Format: DVD Video, 40 min., with bonus 14 min. slideshow
Publisher: Labor Education Service, U of MN
Usually ships in: 1 to 3 business days
Product ##: 7517
The history of the Twin Cities Ford Assembly Plant, United Auto Workers Local 879 and the unique community of workers in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood.
Since 1925, Ford Motor Company has operated a manufacturing plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, employing thousands of workers. This documentary tells the history of the Twin Cities Assembly Plant, United Auto Workers Local 879 and the unique community both hourly and salaried workers created inside and outside the factory.
2011
Directed by: Timo Grosspietsch
Documentary Feature (65 minutes)
A butcher, a post office worker, a taxi driver, a nurse and a deejay are accompanied during their night in Hamburg. Documentary filmmaker and cameraman Timo Grosspietsch observes with his camera in such a way that involves the audience immediately. It is a quiet film that leaves room for the people portrayed and depicts their workplace in carefully composed images. It documents the tough daily life of those whose jobs nobody really wants to do anymore.
Directed by: Mary Matthews
Documentary Shorts (60 minutes) Mary Matthews (917) 664-9443 Mmatthews@twu.org
A short film series from all over the country by one of the labor movement’s pre-eminent current day
documentary filmmakers – Mary Matthews. Director Matthews, for the TWU International takes us right into the center of worker/labor battles being fought all over the country right now. These shorts will include: TWU: FRONT LINES OF HURRICANE SANDY
TWU Local 100 and TWU Local 234 join forces in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. PRECIOUS CARGO: SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS ORGANIZE
School bus drivers and monitors join TWU in Burelson and Weatherford, Texas. SUPPORT YOUR DEALERS
The casino dealers of TWU Local 721 In Las Vegas, NV secure contracts at Wynn Resorts and Caesars Palace. TWU GET OUT THE VOTE
Philadelphia’s TWU Local 234 and New York City’s TWU Local 100 work together to help get out the vote in Pennsylvania. NASA FIREFIGHTERS PROTEST HUGE CUTS & LOSSES
TWU Local 525 members fight 20% in salary cuts and retirement benefits for firefighters, paramedics and inspectors who work at the Kennedy Space Center. THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE
This is the American Workplace, where you will spend most of your life. Hard work in America comes with an important promise. I SUPPORT AMERICAN JOBS: DFW PROTEST
American Airlines employees unite in protest at Dallas/Ft. Worth airport over tens of thousands of proposed job cuts at the airline. AA mechanics, flight attendants, fleet service, community business people and local leaders speak out on how and why you can show your support. THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE
Hard working TWU members keep American Airlines and American Eagle operations going every day – rain or shine. In spite of AMR’s bankruptcy, TWU members continue to perform as airline professionals, doing their best for our passengers every day, 24-7. YOUNG WORKERS OF TWU
Young Workers in the TWU are trained the right way from the start.
The first film in the WGBH Great Depression Series, this documentary uses the rise of the Ford system of manufacturing and workplace control as a prism into the onset of the socioeconomic cataclysm by the end of the 1920s known as the Great Depression. Stocked with oral histories with workers, managers, and working-class families, as well as archival film footage, it analyzes the ways in which the automobile, as a product of labor and a catalyst for deep transformations in American society, dominated American life and dictated its economic fortunes. Cars offered far greater access to travel and cultural experiences, especially for women and rural residents, than ever before. Auto work also attracted migrants from across the country, as well as from Mexico, to manufacturing centers in Detroit and the industrial North. Crucially, “A Job at Ford’s” illustrates the repressive labor-relations system that governed not only the workplace environment of auto workers, but also the daily lives of their families in order to ensure compliance with Henry Ford’s desires for social control. Additionally, the film devotes ample time to Ford’s anti-Semitic, racist beliefs, to the worsening conditions of the Depressions, the struggles of everyday people to survive largely without the direct help of the federal government, and the community-based efforts of political radicals and neighborhood groups to respond to the crises. Culminating with the Ford Hunger March in which Ford security guards killed four marchers and wounded over sixty others, the film conveys violence as not only a real threat to organizing at this time, but also a thread through, and force mitigating, working-class daily life in the early twentieth century.
Goes to the front lines over the future of America’s middle class – by insightfully tracking the recent battle over union rights in Wisconsin, and by focusing on the hometown of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. First, General Motors shut down Janesville’s century-old auto plant, leading to massive layoffs. Then, newly elected governor Scott Walker ignited a firestorm by ending collective bargaining and unleashing a protest movement that led to his recall election. Director Brad Lichtenstein followed the lives of Janesville’s auto workers for over three years, as they tried to save their jobs.
Directed by Jean Tsien & Joshua Z Weinstein
Run time: 53 min. | USA
It takes persistence to run a taxi service in New York City, and new drivers are always needed. Long hours, disrespectful customers and the blinding snow of a blizzard are just some of the challenges they must face. DRIVERS WANTED explores the daily workings of one Queens garage as a new driver transitions from double-decker tour buses to taxis. Throughout it all, 90-year-old Johnnie “Spider” Footman keeps showing up for work. – MRR
Synopsis: In 1864, George Pullman began selling his famous railroad sleeping cars which helped him build a vast industrial empire that was supposed to last forever. In 1981, however, Pullman workers found themselves in the midst of a fight not only for their jobs but the future of the American rail car industry. One hundred years of government, union and corporate policies are traced in this engaging story.
Contact: Available from New Day Films 22 Riverview Drive, Wayne, NJ 07470.
Synopsis: In August of 2005 the mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike. Soon after, an anonymous flight attendant quit her job rather than cross the picket line. Disillusioned and inspired, this woman went in search of an established documentary filmmaker to tell the story of the workers of NWA.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau
Synopsis: It is the fall of 1944 and the Allies are advancing to liberate Paris. German Colonel Von Waldheim decides to seize hundreds of France’s most famous artworks and ship them back to Germany via train. The French resistance wants to stop this and a team of working-class train operators and workmen are given the mission.
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