costed in.
And the reason for that is simple is because they are relatively powerless.
They are fungible, they can be replaced.
you know, if one of them leaves, somebody else can be hired, usually in pretty short order to replace them and get back on the air.
So the real problem here is not a numbers problem,
it's a power problem.
It's the disparity in power between the very large, highly concentrated firms
who dominate the heights of the big tech economy,
and the people who do the entry level jobs.
And I firmly believe that if you dislike the behavior of these companies,
the only real solution for that is old fashioned politics to you know,
find politicians and elect them,
who will improve the regulatory and legislative framework,
so that the behaviors that irritate us, they're just no longer acceptable.
So here is Jeff Bezos, his company, Amazon,
and they received a tax rebate,
they paid nothing in 2018 in federal taxes,
That's a corrupt tax system to begin with.
But then on top of that, they received $129 million as a tax rebate.
So Amazon isn't the problem
the problem isn't that Amazon is evil.
The problem is that we have accepted a structure of legislation and regulation
that allows companies like Amazon,
to play entirely by the rules, break no laws,
and still do things that when you're looking at them, seem like opression.
[Smalls] They thought firing would put an end to me,
they were wrong.
[Smalls on megahpone] For those who don't know me,
my name is Chris Smalls, former Amazon employee
that was fired from Amazon back in March, March 30th,
for raising health and safety concerns.
And now we're here today, becuase we're gonna march on this motherf***ing Jeff Bezos house today
(crowd cheers)
And this is what we're about,
we are about giving the power back to the workers,
putting the power into workers hands,
and letting the workers decide their own destiny.
(chanting) IF WE DON'T GET IT?
SHUT IT DOWN!
IF WE DON'T GET IT?
SHUT IT DOWN!
Me being a supervisor, pre COVID, building the foundation,
the relationship with my employees, something family oriented,
I carried that over into this organizing position.
It was easy for me to transition into this position because
Amazon ironically, pretty much prepped me for this for the last five years when I was employed.
I've been a leader there, and when they terminated me,
they got rid of one of their best leaders.
And they didn't know that. But I think they may know now.
(chanting) IF WE DON'T GET IT?
SHUT IT DOWN!
IF WE DON'T GET IT?
SHUT IT DOWN!
I never planned on being the organizer.
I was just a concerned supervisor looking out for people.
And I'm going to continue to do that.
since then, I've organized around the country.
I founded my own organization
The Congress of Essential Workers,
T.C.O.E.W.,
to continue to uplift the voices of all essential workers.
[Michael Brooks] Welcome Chris Smalls.
He is organizing Amazon workers.
[Amazon Worker] When it comes to profit over safety,
they will always choose profit.
[Celeste Huete] Pay your employess a living wage
so they won't have to be on government subsidies.
[Amazon Worker] If you go on the website, all the essential items are sold out.
Until you restock,
shut it down!
{Former Amazon Worker] But you have a man that's a billionaire
and then not being taxed
What part of the game is that?
Tell me, where the right and wrong is in that?
[Smalls] I always say it's not gonna be Amazon versus Chris smalls...
It's going to be Amazon versus the people.