“I don’t want to bother you while you’re eating your Mac, but we have some real food over here,” a member of the team attempting to organize the Amazon JFK8 Fulfillment Center in Staten Island tells a warehouse worker as she looks like she’s waiting for the bus home in “Union.” If the way into a person’s heart is through their stomach, Chris Smalls was onto the right idea after being dismissed from the online retailer and deciding to set up a BBQ across the street where hot dogs and burgers would be served up alongside information about workplace protections and the potential for collective bargaining to secure a living wage. After staging a protest against his abrupt firing, he’s “low-key famous” as the person who realizes who he is only after asking a few questions while getting her burger says, and ironically, it’s revealed soon after that Jeff Bezos and others at the company would like to make him “the most interesting topic” when it comes to the union drives that Amazon would like to cut off at the pass, believing an example should be made.
“Union” suggests management should’ve been careful about what they wished for when there’s no disagreement from Story and Maing that Smalls is fascinating, though maybe not the most interesting element of their year-long chronicle of the organizing drive in Staten Island. A marriage made in nonfiction heaven between Maing, one of the finest cinematographers working in nonfiction with a real feel for capturing a sense of place and how people endure within it (last directing the riveting NYPD arrest quota doc “Crime and Punishment”), and Story, who has a rare ability to reframe conversations around social issues in films such as “Prison in 12 Landscapes” and the sly climate change doc “The Hottest August,” the film is more subdued than what most audiences walking in might expect when the landmark labor victory was hailed around the world. But “Union” is all the better for it, offering a sober look at the internal guessing games and debate that ensue within a movement because of an impervious adversary, leaving them to question themselves when they hit road blocks and inevitably slightly at odds over the best way forward.
Maing and Story do indeed have a movie star in Smalls, the charismatic and unconventional face of the Amazon Labor Union effort whose camo wear may be appropriate for the battle ahead, but in stark contrast to the suit you might expect him to wear. More crucially, the directing duo identifies a number of key figures that will be familiar to anyone that has ever attended a labor union meeting, illuminating the complicated dynamics that are always at play and make it difficult for such groups to ever get on exactly the same page. On one end, there’s Madeleine, an idealistic young labor leader from Florida who takes a part-time job at the Amazon facility with the ulterior motive of helping to organize the Staten Island center, and at the other is Natalie, a middle-aged employee who would love to be part of a union, but is inclined to vote against a local effort when she believes a national one would be more successful. The scenes where the two women engage with one another are as important as any contretemps between the ALU and Amazon, showing how great expectations can get in the way of good even amongst those who share a common cause and as Natalie becomes more alienated when feeling like her voice isn’t heard, the areas in which she diverges from her colleagues in terms of race, gender or age start to look more insurmountable, creating the kind of roadblocks on an individual level that prevent progress from happening.
This makes what the Amazon Labor Union achieved all the more impressive, though Maing and Story smartly resist the rousing finale that could suggest the story is over, though they can’t help but inspire when depicting the nuts and bolts of a modern movement so vividly that it can be replicated by those that see it, as well as the headwinds against such organization, not only when resistance can come from within the workforce but companies such as Amazon have adapted their hiring practices to rules about the formations of unions that makes it all but impossible to get the signatures needed to even start the process. Individually, the imagery Maing and Story capture may not call attention to itself, but fittingly, it holds tremendous power collectively.
“Union” will screen at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22nd at noon at the Redstone Cinema in Park City, January 23rd at 5 pm at the Broadway Centre Theaters in Salt Lake City, and January 25th at 9 am at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City. It will also be available to stream from January 25th through 28th.