Leaked Amazon memo: Walkout leader “not smart or articulate”

Enlarge / Chris Smalls. (credit: CNBC)

Amazon was eager to make warehouse manager Chris Smalls the face of worker activism at the company, an internal memo shows. The memo was leaked to Vice, which published excerpts of the document on Thursday.

"He's not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we're trying to protect workers," wrote David Zapolsky, Amazon's general counsel. Zapolsky was summarizing discussions at a daily meeting of senior Amazon executives focused on the coronavirus crisis. Vice reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos attended the meeting.

Smalls was a manager at an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York. It's one of Amazon's largest facilities, with around 5,000 workers. On Monday, Smalls was one of a number of workers-Amazon says 15, organizers say 60-who walked off the job to protest what they saw as inadequate precautions for worker health.

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