UALE Summer School for Union Women : Labor Films

1992. Academy Award winning, controversial documentary about the P-9/UFCW--Hormel strike in Austin, Minn.
(note: for some reason, the title is in IRIS as AN American Dream. The title is American Dream.)

1993. Documentary of two 1968 events in the civil rights movement--the sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2000. Maya, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, meets a young organizer and joins the fight to unionize the janitors at her workplace. But her sibling and sister janitor Rosa has concerns, and the bosses are not happy.

2005. This documentary visits a Chinese blue-jean factory, where workers are trying to survive a harsh working environment. But when the factory owner agrees to a deal with his Western client that forces his teenage workers to work around the clock, a confrontation becomes inevitable.

2004. Documentary examines the nature, evolution, impact and possible futures of the modern business corporation.

2004. While good jobs in high tech and manufacturing are increasingly hard to find, companies like Subway, Starbucks, and Blockbuster are opening stores at a pace of one a day. This film examines the rise of the low wage service sector and what it means for a generation of young Americans whose lives depend on it.

2014. "Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back. Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve."

1977. Academy Award-winning documentary on the UMWA strike at Brookside Mine. Kopple “celebrates the spirit and courage of the miners and their families in the context of violence that seems never to end, in a class war that seems more appropriate to the 1930's than the 1970's”

1984. The story of two young African-Americans who migrate from the South to the Chicago stockyards at the beginning of World War I. Though fiction, the story is based on real events. An intense and moving story.

1980. This excellent documentary tracks five “Rosies”, combining contemporary interviews and historical footage.

1987. Sayles' fictional film about mining conflict in an Appalachian community after World War I speaks to many still current issues--class, race and the labor movement, the role of women in working class communities, and also speaks to the deep emotion involved in creating change in a closed community.

TV 1982. DVD 2004. This video takes a look into the lives of three Latina immigrants working as nannies and housekeepers in Los Angeles. The issue of worker' rights is introduced in the film.

2007. Follows the remarkable story of three Latina immigrants, Lupe Hernandez, María Pineda, Maura Colorado, working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from a mega-trendy clothing retailer.

1936. An imaginative, often slapstick satire on the alienating and disruptive effects of mass production and automation. Charlie Chaplin, as the Tramp, goes from job-to-job, beset on all fronts by bad luck. Primarily a silent film with music, sound effects, and some spoken and sung dialogue.

1979. Southern mill worker Norma Rae meets union organizer Reuben and becomes a key organizer in the mill, a move that radicalizes her life and relationships.

1996. An award-winning documentary about what it means to be openly gay in the workplace.

2006. Explores how Argentina's 2001 economic collapse, where a prosperous middle-class economy was destroyed during 10 years of IMF policies, impacted the lives of ordinary workers. Follows 30 unemployed auto-parts workers, who stage a protest against their bosses and economic globalization by occupying their closed factory and refusing to leave.

1978. While autoworkers were occupying the Flint GM plant during the great sit-down strike of 1936-37, their wives, sisters, mothers, and girlfriends were leading the strike on the outside.

Viewers can turn to this comprehensive, annotated guide for films about unions or labor organizations; labor history; working-class life where an economic factor is significant; political movements if they are tied closely to organized labor; production or the struggle between labor and capital from a "top-down" either entrepreneurial or managerial perspective.