Union Is a Reminder That Documentaries Can Be Artful As Well As Political

Brett Story and Stephen Maing like to emphasize the scale of the multinational corporation the labor organizers in Union are up against with images of the vast mechanisms that allow it to operate. In the opening shot of the documentary, which the two directed together, a container ship creeps into the frame, loaded with cargo, some of which will be fed into the enormous Staten Island warehouse around which the film is set. The first time we see the building, it looms out of the dark like a dystopian landmark, the Amazon logo an illuminated Joker’s grin on its side. The glimpses we get of the inside, some shot on the sly by members of the Amazon Labor Union, are no less bleak, with workers crouched over conveyor belts in vast, fluorescent lit spaces. The film returns more than once to a shot of what looks like rolling shelves in an unoccupied room being moved around mechanically. The ALU team will, at a certain point in their battle to unionize, project messages reading, “You are not a number. You are not disposable. You are a human being” on the side of the compound. It’s clear that the company, with its astounding turnover rate and algorithmically dictated conditions, would prefer its workers not be, but until technology allows for full automation, they’re going to treat their employees as component parts instead.

Union is a rare thing — a documentary that is undeniably political in its focus while being artful and observational in its approach. The idea that a doc has to function as a utilitarian message, constantly plunking stats on screen and shaping itself into the form of a blunt argument in order to have an impact, has taken such hold that it has drained some of the life out of nonfiction filmmaking. Union’s very existence is a testament to trusting your subjects to carry the film with their actions and personalities, and to the capacity for visuals to convey meaning just as eloquently as a set of title cards. Story’s brilliant last film, The Hottest August, was a journey in random interviews around New York City during the record-setting heat of the late summer in 2017, a wryly observational and utterly haunting pre-apocalyptic document. Union has a more obvious narrative drive, but retains some of that sense of momentous austerity. In one of those shots of cargo ships moving around like miniature continents, carrying enormous volumes of goods from across the ocean, we see one vessel pass from in front of another, revealing that the ship in the background is labeled with the name “Capital.” It’s the kind of detail that’s too good not to include, but also so on the nose that it functions as a very dry joke.

Union is not a movie that otherwise has the luxury of much humor, though there’s a camaraderie to its subjects that sustains them through their grueling work. Their leader is Chris Smalls, a father of three who took up organizing after being fired from Amazon for protesting the lack of COVID protections for the workers. He spends a lot of the film camped outside JFK8, the warehouse in which he used to work, grilling food and talking to the employees who stop by about what they have to gain from banding together. Chris and his colleagues, a mix of former and present Amazon employees as well as professional organizers who join specifically to help the union efforts, have been left to do things the hardest possible way — starting a brand new union from scratch (the ALU has since affiliated itself with the Teamsters). Chris, the face of their battle, has become “low-key famous,” as a worker observes when meeting him for the first time, though over the course of the film, we see both how dedicated and magnetic a figure he is, as well as his impatience. He and his colleagues have learned a lot, but are also still figuring things out as they go, and over conversations on Zoom and gatherings in person, we watch them plan, encourage, and also fight amongst themselves as the pressure grows.

That pressure is intense, and Union, which starts in the spring of 2021, simmers like a present-day techno-thriller in which the scrappy underdogs face down a monolithic corporation. It includes some astonishing moments of communication, like when ALU members interrupt a mandatory union-busting meeting to offer a counterpoint to the presentation, and in doing so gradually win over a grouchy attendee who’s initially hostile to their presence. But it also showcases how exhausting this work can be, and how the fight wears down different volunteers, one of whom has been living in her car for three years, and another of whom gets roughed up and arrested by the police. Union captures an incredible win for the labor movement, but it’s too canny to simply end on a note of triumph, and instead continues on to a reminder that the most profound tool a company like Amazon has is its ability to stall. Still, there are people — like these filmmakers — who are there to direct the eyes of the world to their actions. When filming an ALU volunteer struggling to put up a tent in the whipping wind, there’s a moment when the woman looks like she might be in trouble, and the filmmakers run up to ask if she needs help. Union may be a vérité work, but it never lets us forget the humanity of everyone in front of and behind the camera.