| On Staten Island, it made all the difference that the union was independent and led by workers from the warehouse, not managed by a large, outside organization.  Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker Last week’s vote to form a union by the workers at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center, on Staten Island, was, as E. Tammy Kim writes in a new dispatch, “potentially one of the biggest labor victories since the nineteen-thirties.” It was also shocking—it will be the first Amazon union outside of Europe, and was built by four activists completely from scratch, with “none of the money or political connections of traditional organized labor.” Kim, who has reported extensively on labor issues, writes that she was as surprised as anyone by the result. By speaking to the organizers—and to the “pickers and re-binners, sorters, water spiders, and packers” who voted either in favor or against unionization—she identifies the innovative tactics that the Amazon Labor Union used to pull off its unlikely victory, and what this win might mean for the labor battles to come. —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor | 
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