Derrick Palmer

Biography

Derrick Palmer is an American labor organizer and co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union, which he launched with Christian "Chris" Smalls after Smalls was fired from Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Palmer served as the ALU's vice president during the organizing drive that led to the union's landmark 2022 victory — the first successful unionization of an Amazon facility in the company's history — and continues to work at JFK8. He and Smalls were named to Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2022, and Palmer is the author of Handbook for the Revolution: Building a More Perfect Union for the Twenty-First Century (2026).