Christian Smalls is widely regarded as the new face of today’s labor movement. Smalls is the founder and first president of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). Christian Smalls was born on July 4, 1988, in Hackensack, New Jersey. He grew up in Hackensack and briefly attended a community college in Florida, but he dropped out because he thought he had a promising career as a rapper. He briefly toured with Meek Mill but gave up his pursuit of a music career to support his children. This led to a series of jobs in the service industry and in warehouses for companies such as Walmart, Home Depot, MetLife Stadium, and, eventually, Amazon.
Smalls joined Amazon in 2015 and worked there for five years before he was fired after organizing a walkout on March 30, 2020, at warehouse JFK8 to protest Amazon’s safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. Smalls challenged the company’s personal protections and lack of social distancing, alleging that it failed to disclose a worker’s COVID-19 illness to the workforce. Smalls had been exposed to the confirmed case on March 11, 2020, but was not notified until March 28, 2020. Smalls was fired on the same day of the protest. After his discharge from Amazon in 2020, Smalls founded 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. His firing prompted Smalls and fellow co-worker and friend, Derrick Palmer, to begin unionization efforts. After 11 months, both men succeeded in creating the Amazon Labor Union with a 2,654 Amazon workers voting for the union on April 1, 2022.
Smalls and Palmer were named two of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2022. In May of that year, Smalls met then United States President Joe Biden at the White House, where Biden told him, “I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.” Smalls is frequently seen wearing streetwear in the style of hip hop culture. He claims that criticism of his appearance motivates him to continue dressing the way he does, “Because I want y’all to understand it’s not about how I look…this is who I am as a person.”
