Labor documentary ‘Union’ dignifies the Amazon worker

Union was recently short-listed for the Best Documentary Oscar, and is available to rent online at least until the nominations are announced on Jan. 17. This sort of streaming info is usually relegated to footnotes and post-scripts, but in the case of Union, this informs its larger context. The aforementioned online rental is entirely self-distributed, despite the movie's critical success. It premiered at Sundance nearly a year ago, where it won a Special Jury Award, and it even played at the New York Film Festival in October, alongside award season heavy-hitters like Anora and Nickel Boys. Still, no one has bought the film for release. When Story was asked about this discrepancy, she claims that multiple distributors cited their ongoing relationships with Amazon Studios.

This ought to come as no surprise. The tech and retail giant has its hands in multiple pies, and docs that speak truth to power but don't end up with distribution has been something of a recent trend. Palestinian documentary No Other Land, which depicts Israeli land seizures in the West Bank, ended up on the same Oscar short-list, but is still seeking U.S. distribution (speaking out in support of Palestine has been a fraught issue for Hollywood, to say the least). As for Union, in which Amazon is the target of organized protest, the film's need for self-funded exhibition has become part of its ongoing narrative. Its rental period coincided with what had been described as the largest ever strike against Amazon—one supported by the Teamsters Union—which kicked off on Dec. 19 in New York, Georgia, Illinois, and four locations across California, and lasted an entire week.

The last time Amazon featured prominently in a major American film was Nomadland, Chloé Zhao's Oscar-winning drama about van-dwelling nomads. It's a gorgeous, poetic piece, but its docu-fiction approach to its gig worker characters—several of whom can briefly be seen toiling away at Amazon warehouses—elides the harshness of their working conditions. Jessica Bruder's book of the same name, on which the movie was based, is much more explicit about the harm that comes to these workers (some of whom even play themselves in Zhao's film). Ironically, Story's 2017 documentary short CamperForce, which was both based on Bruder's book and in turn influenced Zhao's adaptation, more directly depicted the violence wrought upon the bodies of Amazon warehouse employees. This makes Union her second time tackling this subject matter, and given her handshake with Maing—whose own documentaries, High Tech, Low Life  and Crime + Punishment, follow citizen journalists and whistleblowers—a perfect storm of exposé filmmaking come to life.

Set largely in 2021 and 2022, Union depicts the mechanics by which the recent protests were made possible in the first place. Its unassuming approach, with night-time silences broken up by casual conversations on the sidewalks near JFK8, gives audiences a welcoming way into its debates on exploitation, accompanied by hints of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s eerie, dreamlike synth score. Amazon Labor Union (or ALU) leader Chris Smalls—a Brooklyn resident, and former Amazon worker fired for pro-union activities—gauges the interest of current employees at his makeshift barbecue stand. As the film goes on, he's joined by a greater number of activists and co-leaders as various deadlines to vote on unionizing draw closer.

Much of the movie focuses on the downtime between significant events—the strategy meetings, the crowded Zoom calls, even the major disagreements—depicting just how, well, physically and emotionally laborious organizing can be. It's no walk in the park, and it's made even less glamorous by Amazon's apparent commitment to union-busting, between their "captive audience" meetings to ascertain workers' views, and their various in-house seminars demonizing the ALU. But a major reason for Union's effectiveness—and really, the effectiveness of unions—is a sense of fearlessness and camaraderie. The film is confrontational, in large part because its subjects are unafraid of confrontation, and covertly capture footage of assembly lines, and even instances when they break up and speak out against the aforementioned meetings.

At least some of Union is a nerve-wracking guerrilla documentary, and its subjects are occasionally its co-authors. However, Story and Maing, in depicting the righteous struggle to unionize, avoid romanticizing it, thanks to the frankness with which they capture the perils of organizing, through the arguments, disagreements, and interpersonal tensions that build up over time. One such disagreement is about cultural and political optics. Smalls, for instance, is a Black man, and commands a street vernacular often looked down upon, even though he speaks words of wisdom. But Smalls' leadership is also called into question by several ALU women who feel their voices aren't heard. The film lets these arguments play out over several months, and in the process, paints a stark intersectional portrait about the demographic realities of organizing, and of the frictions and in-fighting that tend to arise within social movements.

Talking heads on news media often discuss the white working class when unpacking economic issues, as though they are mutually exclusive with ideas of race and identity, rather than sides to a coin.

However, in centering Smalls as their primary subject, Story and Maing—a white Canadian woman and an Asian American man, respectively—also gradually expose the biases within the general American understanding of "the working class." The phrase is often thrown around in broad discussions about the United States (in particular: electoral politics), with an underlying assumption that seldom pronounces a silent adjective: white. Talking heads on news media often discuss the white working class when unpacking economic issues, as though they are mutually exclusive with ideas of race and identity, rather than sides to a coin. In training their camera on Smalls, and on the multi-ethnic coalition beside him, the filmmakers shatter this illusion.

Their hand-held, cinéma verité approach (courtesy of cinematographer Martin DiCicco) also has a two-fold effect on our perception of the subject matter. On one hand, the movie's intimate close-ups create a distinct sense of lived reality—of truthfulness, depicted in all its hues. On the other hand, the use of long, telephoto lenses feels occasionally as though it’s intruding, enhancing the sense of subtle paranoia some of the subjects feel, about their corporate overlords potentially surveilling them at a distance.

After all, what these workers are up against isn't merely a company, but a fascistic powerhouse employing divide-and-conquer strategies while armed with money, lawyers, and even local law enforcement. However, the ALU's weapon against them is relentless solidarity, and Story and Maing's weapon is the movie camera, and its ability to depict the truth. At the end of Union, each hard-fought victory, and each loss reluctantly swallowed, is re-framed as just one drop in a larger ocean of workers, and one chapter in an ongoing story. This is perhaps the movie's biggest accomplishment: that despite being its own, self-contained work, it feels part of something greater.