Amazon has now fired another key organizer of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). Pasquale Cioffi, better known as “Uncle Pat,” was a process assistant at JFK8, the fulfillment center in Staten Island that voted to become the first unionized Amazon facility in the United States on April 1.

When the union drive began, Cioffi wasn’t immediately on board. A Republican and former longshore worker with the International Longshoremen’s Association, Cioffi felt that the ALU’s organizers were promising too much, particularly on the subject of raises, as they spoke with coworkers about the union. But upon seeing ALU president Chris Smalls arrested in February alongside ALU members Brett Daniels and Jason Anthony — the trio were delivering food to workers, which Amazon deemed trespassing given that Smalls no longer worked at the facility — Cioffi changed his mind. “At the end of the day, they were dropping off food,” Cioffi told In These Times.

His decision to back the union was decisive. Cioffi, who sometimes adorns the back of his yellow Amazon vest with the words “Italian G.O.A.T.,” has a following in the warehouse. Once he decided to join the ALU’s effort, he estimates that he flipped around five hundred workers in the facility to vote yes for the union.