Amazon and union recognition: ‘I didn’t set out to make a union film’, director of Americonned says

The director of a new movie which details the successful drive for union recognition at an Amazon warehouse says he didn’t “set out to make a union film” when charting the rise in inequality in the United States.

More than 400 people are due to attend a free screening of Americonned, the first documentary feature by New York’s Sean Claffey, at Liberty Hall on Thursday night.

The film deals with what its director regards as hugely expanded inequality in the United States, something he says has been growing steadily since the 1970s only for the process to have accelerated in recent years.

It also charts in some detail the successful drive last year to secure union recognition at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, the first of it kind. Chris Smalls, an employee who was fired for initially leading a walkout over workplace safety during the Covid pandemic eventually played a leading role in the formulation of the Amazon Labour Union.

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The Dublin screening, which precedes a similar one in London at the weekend, is being backed by a number of unions here including the Communications Workers Union, which has sought to organise workers at Amazon’s “fulfilment centre” at Citywest, and Siptu.

“I didn’t set out to make a union film,” says Claffey, who is in Dublin for the event, “but when I asked the experts we approached about inequality what the solution was, they all said ‘unions’. Or not necessarily unions but for people to organise and to fight for things to be better. So at some point I realised, well, ‘it looks like we’re making a union film here’.”

[ Amazon workers in UK launch fight for union recognition ]

[ Amazon workers vote to form first US union in New York in historic win ]

The Amazon element, he acknowledges, was something of a fluke. He had heard about Smalls and the original walkout and decided it would be good to talk to him but “he didn’t really fit into the structure film. We interviewed him anyway and we kind of clicked right away and I was like, there’s just something about this.”

Smalls, and his co-organiser, Derrick Palmer, would end up being listed by Time magazine as among of the 100 most influential people of 2022 and their story of organising the drive, largely from a bus shelter near the warehouse, became a central thread of the film.

The CWU’s Seán McDonagh says, “Amazon management here have the same policy but in response to our efforts have publicly said the choice to join a union is [with] staff but internally won’t entertain it.” A spokesperson for Amazon said “our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have.”

The film’s wider contention, however, is that the growing economic divide in the US is not sustainable in the long term.

“I got to grow up during the boom times in the United States and was devastated by what happened in 2008,” says Claffey, who has family roots Donegal – which he visited regularly in his childhood – Leitrim and Offaly.

“For me, the film was a chance to shine a light on what is an existential threat to society. It was only when we were driving around the country, we started realising how bad it really is. I mean, there’s entire neighbourhoods where they don’t have running water or electricity. In the United States. It’s not that the services aren’t there, but people can’t afford them. And then you have so many people that are working multiple jobs, 60 or 80 hours a week. But for millions of working Americans, wages are so low that they just can’t make it. It’s heartbreaking.”

[ Amazon ‘must respect’ workers’ rights at new Dublin warehouse ]

Claffey, whose professional background is in production design, suggests that the situation has fed into racism in American society. He also believes that there are challenges to face here, particularly in relation to housing.

Getting the film completed, he admits, was quite a personal challenge, one prolonged very considerably by the pandemic. “It was supposed to be a few months but then we were still there three years later.”

Finance was a big issue and credit cards, he acknowledges, played their part before someone who he has worked with regularly before, Len Monfredo, saw a rough cut and provided the funding required to get the project completed.

Trying to make the money back is a priority now. It had a limited release in several US cities and has featured at quite a few festivals but is also available in the United States on various streaming services including, he says with a smile, Amazon Prime.