From the rousing leader dismissed for leading a walkout to the activists handing out free burgers, pizza and weed, an inspiring new documentary charts the long, hard fight to create the delivery giant’s first union

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in January, US trades unions are among the many constituencies bracing themselves for impact. Cheered on by Elon Musk, Trump is expected to gut public regulators – including the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforces unions’ right to organise in America’s workplaces. Musk, who rejects unions as creating “a lords-and-peasants sort of thing”, had already joined a legal claim, alongside Amazon founder and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, arguing the NLRB is “unconstitutional” and should be scrapped.

It is against this bleak outlook for US labour activists that a new documentary, Union, opens in the UK this week. It follows the David and Goliath battle of a ragtag group of workers at Amazon’s huge JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, to create a union from scratch, and force Bezos’s retailing giant to the negotiating table.