The two men who led a shocking union win at an 8,000-employee facility owned by the nation’s second-biggest employer were among the speakers at the Worker Institute’s Union Days at the ILR School this semester.

Amazon spent millions attempting to keep a union out of its JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, but lost when 2,654 workers voted “yes” for representation by the Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 voted “no” a year ago.

Chris Smalls, founder and president of Amazon Labor Union, Smalls, and Derrick Palmer, the union’s vice president, gave the Union Days Labor Leaders in Residence Keynote, “Taking on a Giant: The Path to Unionizing the First Amazon Warehouse in America.” Read the story here and see the video here.

In an interview on campus, Smalls and Palmer discussed their connections with Cornell students. Read the story here and see a video clip here.

Additional Union Days 2023 events can be viewed here:

Southern Workers Organizing

A Founder’s Account of the 9 to 5 Movement

Unionizing on University Campuses

ILR students Amira Shimin ’25 and Jiwook Jung ’25 contributed to this story.