Our In Conversation with Brett Story and Stephen Maing, director of Union (2024) is now available to watch.
SYNOPSIS
On April 1, 2022 a group of ordinary workers made history when they did what everyone thought was impossible: they successfully won their election to become the very first unionised Amazon workplace in America. This feat would be extraordinary for any union, let alone the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), who did it with no prior organising experience, no institutional backing, and a total budget of $120,000 raised on GoFundMe. Heralded as the most important win for labor since the 1930s, our documentary captures the ALU’s historic grassroots campaign to unionise thousands of their co-workers from day one of organising. Described by ALU President Christian Smalls as the “N.W.A. of the organising world,” the group’s persona and strategies are highly unconventional: from wearing Money Heist costumes at press conferences to distributing free marijuana to workers. A core emotional arc arises out of the journey of our worker-turned-organisers through a series of political battles, pivotal strategic events, and interpersonal tensions that test their commitments and their solidarity. Up against a corporate superpower and with legal protections at a drastic low for workers, all odds are against the ALU. Yet our protagonists remain unswayed in their beliefs in collective action and the dignity and power of the working-class.
DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT
BRETT STORY
As a filmmaker who grew up working-class and who saw my single mother and many neighbors struggle for decent pay and working conditions, I have long understood the stakes of labor organizing. I also know that the state of the union movement is not what it was a half century ago. Indeed, my first film, a feature documentary called Land of Destiny (2010), tracked the fall-out of an epidemic of workplace cancers among petrochemical workers in an industrial town in Ontario, Canada. Filming in this community in the mid 2000s, I first thought that I was making a film about workers rising up – a kind of 21st Century companion to Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA. It wasn’t until I was deeply embedded in the community that I realized I was actually making an intimate portrait of deindustrialization and obsolescence. All of my films since have focused, in one way or another, on the struggle of ordinary people to feel like they have power. It is significant that today’s insurgent labor battles in the United States are being led primarily by people of color, with Black women in particular at the forefront of multi-racial struggles for better pay and dignified working conditions. Some of these struggles take the form of traditional unionization campaigns, but many do not. Rather than drawing primarily from the history of labor organizing in America, today’s most active workplace organizers are taking inspiration – and support – from contemporary movements for Black lives, climate justice, and police abolition. UNION begins with the highly anticipated unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama and the decision, made in the immediate wake of its defeat, by Chris Smalls and his fellow workers to fight a different kind of fight. It will not be easy, but it will be a struggle that the entire world will be watching. UNION captures the labor struggle of the 21st century – Black led, multi-racial, and thoroughly without precedent.
STEPHEN MAING
As a first generation Korean, raised by a single mother long beset by financial and employment challenges, my films have often considered the experiences of race and class within larger economic and institutional structures. Having spent many years collaborating with whistleblowers, leakers and citizen reporters, my work has been informed by many unlikely champions compelled to disrupt these designs. After three-years of immersive observation, I hope this film shows how the pent up indignation of any group of people can also be a wellspring of collective power. While the insidious nature of capitalism will always fundamentally seek to undermine unionisation efforts, the workers in Staten Island proved organising may get messy, but progress is the result of each individual believing in the power of their voice and vitality.
I hope viewers feel the indelible sense of urgency and purpose that we did while filming. That for most workers, it is no small decision to challenge one’s own employer, let alone a ruthless adversary like Amazon. To create an organization out of nothing, in the face of immense pressure and risk to livelihood, requires great sacrifice, endurance, and sometimes hubris. I will never forget the day the organizers of the ALU won their first election – the feeling was electric, joyful, and a complete relief. And, likewise I will never forget the utter devastation when they lost their next. Seeing many of them learn to organize for the very first time, discover their talents and capacity, and witness their impassioned determination during such a challenging and consequential time fills me with gratitude. I hope viewers feel a bit of their own restlessness, determination and potential for change in the collective efforts of these workers and their historic achievement.