WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES

A first-person account of labor organizing in the 21st century.

Smalls first made news during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he organized a walkout at an Amazon warehouse. Fired the same day and lambasted by Amazon executives in a leaked memo as “not ‘articulate’ or ‘smart,’” Smalls cofounded the Congress of Essential Workers and staged protests outside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ homes across the country. After Smalls formed the Amazon Labor Union, the Staten Island facility where he had been a supervisor became the company’s only unionized warehouse in the country. President Joe Biden commended Smalls personally, and Time magazine named the 32-year-old labor leader one of the most influential people of 2022. This book recounts Smalls’ experience at Amazon, but not before tracing his New Jersey upbringing and early job history. By the time he accepts his first warehouse job for the online retailer, readers have a strong sense of his character; he describes himself as “competitive, unafraid, charismatic, and not here for the bullshit.” His proficiency on the job didn’t lead to the opportunities he thought he deserved. “Christian is a productive employee,” a manager’s note conceded. “But we’re concerned that if promoted, he will side with workers over management.” Dotted with short episodes drawn from U.S. labor history, the book is mostly a straightforward account of Smalls’ challenges, setbacks, and organizing victories. Written after Smalls was replaced as his union’s leader, it doesn’t have the sweep one expects from a memoir or a labor history. Instead, the author’s story resembles a long, absorbing passage from Studs Terkel’s Working, the 1974 classic about work and what it meant to those who did it. That Smalls worked at (and resisted) one of this era’s largest companies makes his story especially relevant.

An absorbing account of work—and unlikely organizing victories—at one of the world’s most powerful companies.