Recently, I caught up on Herbert J. Biberman's incredible 1954 movie Salt of the Earth. This independent feature chronicled New Mexico miners striking for better wages and living conditions. An unabashedly leftist and pro-union work, Salt of the Earth was trashed by politicians, critics, and Hollywood brass alike back in the day. Daring to depict worker struggles and negative portrayals of cops and businessmen (not to mention the film hailing from a trio of men blacklisted from Hollywood) made Salt of the Earth enemy number one. The film's leading lady, Rosaura Revueltas, was even deported to her home country of Mexico over her involvement with the feature and alleged “communist sympathies”.
America is built on suppressing the marginalized. The horrific treatment of Salt of the Earth’s artists is not an anomaly. It’s the norm in a capitalist country prioritizing the bourgeoisie and colonizers. For proof of that reality, just look at the new documentary Union. 70 years after Salt of the Earth, the silver screen is once again filled with largely non-white workers struggling to get their voices heard. Cops still function as just hired guards who do whatever rich people say, including brutalizing the proletariat. The only difference across seven decades is the size of the company these workers are striking against.
Union’s central subjects aren’t just holding up picket signs against a mining town. They’re boycotting Amazon, a company with a $1.97 trillion market cap.
Chris Small leads the charge on this task. He's a labor organizer recently laid off from a Staten Island Amazon warehouse. Though he's been let go, Smalls hasn't stopped advocating for his fellow workers. On the contrary, this man has started up the Amazon Labor Union. The various members of this outfit trudge towards getting enough support to create the first official Amazon union. As with any American group emphasizing working-class power, ceaseless challenges face Smalls and company.
There’s a disparity between the rules for how to establish rules and Amazon’s business practices, for one thing. Case in point: you need a certain number of still-employed workers at an outfit to sign petitions to get a vote going for a labor union. Amazon’s immense turnover rate for warehouse employees makes hitting that amount near impossible. Then there’s the way Amazon punishes workers connected to the labor movement. Problems are endless in this struggle. Thankfully, so is the determination of Smalls and company.
Directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing start Union in Spring 2021. They then follow the Amazon Labor Union members through a critical vote held in April 2022 (a smattering of footage from late 2022 is also shown). This concise scope makes the urgency of this initiative extremely palpable. This restrictive gaze subtly reinforces the finite resources and time the Amazon Labor Union has. This innately limited approach accentuates the importance of even seemingly throwaway interactions between Smalls and everyday Staten Island inhabitants. Every connection between Amazon Labor Union members and the working class is critical.
Meanwhile, Union’s most evocative sequences stem from stealthily captured footage. Such images concern the interior of the Amazon warehouse these workers inhabit. Thanks to cleverly positioned phone cameras, audiences see Amazon superiors do things like attempt to take down pro-union fliers. There’s a tangible dangerousness to witnessing off-the-cuff recordings of actual Amazon employee training sessions and anti-union videos. One can’t help but hold their breath as these images flicker across the screen. Surely some Amazon boss will come by and swat the phone out of the filmer’s hands. These risky glimpses inside the belly of the beast really accentuate the stakes of what Smalls and Company are fighting for.
The greatest example of this footage comes in depicting Amazon Labor Union members invading an anti-union seminar held by Amazon brass. For starters, it’s great to see a mainstream American documentary depicting active disruption as a noble endeavor. For another, this sequence fascinatingly depicts Amazon Labor Union winning over and finding common grounds with Amazon employees uncertain of union representation. Capturing such evolving dynamics with a phone camera truly makes you feel like you’re in the incredibly tense room.
When it’s not reflecting cloak-and-dagger recording techniques, Union’s filmmaking is otherwise unfortunately boilerplate. The production is crying out for editing or framing choices as boundary-pushing as the activists on-screen. It’s also a pity Story and Maing's camera doesn't gather more material on who Chris Smalls is. An early scene showing him trying to get his kids to attend virtual school lessons is one of the rare times Union pauses to flesh Smalls out. Watching this movie, it’s easy to understand who he is as a labor figure. As a human being, though, Smalls remains a bit of an enigma.
Quibbles aside, Union marches on more often than it stumbles. Much of that comes from a willingness to show discord in the Amazon Labor Union (including one member’s concerns about it turning into a “boys club”). This unblemished gaze reminds viewers human beings are behind this operation. They have squabbles and disagreements like everyone else. Just as engaging are depictions of unique Amazon Labor Union strategies that show why they’re “the NWA of organizing.” Where else will you see people raise awareness for working-class rights by offering folks free pizza and weed?
As near as I can recall, nobody in Salt of the Earth offered up doobies at no charge. Yet, otherwise, the spirit of Biberman's 1954 feature reverberates within Union. 70 years later, cinema is used once again to bear witness to what working-class people are capable of…and the systemic structures suppressing them. If you were already enraged over Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his egomaniacal Rocketship excursion, Union will make your blood boil to unprecedented degrees.