New trade unions in America are successfully using company brands

Deploying the Alphabet and finding a happy Medium

Amazon Labor Union leader Christian Smalls speaks during a rally with Amazon workers outside the company building in Staten Island, New York City, on April 24, 2022. - A recent push for worker unionization has gained traction and found some major successes in the United States. (Photo by Kena Betancur / AFP) (Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)

May 26th 2022

Christian smalls and Jaz Brisack have lived very different lives. Mr Smalls started out as a rapper and worked in a series of jobs in retail before joining Amazon as a warehouse picker in 2015. He was fired in 2020 for leading a staff walkout, and he went on to found the Amazon Labour Union (alu). Ms Brisack won a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford, then moved to Buffalo, New York, to work on a union campaign, but soon took a job at Starbucks. Eight months later she helped to found Starbucks Workers United (sbwu). Despite their different routes, Mr Smalls and Ms Brisack are the faces of America’s changing labour movement.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The name game”