What is it that makes a worker essential? This is the question that Chris Smalls and hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers had to ask as they found themselves working long hours in unsafe conditions at the height of the pandemic, having been deemed 'essential.' But when Chris, who was responsible for training thousands of other employees and upper management, organized a protest for better work conditions he was immediately terminated and told he wasn't articulate enough to be the face of efforts to unionize. Chris responded by pushing it further, creating the Congress of Essential Workers and, eventually, the Amazon Labor Union.
Chris joins Fredrik and Leilani to discuss the intense amount of work it took to create the union, the power of challenging the system as his authentic self, and proving those who underestimated him dead wrong.
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Amazon Labor Union. You can see more about Chris's fight to create the Amazon Labor Union in Fredrik's latest film,
Breaking Social.