The News

Amazon Prime users who are taking advantage of Prime Day on Tuesday should “have a guilty conscience,” the president of the Amazon Labor Union said at a Semafor event Tuesday.

“I’m encouraging all Prime users to have a guilty conscience. If you’re shopping on Prime, also help donate to our efforts because this is a grassroots, worker-led movement,” Christian Smalls, who founded the union in 2021, said during Semafor’s The World at Work Summit.

Smalls led a walkout at the Amazon warehouse where he worked at on Staten Island in 2020. Last year, workers at the warehouse voted in favor of unionizing. The union remains in a legal fight with Amazon.

Smalls said labor laws in the U.S. are “outdated and never been in favor of workers.” He has met with President Joe Biden and said his administration has “a lot to do for labor and the working class right now.”

“They have an opportunity of a lifetime,” he said. “It’s good that we’re talking about labor in this country, it’s good that labor and organizing, and joining unions, forming unions are appealing now, especially to the younger generation.”