As the coronavirus was spreading throughout the city, Christian Smalls, a supervisor at the facility, was worried that he and his colleagues were vulnerable.

For weeks, he raised concerns about staff falling sick, and for weeks he says he was brushed off. When the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed at the warehouse, and management refused to temporarily shut down, he decided to take action.

“I was expecting them to close it down, send everybody home with pay, and sanitise the building professionally. But it was just business as usual,” he says. “That was pretty much my last day working for Amazon. I left that building that day and I continued my fight behind the scenes.”

Smalls took time off over safety fears in the warehouse, but he continued to go into work to try to convince his colleagues and his bosses that they were at risk.

“I did everything I could in my power to try to get those people out of that building,” he tells The Independent.

When he ultimately failed, Smalls, a 31-year-old father-of-three, organised a staff walkout. On the day it was held, he was fired by Amazon.

The company said he was let go for “putting the health and safety of others at risk and violations of his terms of his employment” and “violating social distancing guidelines” when he continued to come into work. But Smalls suspects otherwise.

“They wanted to get me out of the way,” he says, “cut the head off the snake.”

If that was indeed the strategy, it has backfired. In the weeks since his dismissal, Smalls has become a vocal advocate for a growing number of Amazon employees across the country who are angry about the company’s handling of the outbreak.

He says he is receiving calls from Amazon employees throughout the US who are planning walkouts.

“I wasn’t a union organiser, I was just a concerned supervisor. Now I absolutely am. I’ve embraced the role,” he says. “This is my new line of work. My life has changed and I’m going to continue to fight.”