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Category Archives: Collective Bargaining

The Hungry Miles (1954)

06 Jun

49m; Australia

Director: Jack Levy, Keith Gow

Synopsis: The Hungry Miles is a documentary made by the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit. It documents industrial relations on the waterfront since the 1930s and includes dramatised scenes of working conditions during the Depression. It also recounts the background to the Federal Governments 1954 amendments to the Stevedoring Industry Act, which proposed to give shipowners the right to directly recruit wharf labour and bypass the union; shows workers demonstrating; contrasts the gap between industry and workers in the division of profits; and evokes the spirit of the Eureka Stockade in portraying the solidarity amongst waterside workers. It includes voice-over narration by Leonard Teale and employs an orchestral score.

Contact: View here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k16WogNM1yE

 
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Posted by on June 6, 2012 in Available Online, Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo)

 

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The Trotsky (2009)

04 Jun

120m; Canada

Director: Jacob Tierney

Cast: Liane Balaban, Jay Baruchel and Taylor Baruchel

Synopsis: Leon Bronstein is a high school student in Montreal West who is absolutely convinced he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.  After leading a hunger strike with some of his fellow private school peers against his father, the owner of a textile factory who will not allow the workers to unionize, Leon is sent to public school.  There he finds apathy, but also potential and begins to organize a student union, while also pursuing an older woman he is convinced he must marry.  A very funny and smart film that includes a lot of genuine moments about the power of organizing, and a lot of jokes about labor and left-wing history.

Trailer

 
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Posted by on June 4, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Education, Labor History, Netflix Watch Instantly, Organizing, Romance, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Seed For Tomorrow (1947)

07 May

20m; U.S.

Director: Julian Roffman

Synopsis: Discusses the need for unions for agricultural workers to help maintain price and wage control.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Farm & Food, Labor History

 

We Can Do That (Si Puo Fare) [2008]

07 May

111m; Italy

Director: Giulio Manfredonia

Cast: Claudio Bisio, Anita Caprioli and Giuseppe Battiston

Synopsis: Soulful and funny, We Can Do That is a kind of modern fairytale with dramas, downfall, and unexpected success, which helped it become a huge box-office success in Italy. In Milan in 1983, trade unionist Nello is too leftist for his publisher and too right-wing for his girlfriend. Sent to run a cooperative of mental patients, Nello decides to organize them into a practical workforce. The group decides that installing mosaic parquet floors is the best option. It’s Nello’s exceptional patience that allows him to deal with the multitude of idiosyncrasies, turning each patient’s particular eccentricity into a valuable skill. Soon, the workers become sought-after specialists and are making real money—and then making demands! The co-op starts this adventure of normality with touching naivety, but not everyone is ready to confront reality. This moving, inspiring story is balanced with good humor and understanding so that we may all laugh with, and not at, common human foibles.

Contact: Rizzoli Audiovisivi Rizzoliaudiovisivi.it

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Drama, Organizing, Romance

 

Smithfield Workers: Yes We Can! (2008)

07 May
 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing

 

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Standing Tall, Women Unionize the Catfish Industry (2001)

07 May
Run Time: 50min.
Produced, written and directed by Donald Blank
The boom in Mississippi catfish farming, in the 1980’s, required processing plants and hundreds of workers. The mostly black female workforce had to work, in noisy and wet factories for minimum wage, without any benefits, bathroom breaks or recourse if a worker was mistreated. The Mississippi Delta, at the time, was notoriously poor, neglected, and resistant to change.This historical documentary chronicles the risky and difficult effort of a few women working at Delta Pride Catfish to organize a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 1529 at their plant. The 1986 union election victory surprised many locals, especially management at Delta Pride. In 1990, the workers at Delta Pride struck for two months and won better wages and working conditions. The strike established local 1529 as an important player in the catfish industry, with a membership today of 3,000 workers.

Rose Turner, Mary Young and Sarah White, who initiated and led local 1529, tell the story with passion and humor.

available from Filmakers Library

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Collective Bargaining, Documentary

 

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (“Bar Association”)

07 May

45m; U.S.

Director: LeVar Burton

Cast: Armin Shimerman, Avery Brooks, Colm Meany, Max Grodénchik

Synopsis: Episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where the employees of Quark’s bar decide to organize a union.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, SciFi, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Strumpet City (1980)

07 May

360m; Ireland

Cast: Frank Grimes, David Kelly, Angela Harding, Peter O’Toole

Synopsis (IMDB): Covering the years between 1907 and 1914, Strumpet City follows several characters through the nightmare years of the “Dublin Lockout,” when the Catholic Church sided with the industrialists to smash Irish labor’s first substantive steps towards unionizing. Using the real-life labor organizer Jim Larkin (Peter O’Toole) as the dramatic lynchpin for the various stories, Strumpet City juggles several storylines to give an overall view of the terrible poverty and misery that afflicted the working poor of Dublin. The central story revolves around Mary (Angela Harding), a young domestic who comes to work for the wealthy, oblivious Bradshaws (Edward Byrne and Daphne Carroll). Once Mary meets handsome, kind foundry worker “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (Bryan Murray), she immediately falls in love, and the couple make plans to save enough money to eventually marry. Mary, distressed at the way the Bradshaws shuttle off their devoted housekeeper Miss Gilchrist (Mairin D. O’Sullivan) to the poor house when she can no longer work, decides to leave the insensitive Bradshaw household and marry Fitz.

–http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/26709/strumpet-city/

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Class, Collective Bargaining, Drama, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Sudden Wake (2009)

07 May

11m; Egypt

Director: Mahmud Farag

Synopsis: The story of the struggle of Egypt’s first independent trade union – the Real Estate Tax Authority Union (RETA). RETA was formed in December 2008, one year after tax collectors there held a two-week sit-in in front of the Cabinet Building. They face constant harrassment from the Egyptian government as well as the country’s official labour federation, the ETUF.

Contact: Hamza Ashra

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Politics, Public Sector

 

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Sunday Too Far Away (1975)

07 May

94m; Australia

Director: Ken Hannam

Cast:  Jack Thompson, Max Cullen and Robert Bruning

Synopsis (Wikipedia): The film is set on a sheep station in the Australian outback in 1955 and its action concentrates on the shearers’ reactions to a threat to their bonuses and the arrival of non-union labour.

Acclaimed for its understated realism of the work, camaraderie and general life of the shearer, Jack Thompson plays the knock-about Foley, a heavy drinking gun shearer (talented professional sheep shearer), and while he makes a play for the station owner’s daughter Sheila (Lisa Peers), the film is a presentation of various aspects of Australian male culture and not a romance; the film’s title itself is reputedly the lament of a shearer’s wife, ‘Friday night too tired; Saturday night too drunk; Sunday, too far away’.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Farm & Food

 
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