Union 2024 Movie Review
Amazon is a multi-billion dollar company that makes so much money that its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, can even afford private trips to space. Despite making huge profits, the conditions for workers at this company are disastrous: long hours of work with low pay, unjustified dismissals and poor health measures. Union , from directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing, shows us the struggle to prevent these abuses.
The documentary follows a group of Amazon packing plant employees who want to form a union, the first for the company, and thus have greater labor protections. However, this is no easy task. The obstacles range from systemic obstacles to internal disagreements. Can the group really succeed in this David versus Goliath story?
From the beginning, the film shows us the clear disadvantages that the group faces. For example, in order to even officially start the process, the signatures of 30% of the employees are needed, something very difficult in a company like Amazon, where turnover is so high that after 6 months the entire payroll is completely different.
The company has a ruthless structure designed to prevent workers from fighting back and uses the most vile efforts to stop the formation of a union, such as coercion, defamation or unjustified dismissal of those who support the creation of this organization. It is very frustrating to see how each step taken by our protagonists is answered with a new and unjust barrier.
At the center of it all is Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired after protesting the lack of employee protections during the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected several workers. Smalls’ resilience guides the story and gives us hope for his fight despite the lack of support from other unions or the discrepancies within the movement. His stubbornness becomes his greatest weapon, but also his obstacle when it comes to convincing others of his cause.
Although it is a story of struggle, the film avoids emotional manipulation, especially thanks to the music, which keeps us alert and stays away from saccharine tunes in hopeful moments or melodramatic ones in sad ones. It conveys very well the feeling of constant expectation.
The photography does a good job of framing the institutions and Amazon as robotic, inhuman and imposing entities. There are shots of large transport ships that take over the screen, low angle shots of the government buildings supposedly in charge of controlling everything or perfectly symmetrical shots of the machinery inside the packing plant. Another good resource is the clandestinely recorded material of the “talks” in which the company seeks to exert pressure on employees.
Union is a work about how difficult it is to obtain justice in a system created to favor corporations. Not only is it a story that keeps you interested and takes you through the complications of forming a union in the United States, but it shows how the fight for labor rights is a constant and tiring process precisely because those institutions charged with protecting citizens have failed them.
