Look Back Labor

Look Back's Top 5 in 2011

2012-01-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

USW The Fighting Spirit

Video, 5 min 29 s

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Matt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill Protest

Video, 5 minutes, 38 seconds

Matt Wisniewski

Let Us Play

Video, 1 minute, 1 second

National Football League Players Association

Stand Up For Kids, Not CEOs!

Video, 1 min 18 s

Michigan Education Association

Help Is...

Video, 2 min 9 s

Take Part [a division of Participant Media] for National Domestic Workers Alliance

Occupy Telephone (2012)

2012-01-19T13:19:00.000-08:00

Occupy Telephone

2012, Video, 3 min 22 s

San Francisco Pride at Work

3 from the Dancers' Alliance

2012-01-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

It's About Time, Part 1
2011, Video, 1 min 9 s
Dancers' Alliance

It's About Time - Bryan Tanaka
2011, Video, 2 min 4 s
Dancers' Alliance

It's About Time - Raquel Horsford-Best
2011, Video, 1 min 44 s
Dancers' Alliance

2 from "No on RTW" in Indiana

2012-01-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

Save Hoosier families, Stop Right-to-Work Laws in Indiana
2012, Video, 31 s
StandUpForHoosiers

Why do we want that for Indiana?
2011, Video, 1 min 10 s
inlabor2010

3 from the Sotheby's Lockout (2011)

2011-12-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

Sotheby's Bad for Art
2011, Video, 4 min 8 s
Sotheby's: Bad For Art

#OccupyWallStreet Labor Action at Sotheby's
2011, Video, 2 min 33 s
NYCCamp

Danny Meyer and Sotheby's Create Misery
2011, Video, 1 min 17 s
bfmcculoch

Taylor Chain I & II (1980, 1983)

2011-12-16T15:43:00.000-08:00

Taylor Chain I: A Story in a Local Union [Excerpt]
1980, 33 min
Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn

Taylor Chain II: A Story of Collective Bargaining [Excerpt]
1983, 30 min
Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn

Help Is... (2011)

2011-12-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

Help Is...
2011, Video, 2 min 9 s
Take Part [a division of Participant Media] for National Domestic Workers Alliance

Burn (in-production)

2011-12-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

Burn: One Year on the Front Lines to Save Detroit
Video, 9 min 19 s
Tom Putnam, Brenna Sanchez

Please help support the production of Burn, click here

Sometimes I Run (1973)

2011-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I Run: Stanley Maupin, Sidewalk Flusher
1973, 16 mm, 21 min
Blaine Dunlap

From "L.A. Rebellion"

2011-11-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Daydream Therapy
1977, 16 mm, 8 min 12 s
Bernard Nicolas

Daydream Therapy screened October 8, 2011 at

L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema
presented by UCLA Film & Television Archive

a part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 - 1980

2 on "Taking Back Ohio" (2011)

2011-11-10T16:27:00.000-08:00

Nov. 8, 2011: Ohio Voters Repeal Anti-Worker Law
2011, Video, 2 min 9 s
AFL-CIO

Think Again: Taking Back Ohio
2011, Video, 3 min 28 s
AFSCME

Stand Up For Kids, Not CEOs! (2011)

2011-11-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

Stand Up For Kids, Not CEOs!
2011, Video, 1 min 18 s
Michigan Education Association

2 on the American Crystal Sugar Lockout (2011)

2011-10-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

American Crystal Sugar is Killing the American Dream
2011, Video, 2 min 9 s
Labor Education Service - University of Minnesota

Nothing Sweet About It
2011, Video, 4 min 56 s
Labor Education Service - University of Minnesota

We Are Wisconsin (in-production)

2011-10-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

We Are Wisconsin [trailer] (in-production)
Video, 16 min 8 s
Amie Williams

Please help support the production of We Are Wisconsin, click here

3 on SB 5 (Ohio)

2011-10-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Save Ohio's Firefighters and Police Officers
2011, Video, 1 min 38 s
Save Ohio Firefighters and Cops

AFSCME Ohio United We Stand
2011, Video, 6 min 39 s
Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OSCEA)

We Are Ohio Teachers
2011, Video, 2 min 58 s
We Are Ohio

3 on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Right Here All Over
2011, Video, 6 min 55 s
Alex Mallis, Lily Henderson

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
2011, Video, 2 min 53 s
AFL-CIO

Samuelsen Speech for #OccupyWallStreet
2011, Video, 1 min 33 s
Transport Workers Union (TWU), Local 100

4 from Harvey Richards

2011-10-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

from Factory Farms
1959, Film
United Packinghouse Workers Union (UPWA)

from The Harvesters
1961, Film

from Uno Veintecinco
1961, Film

from The Land is Rich
1966, Film

"Harvey Wilson Richards [1912-2001] began using a camera in the 1950s when he was in his mid-forties. He became a photographer after years of working as a machinist in the San Francisco shipyards, and as a merchant seaman sailing the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean seas. Before moving to San Francisco in 1940, Richards also worked as a union organizer in Philadelphia and Boston.

During his most active years as a photographer, from 1958 to 1978, Richards produced twenty two films on many subjects including farm labor, the civil rights movement locally and in the southern U.S., and the peace and anti-war movements. His long time concern for the environment led to films exposing the wasteful forestry practices going on nationally, especially in northern California and in Oregon, where he was born and raised."

For more information, please visit Estuary Press and The Harvey Richards Media Archive

USW The Fighting Spirit (2011)

2011-09-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

USW The Fighting Spirit
2011, Video, 5 min 29 s
United Steelworkers

Meet the New American Sweatshop (2011)

2011-09-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Meet the New American Sweatshop
2011, Video, 6 min 3 s
Brave New Foundation

CWA 9/11 Remembrance (2011)

2011-09-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

CWA 9/11 Remembrance
2011, Video, 4 min 48 s
Communications Workers of America

The Look Back Award and America Wants to Work (2011)

2011-09-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

This Labor Day, Look Back Labor is pleased to introduce the Look Back Award, to distinguish the most exceptional contribution to moving-image media advocacy in the United States produced or featured on Look Back Labor during the previous year. We are honored to announce that Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel produced by San Francisco Pride at Work is the recipient of the inaugural award.

Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel

2010, Video, 4 min 59 s
San Francisco Pride at Work

America Wants to Work
2011, Video, 1 min 6 s
AFL-CIO

2 from Justice at Hershey's (2011)

2011-08-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

Justice at Hershey's
2011, Video, 5 min 28 s
National Guestworker Alliance

A Letter to Hershey's CEO John Bilbrey
2011, Video, 2 min 33 s
National Guestworker Alliance

2 from the CWA, IBEW Verizon Strike (2011)

2011-08-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

WHATEVER IT TAKES
2011, Video, 4 min 43 s
Communications Workers of America

Verizon Workers Fight Back!
2011, Video, 1 min 55 s
Communications Workers of America

Meet Today's Help (2011)

2011-08-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Meet Today's Help
2011, Video, 2 min 41 s
National Domestic Workers Alliance

A Practical Faith (2009)

2011-08-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

(200

A Practical Faith: Rabbi Robert Marx
2009, Video, 8 min 55 s
Dorothée Royal-Hedinger (Interfaith Worker Justice)

3 on Starbucks

2011-07-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

Together We Win: The Fight to Organize Starbucks [YouTube Version]
2007, Video, 8 min 55 s
Diane Krauthamer

Howard Schultz & Starbucks: A History of Union Busting
2009, Video, 3 min 59 s
Brave New Films

Starbucks Barista Tells The Real Starbucks Story
2009, Video, 1 min 56 s
Starbucks Workers Union

Who We Are (2011)

2011-07-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

Who We Are - Organization United for Respect at WalMart
2011, Color, Video, 4 min 3 s
Organization United for Respect at WalMart (OUR WalMart)

The Seafarers (1953)

2011-07-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Seafarers
1953, Color, Film, 28 min 43 s
Stanley Kubrick (Seafarers International Union)

The Harvest (2011)

2011-07-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

The Harvest/La Cosecha [trailer]
2011, Color, Video, 7 min 28 s
U. Roberto Romano for Shine Global

Grassroots Media Spotlight: VozMob

2011-07-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

VozMob
2010, Color, Video, 2 min 51 s
Voces Móviles/Mobile Voices

Walmart Workers Fighting for Change (2009)

2011-06-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

Walmart Workers Fighting for Change
2009, Color, Video, 5 min 54 s
Walmart Workers for Change (a campaign of the UFCW)

Trabajadores de Walmart Luchan por el Cambio
2009, Color, Video, 5 min 55 s
Walmart Workers for Change (a campaign of the UFCW)

The Red Tail (2009)

2011-06-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Red Tail [trailer]
2009, Color, Video, 2 minutes 44 seconds
Melissa Koch, Dawn Mikkelson

A View from North - Two Films on Labor from the National Film Board of Canada

2011-06-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Strike in Town
1955, Black&White, Film, 37 minutes, 26 seconds
Leslie McFarlane

Final Offer
1985, Color, Film, 78 minutes, 36 seconds
Robert Collison, Sturla Gunnarsson

3 on the Battle of Blair Mountain

2011-06-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Blair Mountain, Part 1
2010, Color and Black&White, Video, 9 minutes, 21 seconds
redbandanaarmy

The Battle of Blair Mountain
n/d., Color and Black&White, Video, 3 minutes, 42 seconds
Producer Unknown

Blair Mountain, WV: The West Virginia Mine Wars
n/d, Color and Black&White, Video, 4 minutes, 47 seconds
iLoveMountains.org

For more information on Blair Mountain preservation efforts, please visit the Friends of Blair Mountain.

2 from the CTUL Hunger Strike (2011)

2011-05-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

CTUL Hunger Strike
2011, Color, Video, 6 minutes, 42 seconds
Brian Payne

CTUL Hunger Strike Day 4
2011, Color, Video, 2 minutes, 46 seconds
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL)

Locked Out (2011)

2011-05-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

Locked Out - Trailer
2011, Color, Video, 2 minutes, 1 second
Joan Sekler

Almost one year ago, on May 24, workers at the Rio Tinto borate mine in Boron, Calif., returned to work after being locked-out for 107 days by the British-Australian multinational company with a shady past.

How the workers of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30 started working again is a story of unity, strength and inspiration. In her new film, Locked Out, filmmaker and producer Joan Sekler documents this historic labor fight in the windy high desert.

She takes us to Boron, a small rather isolated town located in the Mojave desert where work is sparse and Rio Tinto is the biggest employer around.

From "‘Locked Out’ Savors Story of Rio Tinto Miners’ Hard-Fought Victory"

In These Times, RM Arrieta (May 12, 2011)

2 on Walmart from New York Jobs with Justice

2011-05-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Mr. Walmart, who do you think you are? Flash Mob - NYC
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 1 second
NY Jobs with Justice, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union

"Don't be Related to Walmart" flash mob in Time Warner Center, NYC
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 44 seconds
NY Jobs with Justice, Mass Bliss Productions

"The Prologue" from The Passaic Textile Strike (1926)

2011-05-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

The Prologue from The Passaic Textile Strike
1926, Black & White, Film, 18 minutes, 6 seconds
International Workers Aid

Special Announcement:

Celebrating Orphan Films: Screenings and Discussions  
May 13, 2011 - May 14, 2011 
Billy Wilder Theater, Los Angeles  

UCLA Film & Television Archive is pleased to partner with Los Angeles Filmforum and New York University's Orphan Film Symposium to present an eclectic mix of screenings and discussions at the Billy Wilder Theater.  

The program of over 40 films will include a screening of:

The Passaic Textile Strike (1926) [reel 5] This legendary labor film, made by International Workers Aid to support New Jersey workers amid a bitter strike, survived in incomplete form until NYU’s Tamiment Library rediscovered a missing reel when it acquired the Communist Party USA Collection. The badly decayed nitrate film was painstakingly rescued by the Library of Congress, revealing a segment showing the plight of “the pale children of the hovels.” Introduced by Steven J. Ross (University of Southern California), author of Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America.  

To purchase passes and view schedule, please visit:

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-05-13/celebrating-orphan-films

[Clip] Cesar Chavez press conference (1973) - Unedited newsfilm from KTLA
1973, Color, Film, 56 seconds
UCLA Film & Television Archive

2 Songs from Madison

2011-04-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

Madison
2011, Color and Black & White, Video, 4 minutes, 9 Seconds
Mark Vickness

Union Town
2011, Color and Black & White, Video and Film, 3 minutes, 6 seconds
The Coalition to Save Workers

2 on the NFL Players Association

2011-04-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

What Does an NFL Lockout Mean to You? Pt. 2
2011, Color, Video, 1 minute, 9 seconds
NFL Players Association

UNITE HERE Workers Speak Out
2011, Color, Video, 6 minutes, 11 seconds
UNITE HERE

3 from "We Are One"

2011-04-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2011: We Are Ohio
2011, Color, Video, 2 minutes, 34 Seconds
Transport Workers Union

Enough
2011, Color, Video, 2 minutes, 47 seconds
We Are One Chicago

Waynesburg Rally
2011, Color, Video, 6 minutes
United Mine Workers of America

3 on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike from the AFSCME

2011-04-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

From Memphis to Madison - The Struggle Continues
2011, Color and Black & White, Film and Video, 3 minutes, 25 seconds
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

Memphis Sanitation Workers Remember
2011, Color and Black & White, Video, 1 minute, 56 seconds
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

I Am a Man: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Memphis Sanitation Strike [2011 Version]
2011, Color and Black & White, Film, 10 minutes, 2 seconds
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

April 4 Day of Solidarity (2011)

2011-04-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

April 4 Day of Solidarity
2011, Color, Video, 1 minute, 18 seconds
AFL-CIO Now

Two on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

2011-03-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Triangle Fire: A Working Legacy
2011, Color and Black & White, Video, 5 minutes, 19 seconds
The Jewish Daily Forward

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: The Race to the Bottom
2011, Color and Black & White, Video, 9 minutes, 19 seconds
United Steelworkers (USW)

Why We Fight: Join Us April 4th! (2011)

2011-03-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

Why We Fight: Join Us April 4th!
2011, Color, Video, 4 minutes, 31 seconds
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)

"We Are Indiana" - 3 from Indianapolis (2011)

2011-03-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

Week One - Indiana Statehous Protests to Protect Worker Rights
2011, Color, Video, 6 minutes, 20 seconds
David Williams

UFCW Members in Indiana: The Middle Class is Not Dead Yet!
2011, Color, Video, 1 minute, 18 seconds
United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW)

Laborers Local 393 attend Indiana Labor Rally
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 21 seconds
J Funfsinn

"Standing with Madison" - 3 from Wisconsin (2011)

2011-03-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

Spoken by the People
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 58 seconds
Tilt Media, Inc.

Thank You Wisconsin 14
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 18 seconds
Teaching Assistants' Association UW-Madison

We Are One
2011, Color, 2 minutes, 2 seconds
AFL-CIO Now

More from Madison (2011)

2011-02-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

We are Wisconsin
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 38 seconds
Finn Ryan, David Nevala

Uprising in Wisconsin
2011, Color and Black and White, Video, 5 minutes, 21 seconds
Transport Workers Union

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest (February 2/14 - 2/21)
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 59 seconds
Teaching Assistants' Association UW-Madison

Two from Madison, Wisconsin (2011)

2011-02-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest, Part 2
2011, Color, Video, 4 minutes, 44 seconds
Matt Wisniewski

&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;Matt

Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill Protest
2011, Color, Video, 5 minutes, 38 seconds
Matt Wisniewski

One Penny More (2010)

2011-02-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

One Penny More
2010, Color, Video, 1 minute, 59 seconds
7th Empire Media, The Food and Society Fellows, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

AFL-CIO 2011 MLK Observance (2011)

2011-02-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

AFL-CIO 2011 MLK Observance
2011, Color, Video, 3 minutes, 55 seconds
Transport Workers Union

Let Us Play (2011)

2011-01-31T16:31:00.000-08:00

Let Us Play
2011, Color, Video, 1 minute, 1 second
National Football League Players Association

Stop the Lies: Wallstreet vs. Main Street (2011)

2011-01-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

Stop the Lies: Wallstreet vs. Main Street
2011, Black and White and Color, Video, 5 minutes, 34 seconds
AFSCME, Brave New Foundation

Top 5 in 2010

2011-01-13T15:14:00.000-08:00

Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel
Color, Video, 4 minutes, 59 seconds
San Francisco Pride at Work

Lifeline
Black and White and Color, Video, 3 minutes, 1 second
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations

OUR Song (Opportunity. Unity. Respect)
Color, Video, 2 minutes 19 seconds
Delta Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

Queen Meg 2010: Rich Enough to Rule California
Color, Video, 4 minutes 56 seconds
California Nurses Association

Why Do You Teach?
Color, Video, 4 minutes, 28 seconds
Connecticut Education Association

TWU Presents: The Powers of Congress (2011)

2011-01-11T18:59:00.000-08:00

TWU Presents: The Powers of Congress
2011, Black and White and Color, Film and Video, 3 minutes, 2 seconds
Transport Workers Union

Lifeline (2010)

2010-12-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

Lifeline
2010, Black and White and Color, Video, 3 minutes 1 second
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)

Andiamo's Boycott (2010)

2010-09-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

Andiamo's Boycott
2010, Color, Video, 8 minutes 31 seconds
Producer Unknown

"UAW President Calls Boycott on Behalf of Detroit Restaurant Workers"
Kari Lydersen, In These Times - September 20, 2010

Workers fired from the Andiamo restaurant chain in the Detroit area took their campaign to a new level last week, with United Auto Workers (UAW) president Bob King joining them in calling for a boycott of the restaurant’s 11 locations in southeast Michigan.

The UAW has 150,000 members in the area, and is also calling on companies with which it has contracts – including Ford Motor Co. — and elected officials to boycott the chain. On Sept. 16 the UAW, Metro Detroit AFL-CIO and interfaith leaders joined ROC-Michigan and workers in trying to deliver a letter to management of Andiamo’s Dearborn location, where workers were fired for organizing with ROC-Michigan, an affiliate of the national Restaurant Opportunity Center.

Please click here for the complete text of the Times article.

Cesar's Last Fast (Work-in-Progress)

2010-09-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Please consider making a donation in support of the completion of Cesar's Last Fast. For more information on the film and making a donation, visit Cesar's Last Fast online.

The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program will present a free Work-In-Progress screening of César’s Last Fast October 6 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California.

Following the screening, Academy Award-nominated actor Edward James Olmos will host a panel discussion featuring César Chavez’s son, Paul Chavez, the filmmakers, and Dr. Mario Garcia, author of The Gospel of César Chavez.

Click here for more information on the Hammer screening.

New Labor Day (2010)

2010-09-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

New Labor Day
2010, Color, Video, 31 seconds
American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)

For more information on this campaign, please visit Labor 2010, produced by the AFL-CIO.

3 on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

2010-08-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

CIW Change We Need

2008, Color, Video, 1 minute 23 seconds
Coalition of Immokalee Workers

CIW Brings the Tomato Fields' Scenes of Exploitation to the Governor's Doorstep
2009, Color, Digital Still Images, 4 minutes 36 seconds
Jacques-Jean Tiziou

Ronaldo the Clown
2009, Color, Video, 4 minutes 37 seconds
Coalition of Immokalee Workers

From CIW 101:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a membership-led farmworker organization of mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. We have been organizing in the town of Immokalee since 1993 and have a base of nearly 4,000 members.

The CIW has two primary campaigns. Our Campaign for Fair Food seeks to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers by calling on major buyers of tomatoes to pay a premium of one penny more per pound for their tomatoes, ensure that this penny is passed down directly to farmworkers, and work together with the CIW to establish and implement a code of conduct in their supply chains.

Our Anti-Slavery campaign is an effort to put an end to the continued existence of modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry. To date, we have worked together with the Department of Justice and the FBI to uncover, investigate and federally prosecute seven cases of modern-day slavery in Florida’s fields. We are founding members of the national network to end modern-day slavery, the Freedom Network USA, and through the Freedom Network Training Institute (FNTI), we also train law enforcement and NGOs on how to eliminate forced labor in their communities.

For more information on the CIW, please visit the Coalition of Immokalee Workers online

More from the CNA - Taking Care: CNA's First Century

2010-08-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Taking Care: CNA's First Century (Part 1 of 3)
n.d., Color, Video, 8 minutes 16 seconds
California Nurses Association

Taking Care: CNA's First Century (Part 2 of 3)
n.d., Color, Video, 9 minutes 8 seconds
California Nurses Association

Taking Care: CNA's First Century (Part 3 of 3)
n.d., Color, Video, 6 minutes 54 seconds
California Nurses Association

From About the CNA/NNOC:

Founded in 1903, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee/AFL-CIO is a premiere organization of registered nurses and one of the nation’s fastest growing labor and professional organizations in the U.S. with more than 86,000 members in hospitals, clinics and home health agencies in all 50 states. In the past 15 years, CNA/NNOC has grown by nearly 400 percent.

CNA/NNOC is also a founding member of the 150,000-member National Nurses United, which in 2009 united CNA/NNOC, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association to create the largest union and professional association of nurses in U.S. history.

CNA/NNOC has attracted national renown as a leading advocate of guaranteed healthcare by expanding and updating Medicare to cover all Americans, for negotiating many of the best collective bargaining contracts for RNs in the nation, and for sponsorship of innovative legislation and regulatory protections for patients and nurses.

Most notably, CNA/NNOC sponsored the nation’s foremost RN patient safety law, in California, requiring minimum RN-to-patient ratios, the most effective solution in the U.S. for stemming the erosion of care standards in hospitals.

When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to roll back the ratio law in 2004, CNA/NNOC drew the world’s attention by successfully challenging Schwarzenegger, then at the height of his popularity, and forging what became a broad coalition that defeated the governor’s attack on the ratio law and a series of initiatives that targeted working people.

Other landmark laws sponsored by CNA/NNOC in California include whistleblower protections for caregivers who expose unsafe hospital conditions, a ban on inappropriate personnel providing telephone medical advice, and increased funding for nursing education programs.

Those patient protections serve as a model for similar proposals sponsored by NNU and NNOC affiliates nationally, in a bill authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, S 1031, and in many states across the country.

RNs represented by CNA/NNOC have many of the best collective bargaining contracts in the nation. CNA agreements are noted for enhancing the collective voice of RNs in patient care decisions, outlawing dangerous practices such as mandatory overtime, and dramatic improvements in retirement security for RNs and other provisions that are needed to retain career RNs at the hospital bedside and protect patients. CNA/NNOC has also won landmark contract innovations including limits on the use of new technology that displaces RNs or subverts RN independent judgment, and expanded protections for patients and nurses in containing the spread of pandemics.

CNA/NNOC is also renowned for its advocacy for patients with programs that have helped hundreds of patients with information on how to respond to health care industry abuses, and assisted patients in bringing their stories to legislative hearings and the media.

More on Meg Whitman from the California Labor Federation

2010-07-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Whitman: California's Future Isn't a Game
2010, Color, Video, 1 Minute 44 Seconds
California Labor Federation

Wall Street Whitman - The Game
2010, Color, Flash-based Interactive Game
California Labor Federation

http://www.wallstreetwhitman.com/index.php/game

Adapted from California's Future Isn't a Game:

Meg Whitman has made a game of downsizing workers and outsourcing their jobs, and has gotten exceedingly rich in the process. And by attempting to buy the California Governor's Office, Whitman wants to take her game to the next level.While Whitman touts her business savvy as her primary qualification to become governor, a closer look at Whitman’s corporate background reveals a troubling portrait of someone who got rich at the expense of her own employees. Whitman is a career corporate executive who built a personal fortune by eliminating and outsourcing jobs and slashing workers’ benefits. Everywhere she’s been, she’s made out with lucrative bonuses, stock options and other compensation. And workers have suffered hardships as a result.When you connect the dots of her corporate career, it’s crystal clear her priority has always been profits, at any cost, above people. Based on her proposals for California – like cutting 40,000 state jobs, opposing the job-creating high-speed rail project and scaling back workers’ overtime pay and meal breaks – it’s evident that she would bring the same corporate agenda she’s advocated throughout her career to the governor’s office. That spells disaster for California.

Whitman’s corporate mentality would lead to higher unemployment, lower wages and fewer benefits for workers – in both the public and private sector. In fact, the only group that would benefit from a Whitman governorship is the exclusive club of large corporations and millionaires and billionaires from which she comes.

For more information on this campaign, please visit WallStreetWhitman.com

'Queen Meg' and the California Nurses Association

2010-07-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Queen Meg 2010: Rich Enough to Rule California (2010)

California Nurses Association

Queen Meg Launches "TRUTH for Teachers" Video!
California Nurses Association

Queen Meg 'Pushes' Her Way Into CNA Headquarters (2010)
California Nurses Association

Queen Meg: Let Them Eat Cake! (2010)
California Nurses Association

California Nurses Say No to Meg Whitman (2010)
California Nurses Association

From California Nurses Respond to Whitman Attack Campaign:

Registered nurses representing the California Nurses Association will come from across the state this Friday, June 25 to host a press conference to express their outrage over the attack campaign being run against them by Meg Whitman, and their resolve to overcome it. The nurses will extend an invitation to Whitman to attend and hear from nurses at a major forum scheduled for July 15th on the issues of nurse rights, worker rights, and healthcare.

Queen Meg—the satire character who crystallized the primary election—will also appear at the press conference and attempt to bully the nurses into supporting her.

“For whatever reason, billionaire Whitman has made the decision to attack nurses. She’s calling us at our homes with push polls, putting out false information to the media, posting deceitful Web sites, and we expect mail to arrive from her soon. THIS is why we didn’t want to give Whitman our personal information, but we feel like she went ahead and violated our privacy anyway,” noted Geri Jenkins, RN, co-President of the California Nurses Association. T

The responses come on the heels of an unprecedented effort this week by Whitman to silence CNA and the voices of nurses in the governor’s race. Whitman first demanded a list of the home addresses of all California nurses, which was refused. In response, Whitman launched an attack website aimed at undermining the ability of nurses to speak up in public, and at silencing their efforts to discuss her ties to Goldman Sachs and her record of flip-flopping on patient safety regulations like safe nurse-to-patient ratios.

Much of the content on the attack website comes from a push-poll of the state’s registered nurses, performed by a New Jersey firm tied to the GOP, which made the calls under false pretenses. The deceitful nature of this push-poll was mirrored by the campaign’s choice to use stock photos of actors on its website, with no actual nurses appearing on a site ironically titled “Truth for nurses.”

Despite CNA’s repeated invitations this week, Whitman has refused to make herself available to the nurses she is criticizing, or to enter into dialogue with them. “We’re inviting her to come meet some actual nurses—and listen to us. She’s only willing to speak at us, not with us,” said Deborah Burger, RN, co-President of CNA. “For example, we’re very interested to ask why the flip-flopping on patient safety regulations. In the primary she wasn’t for them, now she might be. Which Meg Whitman will show up when?”

As part of her attack campaign, Whitman has expressed surprise at the lack of support she maintains among Registered Nurses. “We have spent a great deal of time educating our nurses about Whitman’s time as a board member of Goldman Sachs. She clearly does not understand how worrisome that is for everyday, middle-class people like our members,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, co-President of CNA.

Whitman’s attack campaign is reacting to the CNA-sponsored statewide tour of Queen Meg whose campaign message is, “we can’t afford our democracy so why not try a monarchy.” Queen Meg toured the state in the days leading up to the primary election, talking to voters and nurses from San Diego to Sacramento. Queen Meg—and her Spanish-speaking cousin La Reina Meg—also helped cement the image of Whitman in the Latino community, by re-running on Spanish-language radio an ad where Pete Wilson endorsed Meg Whitman and praised her harsh and punitive policies towards immigrants.

For more information on this campaign, please visit http://www.QueenMeg2010.com

5 from the NEA and its Affiliates

2010-07-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

NEA: A Special Mission (2009)
National Education Association

I am NEA Alaska (2009)
National Education Association, Alaska

A True Florida Story: Mr. Politician (2009)
Florida Education Association

We are the MEA! (2009)
Michigan Education Association

Why Do You Teach? (2010)
Connecticut Education Association

From Answering the Call by Sabrina Holcomb:

On a summer afternoon in 1857, 43 educators gathered in Philadelphia, answering a national call to unite as one voice in the cause of public education.

At the time, learning to read and write was a luxury for most children—and for many children of color, it was actually a crime. But almost 150 years later, the voice of the fledgling Association has risen to represent 2.7 million educators, and what was once a privilege for a fortunate few is now a rite of passage for every American child.

Over the years, NEA has played an increasingly vital role in improving the conditions under which teachers work and children learn. In the turbulent 1960s, the historic merger of the NEA and the predominantly Black American Teachers Association promoted the human and civil rights of educators and students of all ethnicities.

Today, public schools guarantee every American child a free education, regardless of race or gender, religion or spoken language, social class or disability. And when this diverse group heads to school each morning, dedicated NEA members are there to teach, drive, feed, counsel, nurse—and inspire.

Please visit the National Education Association for more information.

Labor in Song

2010-06-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

Look for the Union Label (1978)
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (now UNITE)

Friends with Low Wages (2007)
American Rights at Work

One Big Union (2007)
Producer Unknown
Words and music by Matthew Grimm

Solidarity Forever (2008)
Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 689
Performed by the Whiteville Choir

Are We Making It America? (2009)
Alliance for American Manufacturing
Performed by Kathy Garrison

Employee Free Choice Act (2009)
Coalition of Labor Union Women

Operation Hey Mackey! Whole Foods, Oakland (2009)
Jamie LeJeune, Cassidy Friedman
Performed by the Brass Liberation Orchestra

Union Song (2009)
Steve Bailey Music
Performed by Steve Bailey

Where Has All the Money Gone? (2009)
Producer Unknown
Performed by the Angry Tired Teachers

Everything is Fine on the Picket Line (2010)
Producer Unknown
Performed by Charles Mattice

Flash Mob at Shaw's Supermarket (2010)
Rand Wilson
Performed by the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band

Our Song (2010)
Delta Association of Flight Attendants
Written by Jarrod Anderson

Send It Down the Line (2010)
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union

Adapted from "The Music of Labor: From Movement to Culture" by Michael Richmond (Legal Studies Forum 23:1 1999)

Labor music began out of the need to attract people to group meetings and then to get them to feel a part of the group. The simple music often selected gospel melodies or melodies popular at the time—music people could hum and they would recall from the happier days of their youth. The lyrics of the music allowed people to “pick them up” easily, and to sing along with the rest of the group. Simple and often repetitive, they spoke to basic needs—decent conditions, fair wages, employment and family security. They exhorted and instructed, they gave people larger-than-life heroes to emulate, and gave people the hope that enabled them to withstand imprisonment, beatings, and disappointment.

The music of labor unions in the first half of this century went well beyond revolutionary exhortation, and differed markedly in tone from similarly-themed popular music of the second half of the century. The need for sheer numbers of union members to achieve the union goals of decent working conditions and living wages drove Joe Hill and then Woody Guthrie to write songs that would galvanize their listeners and create in them a common bond. A dramatic disillusionment with the form organized labor had assumed by the middle of the century then found its way into music, and pushed the music to take different forms — both in the message the music provided, the audience which received the music, and in the very nature of the music itself. The loss of jobs following the Second World War and the entry of women and minorities into the workplace in increasing numbers also served to create a different type of labor music in recent years.

[Woody Guthrie in Pastures of Plenty (1999) is quoted saying] "People need work music. People need music to march by and to fight with... And rather than me to keep on scribbling here, it would be a whole lot better if we both always keep our eye peeled and our ear cocked to what all of us are trying to say – because all any kind of music is good for anyway is to make you and me know each other a little better. That’s the most modern thing in the world."

3 from Shaw's (2010)

2010-06-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Shaw's Workers Need Your Support (2010)
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)

300 Families, 5 Days, 60-mile March for Justice at Shaw's (2010)
UFCW

Flash Mob at Shaw's (2010)
Rand Wilson

From Justice at Shaw's:

Shaw’s and their parent company, Supervalu, have forced three hundred and ten workers at their Perishable Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., into the streets on strike since March 7, over unfair demands for workers to bear all the burden of increasing health care costs.

From the onset of the strike, Shaw's has used health care as a weapon to punish their workers and coerce them into submission. On April 1, three weeks into the strike, the company unilaterally cut off health care coverage for strikers and their families, ignoring the fact that many of their workers have spouses or young children with serious medical conditions.

After ignoring several requests to sit down at the bargaining table, including calls by religious, labor, community and political leaders like Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Shaw's finally resumed negotiations on May, 2 only to demand more draconian cuts to workers' living and working standards. In an effort to end this strike, the workers made significant movement in their contract offer, which Shaw’s flatly rejected.

Clearly, Shaw's Supermarkets has no intentions of bargaining in good faith and reaching a fair agreement with their workers.

Here are some of the callous demands Shaw's is insisting upon:

- Taking away the workers' union health care plan and substituting it with a more expensive company plan with fewer benefits.

- Eliminating the pension plan for new employees.

- Subcontracting work to a third party, resulting in loss of jobs and the reduction of work performed by union members by 50 percent.

Even more unacceptable is the fact that the entire package is conditioned on a number of things: the replacement workers stay in the facility, meaning that more union members will lose their jobs. Shaw's also stated their intention of moving the meat and deli work out of the Methuen facility and subcontracting it to C&S Wholesalers, which will reduce the work performed by union members by 50 percent.

Shaw’s offer is outrageous and UFCW members refuse to be bullied into accepting a package that lowers the standard of living in our communities.

For more on this campaign, please visit justiceatshaws.org

2 from the Williamson Mott's Workers' Strike (2010)

2010-06-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

From the Workers (2010)
Bret Granato

Everything is Fine on the Picket Line (2010)
Charles Mattice[from Union Plus, Brothers and Sisters in Song contest]

From Buffalo to Gavelston, Mott's Workers Fight Back:

At separate events far north in Buffalo, New York, and down south in Galveston, Texas, Striking Mott’s workers are taking the fight to the company and its owner, Dr Pepper Snapple. The Williamson, New York, workers and RWDSU Local 220 members have been on strike since May 23. Company executives are demanding painful wage cuts despite enjoying a record year of $555 million in profits.

In Galveston, Texas, it was the start of the Mott’s Magical Taste Tour, where Mott’s representatives are handing out samples of many products, including single-serve applesauce products, which happen to be made by the striking Local 220 members in New York. When Mott’s decided to visit a sandcastle competition being held in Galveston, they were counting on the sun, the beach, and fun of the competition as a nice place to spread the word about their products. They weren’t counting on some unexpected guests: workers from the Mott’s plant in Williamson who came to spread the word about the rotten anti-worker tactics of Dr. Pepper Snapple.

We followed the people around who were giving out samples of the products that I made in the factory, and handing out flyers letting people on the beach know about what is going on and how they are trying to use the recession as an excuse to attack us, despite their big profits,” said Ryan Bubacz, who has worked at Mott’s for four years.

“Right after people got their samples, I’d let them know about the corporate greed behind these products. Most people were really shocked and receptive to our message, with many saying they’d avoid Snapple and Mott’s products until this was worked out,” Bubacz said.

“I think it’s really important that people understand what is going on with our jobs, and how this kind of corporate greed, if we don’t stop it, will ruin the country. When we tell them about this, people realize that it could be their jobs that somebody comes after next, and that just because your employer is profitable doesn’t mean they won’t come after you to make more money for themselves,” Bubacz added.

The Mott’s Magical Taste Tour will be visiting cities across the U.S., including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Tampa, and Boston.

“I hear it’s really nice in San Francisco and Chicago this time of year, and I’m really looking forward to helping to spread the message about Mott’s wherever they are. It’s a good product, but there’s nothing good about what they are trying to do to us, and people need to know about it,” Bubacz said.

The message was the same at the Working Families Party convention in Buffalo, New York this past weekend. Mott’s workers Shelly Snyder, Kent Knox, Randy Selly, and Linda Van De Viver were on hand to put a human face on the theme of the day: corporate greed, the assault on workers’ rights, and the widening wage gap between the rich and the middle class in North America. The attendees, who included elected officials, community groups, union members, activists, and other players in the New York political arena, heard all about the Mott’s assault on the workers in Williamson.

Mott’s worker Kent Knox told the convention about how the workers ended up on strike and on the picket lines.

“We entered negotiations in the spring with high hopes. Mott's/Dr. Pepper Snapple has never been more profitable. Last year they made a $555 million profit. This is exactly the kind of company that does well in a recession, and so we assumed that we would do well, too,” Knox said.

“The company had other ideas, demanding wage cuts of $1.50 per hour, an elimination of the pension plan, changes to the health care benefits, and other things we couldn’t accept. We never were given a fair chance at bargaining a contract, they never respected the process, saying instead that we were commodities like corn and oil and that since unemployment was so high they should get to pay less for us,” Knox added.

“We had no choice, and were forced to strike.”

According to Mott’s worker Shelly Snyder, “we aren’t people to the company. To Mott’s, I’m just a dot on a graph.”

Mott's and Dr. Pepper Snapple sell products all across the country, and Mott's workers are determined to spread the story everywhere these products are sold. Events like the WFP Convention and the sandcastle competition in Galveston are just the start.

For more on this campaign, please visit the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)

Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman, 1954)

2010-06-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman, 1954)
Independent Productions Corporation

Adapted from "Salt of the Earth: The Movie Hollywood Could Not Stop," by Steve Boisson (American History, February 2002)

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, the Soviet Union became an ally, and Hollywood began to make movies that celebrated our newfound comrades. Those films returned to haunt the movie industry when World War II ended and the Cold War pitted the United States against the Soviet Union. Suddenly the U.S. government began casting a critical eye on the movie industry, and HUAC began investigating Communist influences on the silver screen.

HUAC's most visible targets were the so-called Hollywood Ten, filmmakers the committee charged with contempt of Congress in 1947 after they refused to answer questions about Communist affiliations. In 1950 the Supreme Court declined to consider the filmmakers' appeals, and the Hollywood Ten began serving their sentences. Herbert Biberman, 50, served six months at a federal institution at Texarkana, Texas. Incarcerated with him was another of the Ten, writer Alvah Bessie. Compared to the ebullient Biberman, Bessie was a dour cynic. He cringed at Biberman's incessant good manners and his penchant for preaching politics to guards and prisoners, but he did have to admire Biberman's dedication to his beliefs, especially when he learned that the director had offered to serve six extra months to get Bessie released earlier.

In 1951, HUAC increased the pressure on the movie industry with a new batch of subpoenas for Communist Party USA members, past members, and even non-affiliated liberals. The studios fell in line and expanded their unofficial blacklist. Actors, producers, directors, and other industry professionals whom the studios deemed tainted by leftist beliefs suddenly found themselves unemployable. Biberman, fellow Ten member and producer Adrian Scott, theater owner Simon Lazarus, and blacklisted screenwriter Paul Jarrico saw possibilities for that discarded talent. They teamed up to form Independent Productions Corporation and set out to find a story to tell.

Jarrico found the subject matter while on a family vacation in New Mexico, where he heard about a mining strike in Grant County. The strikers were predominantly Mexican Americans, members of the Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a union the Congress of Industrialized Organizations (CIO) ejected in 1949 for alleged Communist influences. The strikers demanded that the Empire Zinc Corporation give them the same benefits and wages it gave the region's Anglo miners. 'The central issue, really, was dignity, equality, being treated like anybody else,' remembers Clinton Jencks, a decorated World War II veteran the union sent to help out Local 890. He found that company housing for Mexican Americans lacked indoor plumbing and that the company organization was stacked in favor of Anglo workers. 'They had separate change rooms, separate payrolls, separate places to eat your lunch, strict locks on promotions with all the better jobs reserved for Anglos,' Jencks says. 'We eventually broke all that down, but it was very consciously being used as a way to keep people fighting each other instead of the company.'

The strike nearly collapsed after eight months when Empire Zinc opened the mine to scab labor and obtained a court injunction prohibiting union pickets on company property. Then the wives and mothers of the union's Ladies' Auxiliary circumvented the injunction by marching in place of the men.

Jarrico was invigorated by what he had seen. The filmmakers had found their story. Biberman would direct and Jarrico would take on the role of producer, as Adrian Scott dropped out due to illness. Jarrico asked his brother-in-law and fellow blacklistee, Michael Wilson, to write the screenplay. Wilson traveled to Grant County and attended union meetings, visited the miners' homes, and watched and listened as the strike unfolded.

For Wilson, the strike provided an opportunity to tell a story that wove together the struggles of Mexican Americans, labor, and women. He saw the dramatic potential to examine how the mineworkers reacted when their wives took over the picket lines and they had to sit on the sidelines. And he wanted to tell the story from the participants' point of view and use their feedback to fine-tune his screenplay. So when he finished his script treatment, Wilson took it to Grant County. People there objected to one scene where the main character had an extramarital fling and another in which he purchased whiskey with his last paycheck. Wilson cut the scenes. They were perfectly acceptable as drama, he explained to his partners, 'But we're dealing with something else. Not just people. A people.' As Wilson labored to complete a final script over the next year, he had union members and their wives look over all his drafts.

Clinton Jencks remembers the community's initial response to the Hollywood attention. 'They found it hard to believe that their lives were interesting enough to make a movie,' says Jencks. 'I think we romanticized the Hollywood people, and the Hollywood people romanticized us.' Some locals pitched in to help build a mine façade on the ranch of Alford Roos, an elderly independent mine owner, archeologist, explorer, writer, and rifle-toting Mohammedan with Jeffersonian political leanings. Roos rented his land to the filmmakers for one dollar. Many other locals found roles in front of the camera. Biberman hired the Roderick brothers, two lanky white miners from another union, to play redneck deputies. Local 890 vice-president Ernesto Velasquez portrayed a union official. Jencks played the Anglo representative from the union's headquarters, his real-life role, and his activist wife, Virginia, played her counterpart on screen. The production cast other members of Local 890 as miners and their wives.

Juan Chacon was the union's newly elected president, and both Revueltas and Biberman's sister-in-law, Sonja Dahl Biberman, suggested that the director consider him to play Ramon. The director thought that 'Johnny' Chacon was too gentle, too small, and too shy for the part, but he let him audition. Chacon gave an unimpressive reading, but the women insisted he had potential. With only three weeks left until shooting, the exasperated director finally decided to take a chance and cast Chacon as Ramon.

Throughout the shooting, Biberman marveled as Chacon grew into the part of Ramon. 'We found we didn't have to 'act',' Chacon would later write about the experience. 'El Biberman, as we came to call him, was happiest when we were just ourselves.' In the first scene Biberman shot with dialogue, Jencks' character restrains Ramon from attacking the foreman. The material touched sensitive nerves, and Biberman let the tension build. Afterwards, if Biberman still doubted that Chacon could get into character, Jencks had the bruises to prove he could.

At the end of January, the miners and their wives flocked to Silver City's theater to watch the first 'rushes,' and they laughed and applauded at their images on the big screen. Yet even as the movie progressed, storm clouds were forming. A Silver City schoolteacher wrote to Walter Pidgeon, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and expressed concern that a Communist film company was manipulating the local Mexican Americans. Soon the media and the government began scrutinizing the maverick movie troupe. Columnist Victor Riesel pointed out the production's proximity to the Los Alamos atomic research facility. Congressman Donald Jackson said the film was 'deliberately designed to inflame racial hatreds and to depict the United States of America as the enemy of all colored peoples.' It was, he said, 'a new weapon for Russia.'

The critical reaction created problems. Pathé Laboratories suddenly refused to process the daily rushes, so Biberman could no longer review each day's work and had to print scenes blind. Immigration officials came for Revueltas — they had sudden concerns about her passport — and deported her back to Mexico. Biberman had to use a stand-in for some sequences, but he still needed the actress for voice-overs and frontal shots. Eventually, Revueltas recorded narration under clandestine circumstances in a dismantled Mexican sound studio, and the crew shot final footage of her in Mexico and then smuggled it like contraband over the border.

'It's Time To Choose Sides,' read a headline in the Silver City Daily Press. Late one night in early March, someone fired shots into Clint Jencks' parked car. The next day two carloads of troublemakers broke up the filming in front of the union hall. Jencks emerged from the fracas with a black eye, and the violent crowd nearly destroyed the camera. That night the vigilantes selected 10 emissaries to relay an ultimatum to the movie people: If they did not leave by noon the next day they would leave in black boxes. The sheriff was forced to call in the state police, who kept the peace as the crew finished the final scenes. Several weeks later someone burned the home of one of the film's Anglo miners.

Biberman and Jarrico refused to quit. They found a company willing to process the film after several labs refused, and they recruited an editor and installed him in a house in Topanga Canyon, north of Los Angeles. The editor, who had worked only on documentaries, proved unsuitable. Worse, the tin-roofed editing quarters became so hot the film began to shrivel. As the filmmakers scrambled to find another editor, they moved operations into the ladies room of an empty theater that Simon Lazarus owned in Pasadena. After firemen came snooping they relocated again, this time to a vacant studio in Burbank. By the time it was finished the film used four editors, one of whom was an FBI informer.

By the beginning of 1954, the moviemakers had turned their raw footage into a movie. The next hurdle would be finding theaters to show it. Roy Brewer, the anti-Communist head of the IATSE, represented projectionists, and he was hardly likely to steer Salt on to movie screens. As he wrote to Congressman Jackson, 'The Hollywood AFL Council assures you that everything which it can do to prevent the showing of The Salt of the Earth will be done.' In New York City the production found a theater owner whose projectionists belonged to a different union. After much persuasion he agreed to host the film's opening. Salt of the Earth premiered at the Grande Theater on March 14, 1954, to mostly positive reviews. The New York Times' Bosley Crowther wrote that 'an unusual company made up largely of actual miners and their families plays the drama exceedingly well.'

Today the movie is largely forgotten, but the passions and upheaval behind its creation have refused to completely die away.

Salt of the Earth was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992 by the Library of Congress.

3 on FedEx from the IBT (2010-07)

2010-06-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

FedEx Drivers Aren't Pilots (2010)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters

FedEx Canada Worker Message (2009)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Bill Gardner (2007)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters

From FedEx Drivers Aren't Pilots:

April 28 (Bloomberg News) The Teamsters Union is taking to the Internet in its campaign to require that drivers in FedEx Corp.’s Express unit be subject to the same labor laws as rival package delivery companies.

The Teamsters site FedEx Drivers Aren't Pilots, introduced today, backs legislation to place the drivers under the National Labor Relations Act, which lets workers vote locally to join a union. The drivers are classified with airline employees under the Railway Labor Act, which requires national elections.

“This is about fairness, this is about leveling the playing field,” Ken Hall, a Teamsters vice president, said in an interview. He declined to reveal the cost of the campaign, which he said will include advertising on news media Web sites and a mobilization of the 1.4 million Teamsters.

The campaign intensifies a three-year battle in Congress over legislation that would make it easier for FedEx drivers to form unions. The Web site features a 35-second video of a truck driver pretending to be a pilot, yelling “mayday” about running low on fuel before pulling his rig into a gas station.

A proposal to reclassify the drivers passed the House last year in a $53.5 billion funding bill for the Federal Aviation Administration. The Senate’s FAA measure passed in March without the driver proposal, and the Teamster campaign is urging consumers to contact senators. Differences must be resolved before the FAA legislation becomes law with President Barack Obama’s signature.

United Parcel Service Inc., the biggest employer of Teamsters with about 240,000 union members, also backs the legislation. UPS truck drivers organize under the law that permits local elections.

FedEx has said Express should be regulated under the railway law because the unit delivers most parcels by air and UPS ships mostly by truck. FedEx has said reclassifying its drivers could reduce reliability, leading to factory shutdowns or delayed medical shipments.

Pilots are the only major group represented by a union among FedEx’s 290,000 employees and contractors. The Teamsters have been seeking to organize FedEx ground workers for years.

For more information on this campaign, please visit FedEx Drivers Aren't Pilots and FedEx Mechanics

More from the Hotel Strikes: Hope for Housekeepers (2009)

2010-05-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

Housekeepers Launch National 'Hope Quilt' Tour to Highlight Workplace Injuries (2009)
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy

Hope for Housekeepers: Grand Hyatt, San Francisco (2009)
Unite Here

Hope for Housekeepers (2009)
Producer Unknown

From Hope for Housekeepers, Esperanza para recamareras:

Hope for Housekeepers is a national campaign of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers across the nation to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry. Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women, and the work we do is difficult and sometimes dangerous. In a survey of over 600 housekeepers by UNITE HERE, 91% of housekeepers reported that they have suffered work-related pain. Of those who reported pain in the survey, two-thirds took pain medication to get through their daily quota.

Hyatt housekeepers often clean as many as 30 hotel rooms a day in just eight hours, and many forgo health insurance for their families because of the high cost. Even worse, Hyatt is slashing jobs, discarding women like the Hyatt 100 in Boston who were fired after training their replacements from an outsourcing agency.

Now Hyatt housekeepers are stepping forward to put an end to this abuse. Hyatt housekeepers are uniting with women from across the country, and together we are bringing a message of hope to the thousands of women working as housekeepers around the globe that things can change. Unionized housekeepers have fought for and won more humane workloads, cleaning around 15 rooms a day, to reduce the rate of injury and pain that can lead to permanent disability in this dangerous line of work. These housekeepers have affordable health insurance and job security that rewards women for their years of service.

Hope for Housekeepers National Tour

To bring this message of hope to women across the country, Hyatt housekeepers are organizing a seven-city tour, featuring the symbol of our movement--the Hope Quilt. In each city, Hyatt housekeepers will hold public events to share our stories of hardship and our hopes for a better life for ourselves, our coworkers, and our families. We will be joined by women in our communities, including prominent local and national advocates for women's health and women's rights, who have joined the Hope for Housekeepers campaign in solidarity to end the abuse of women in the hotel industry.

The Hope Quilt

For generations, quilting has represented an important women's tradition that has enabled women to build community, turn discarded scraps of fabric into something beautiful, and create something that when joined together is bigger and more beautiful than the sum of its parts.

In keeping with this tradition, the Hope Quilt stitches together the stories of Hyatt housekeepers and the pain they endure everyday just to provide for their families. As the tour progresses from city to city, each housekeeper who joins the Hope for Housekeeper movement will add a new patch to the quilt, which will grow to be hundreds of feet long by the end of its journey in just one month's time. With each patch symbolizing a story of pain or injury brought on by the heavy burden of our jobs, the quilt makes visible our lives and our struggle.

As such, this quilt is a testament to our work as housekeepers and our worth has human beings. Like the quilts our mothers and grandmothers made for us, this quilt is the product of our sweat, our tears, and most importantly our love. It is a symbol that together, we can turn our stories of pain into a source of strength that we can use to empower each other and pass on to future generations of women in our industry.

For more information on this campaign, please visit http://www.hotelworkersrising.org/hope/

3 from the San Francisco Hotel Strikes (2009-10)

2010-05-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Hotel Workers Rally and March on Expiration of their 2009 Contract (2009)
Labor Video Project

Hotel Workers Struggle for a Contract in San Francisco (2010)
UNITE HERE! Local 2

Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel (2010)
San Francisco Pride at Work

From: "Labor Day Action: Hotel Workers Take to the Streets"
(UNITE HERE! Local 2, September 7, 2009)

In the spirit of Labor Day, hundreds of hotel workers and community members marched through downtown San Francisco today, demanding a fair contract with low-cost, high quality healthcare and job security. The march began at Justin Herman Plaza and proceeded around several downtown hotels.

The hotel contracts that expired August 14, 2009 affect about 9,000 workers and 62 hotels – 32 of which are San Francisco’s largest and most luxurious hotels. Members of Unite Here Local 2 include room cleaners, dishwashers, bellmen, cooks, and others who are the backbone of the city’s tourism economy.

After several years of record corporate profits in the hotel industry – totaling over $200 billion in the last decade – tourism is suffering the effects of the economic downturn. And it is hotel workers who are bearing the brunt of this recession. Nationwide, hotel corporations have cut back on staffing, and increased the workloads of those who remain working.

This is a commonly-heard theme among hotel workers. While the companies cry poor to their workers, they have received applause from investment analysts for upholding profit margins. According to one Goldman Sachs analyst, “expense reductions have been so dramatic that even a modest pick-up in RevPAR [revenues] should lead to outsized profit gains” (Goldman Sachs, 8/9/2009). And while several San Francisco properties have received attention for defaulting on loans in recent months, each one of these hotels was purchased at the height of the 2007-08 real estate speculation bubble, and is testament to excessive risk-taking by corporate investors and banks. “They’ve been making record profits for years and now they’re making us work harder and longer,” exclaimed Gary Kozono a banquet server at the Four Seasons. “Why should we pay for their bad business decisions?”

Local 2 has had initial negotiations with the largest operators in San Francisco’s hotel industry, including the Starwood Corporation (operator of the Westin St. Francis, Palace, St. Regis, and W Hotels), Hyatt (Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency), and the Blackstone Group (Hilton).

Proposals made so far would require deep cuts in benefits and low-wage workers to pay unaffordable rates for healthcare coverage. “I can either send my son to college or pay exorbitant health care premiums,” said Omni Hotel cook Linda Knighten, “If I don’t get affordable, high quality healthcare through my employer, then who is going to pay for it? Will you?”

An average San Francisco union housekeeper earns $30,000 a year. “We’ve sacrificed increases in wages and pension for affordable and quality healthcare,” said Francisca Ramos a linen room attendant at the St. Francis, “we’re not going to give all that up so hotel companies can continue making profits at our expense.”

As the national healthcare debate continues to unfold, this Labor Day, San Francisco hotel workers take to the streets in solidarity against healthcare cuts and unfair workloads.

UNITE HERE! Local 2 is the union of food service and hotel workers in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.
It represents about 12,000 members in the hospitality industry. For more information visit www.unitehere2.org

Show Us the Tax Breaks (2010)

2010-05-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

Show Us the Tax Breaks: Economic Recovery the Pritzker Way (2010)
David R. Koff (UNITE HERE)

From ShowUstheTaxBreaks.org:

Union Tank Car has been one of the country’s largest manufacturers of railroad tank cars for decades. Incorporated in 1891 as a subsidiary of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, Union Tank Car was purchased by the Pritzker family of Chicago in 1981.

For decades, the company’s primary manufacturing facility was in East Chicago, Indiana, which employed more than six hundred members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 524. After months of reduced staffing, company officials announced on March 29, 2008 that they would permanently close the plant. East Chicago’s Union Tank Car plant, which had received millions of dollars in property tax abatements as an incentive to continue operation, closed its doors on May 30, 2008.

Those jobs did not simply disappear. In 2004, after aggressive negotiations with both Texas and Louisiana, Union Tank Car announced that it would be opening a new plant in Alexandria, Louisiana. Union Tank Car had been heavily courted by then Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, who won the company’s new $100 million plant with the help of a package of taxpayer subsidies worth over $60 million. Louisiana officials expected the new plant to employ 850 workers and spur further economic development in central Louisiana. As of May 2009, Union Tank Car employed around 325 workers.

Union Tank Car has collected public economic development subsidies from both East Chicago and Louisiana without any net increase in jobs. Workers in East Chicago lost their jobs despite decades of service. The city lost a major employer despite paying local tax incentives.

The Pritzker family owned Union Tank Car from 1981 to 2008, when it sold 60% of the company to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The Pritzkers are a group of eleven cousins whose net worth is estimated to be at least $20 billion. Thomas Pritzker, who remains the chairman Union Tank Car’s parent company Marmon Holdings, also serves as the chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Penny Pritzker serves on the board of Hyatt Hotels, and is the chairman of four other Pritzker businesses. Penny served as national finance chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and now serves on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. While it is unclear exactly how much taxpayer money has gone to Pritzker-owned businesses, Hyatt-branded hotels alone have collected approximately $1.5 billion in public subsidies.

------

On May 13, the AFL-CIO, the IBB and UNITE HERE, joined by experts and Congressional leaders, will host a discussion about real economic recovery and its dependence on good jobs [at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters headquarters in Washington, DC].

The premier screening of the short film Show Us the Tax Breaks will follow the discussion.

Five from the M4CA (2010)

2010-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

"Unions' Long March Against California Cuts ", by Fred Glass (Labor Notes, March 25, 2010)

March 4 witnessed an explosion of energy across California (see Can Public Education Be Saved?), as thousands demonstrated against the devastation of the state’s K-12 schools and vaunted public colleges, once the gateway to opportunity for the working class.

The flame didn’t sputter out, though. The following day 1,500 people gathered in a church in South Central Los Angeles, including 300 who bused in from San Diego.

They were there to send off a “March for California’s Future,” a 48-day, 250-mile trek from Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento, initially organized by the California Federation of Teachers.

The intent of the march, said CFT President Marty Hittelman, is to show what caused the state budget crisis, draw attention to what severe budget cuts do to Californians, and move toward solutions that make sense.

Those solutions include, front and center, progressive tax policies to fund public education and vital public services. And that will require reducing California’s requirement of a two-thirds vote in the legislature to pass a budget or taxes, down to a simple majority.

“We don’t have any illusion the march by itself will accomplish its ultimate goals,” said Hittelman, a Los Angeles community college instructor. “But sometimes the right action at the right time can light a symbolic flame for people and help get a movement going.”

'I AM MARCHING’

The CFT knew it needed to build a broader coalition, and plenty of green-shirted AFSCME members filled the pews alongside blue AFT and purple Service Employees garb (and a sprinkling of orange from the reconstituted ACORN).

The march is a stretch for the CFT and AFSCME, which are not among the largest public sector unions in California. But they put the march on the road because, of all the state’s unions, they are the two most consistently focused on a progressive tax message.

Josh Pechthalt, head of the CFT’s “Fight for California’s Future” committee that dreamed up the march, walked the first five days.

“We know that it can’t be just a fight for education,” he said. “It’s also a fight for social services, health care, making sure that our children can play in public parks. And the only way that we’re going to get there is if we tax the rich and the corporations, like the people of Oregon voted to do two months ago.”

The loudest cheers at the send-off rally came for seven people dressed in black-and-white shirts that read simply, “I am marching,” modeled after the famous 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike placards (“I am a man”). The seven trail a path marked by Cesar Chavez’s 1966 peregrinación, a 240-mile pilgrimage that lifted striking farm workers into the nation’s conscience.

CFT and AFSCME recruited the seven to march for 48 long days: Watsonville teacher Jenn Laskin and a former student of hers, Emmanuelle Ballesteros; San Diego community college instructor Jim Miller; Los Angeles County probation officer Irene Gonzalez; adult educator Anna Graves and high school teacher Gavin Riley, both retired; and Los Angeles substitute teacher David Lyell.

Along the way they are joined by day marchers—some days a handful, other days hundreds, as they pass through some of the areas hardest hit in the nation by the recession.

WALKING ALL OVER US

The crisis in the state is only too clear. College students are staggering under gigantic fee increases, dwindling course offerings, and faculty and staff furloughs and layoffs. Economic refugees from the Great Recession can no longer, as in downturns past, regenerate their job skills and renew their lives.

The marchers signed up, as Gonzalez said, because “we can’t let the legislators walk all over us. We can’t be living from paycheck to paycheck while corporate executives are making the big bucks. If it takes a march to do it, if it takes three or four months, I’m there.”

Gonzalez was nursing a swollen ankle following two straight 14-mile days walking back roads in the San Joaquin Valley near Highway 99. Her foot care was in the hands of Bob D’Ausilio, a retired firefighter (IAFF Local 1578, Alhambra) and paramedic driving one of the support vehicles.

D’Ausilio is also preparing most of the meals for the marchers and staff. “I’m putting just about all my firefighter training into play here,” he joked.

Eight days into their adventure, the marchers had a sober but optimistic assessment of their impact thus far. “It’s a pretty desolate patch of valley here,” said Jim Miller, “not much of anything except roads and fields.”

Cars and big rigs hurtled by on the highway a couple of hundred yards away. Although the media hoopla of the launches in L.A. and Bakersfield had tapered off, at least one or two reporters interviewed them by phone or tagged along for a while on the road each day.

The marchers’ spirits were buoyed when passing motorists honked and waved, and sometimes stopped to chat. “One woman drove up from L.A. after seeing us on TV,” said Laskin. “She brought us water and marched a few hours.”

LOCAL RALLIES, TOWN HALLS

Marchers had different favorite moments: sharing a stage at a rally of a few hundred people in Delano with Dolores Huerta; the ceremony in Allensworth, a former African American utopian colony, now a state park closed most of the time due to budget cuts; and the time a woman ran out of her house to serve them melon and orange slices and thank them for their sacrifice.

The three official themes of the march, emblazoned across a bus accompanying the marchers, are “restore the promise of public education,” “a government and economy that work for all,” and “fair tax policies to fund California’s future.” Toward those ends the marchers are joining with local unions and community organizations as they move up the central valley in rallies, town halls, and other events to gain public attention. Graves is posting her images daily at March for California’s Future.

A modest purchase of paid ads is running on local radio and in newspapers to reinforce news coverage and concerted blogging by the marchers. The march will conclude with a massive rally in the state capital, calling out the legislators who have so spectacularly failed their state.

PERSONAL POLITICS

Gonzalez, a single mother, grew up in foster homes across the Central Valley. She put herself through school, got a master’s degree, and has worked as a Los Angeles County probation officer for 10 years. A member of AFSCME Local 685, she recognizes the crucial role public education played in her own life, and for the people she now works with.

“But with budget cuts, the support is all going away,” she said. “No more education and medical programs for the probationers and their families. There aren’t any jobs for them either.”

Fred Glass is a member of the California Federation of Teachers.

The Time to March is Now (2010)

March for California's Future

March for California's Future: Kick-Off Rally (2010)

SEIU-ULTCW

March for California's Future (2010)

AFSCME

March for California's Future in Bakersfield (2010)

Producer Unknown

March for California's Future - No More Cuts to Education (2010)

Producer Unknown

Please visit M4CF: Fight for the California Dream for more information on the march.

More from the Mines: On Rio Tinto

2010-04-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Adapted from, "The Desert Lockout" by R.M Arrieta in Working: In These Times

BORON, CALIF.—It’s 6:15 and cars and trucks are coming down the long stretch of desert road to the main gate at the Rio Tinto/Borax facility. Soon, scores of vans and buses filled with replacement workers—what more than 500 locked-out workers call “scabs”—will be shuttled in and out of the gates. Union workers of Rio Tinto line the road, with bullhorns, shining lights at the passengers, jeering and hurling insults.

Some of the replacement workers smirk. They’re mostly the young ones. Some have the music cranked up loud. Some wear headphones. Some wear caps and cover their faces with knit material with holes cut out for their eyes, nose and mouths. Some look downright ashamed.

The company is paying their lodging at various hotels around the area. But not in Boron, where there is overwhelming support for the workers, now in month three of the lock-out. If these workers don’t get their jobs back, “this town will just dry up and blow away,” says Bill Galloway, one of the locked-out workers and a rank-and-file member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30. “It will be a town of extremely low-income people instead of healthy middle-class families.”

THE MULTINATIONAL SQUEEZE

Welcome to Boron, Calif. Population 2,000. Home to the state’s largest open pit mine and one of the richest borate deposits in the world. The mine produces almost half the global demand for borates from the California facility, according to the Borax company website.

Rio Tinto/Borax, the world’s third largest mining company, is based in London and Australia. Relations with the mine's workers, represented by Local 30, have been strained since Rio Tinto bought the U.S.-owned Borax facility in 1968. The first labor dispute boiled over in 1974, when 100 Kern County sheriff deputies were brought in and two helicopters patrolled the line filled with hundreds of angry workers. (You can read about it here.)

Today’s troubles are almost as contentious.

In 2009, when workers were renegotiating their contract, Rio Tinto managers smelled blood: a weak economy had created workers desperate to hold onto any job.

In contracts talks they presented the union with, among other demands, the right to promote or demote at will, reduce retirement benefits for current employees, eliminate pension benefits for new employees, cut back sick leave and holidays, do away with seniority, outsource union jobs, eliminate existing work rules, force overtime,changes shifts and hours and work assignments with no scheduled days off, fire at will, authority to eliminate long-term disability coverage for any new worker and a laundry list of other ideas that will allow them to, as their ad placed in newspapers states: “…respond to a changing world and a more challenging workplace.”

Or, as Susan Keefe, Rio Tinto spokesperson has stated, “Modernize work practices to keep up with competition.” You can read the entire contract here at Local 30’s website.

Local 30 members rejected the proposal.

Last year, Rio Tinto reported profits of $4.7 billion. The company said that it lost 25 percent of its share of the global borax market to an operation in Turkey, Eti Maden, which pays its workers about $9.70 an hour. Even so, Rio Tinto reportedly made 30 percent more last year than they did before. Apparently that isn’t enough.

After several months of negotiating, the company claimed union negotiators weren’t playing fair. They couldn’t understand why no one would not want their retirement years lessened or, why cutting back sick days and getting rid of seniority was such a big deal. Or, why being able to fire someone because they didn’t get along with a supervisor was so bad.

Rio Tinto/Borax threw a collective tantrum. On January 31, 2010 at 6:59 a.m., the company locked its doors to 570 workers.

The company put out a large newspaper ad stating that union negotiators did not want to go about “changing the way we work” and that the “old ways” (aka fair wages, holiday and sick leave, and respect) had cost the multinational money and hundreds of jobs.

It’s not beyond reason to think that the owners thought no one would notice or care much when they locked the workers out — since Boron is kind of in the middle of nowhere. For a minute the workers were stunned and alone in their fight save for Local 30 and efforts of the ILWU. But word spread quickly in the labor movement and people came to help.

Since the lockout, Rio Tinto/Borax has gone on the defense. Says Jeri Lee, executive administrator for Local 30 and chair of the family support food bank committee,

Borax keeps putting these ads in the paper that they've called down here to negotiate and that the union keeps telling them no.

Well, let me tell you something, those phone calls come through me. I log every phone call that comes in this office and they have never called down here,

“Our (local 30) president and incumbent president have sent emails and calls to the federal mediator through our attorney requesting negotiations and the company has refused every one of them,” says Lee. “Borox is truly lying in the papers. We would negotiate 24 hours a day, seven days a week if we could, to get these workers back to work."

Terri Judd, who has worked at the mine for 13 years as a loader operator and is a U.S. Army vet., says:

It’s disappointing you put your faith and loyalty into a company and it pretty much feels like they just turned around and stabbed you in the back. I’m third generation out here. My grandfather came out here in the 40’s. He retired from here in 1975. My father worked here.

NEGOTIATIONS RESTART, AS DESERT BATTLE CONTINUES

The workers and their families are settled in for the long haul. Worker after worker I spoke with is convinced the stand they are taking is a stand for workers across this country.

“The support has been overwhelming,” says Galloway, a refrigeration mechanic who has been with the company for almost nine years. Says Galloway,

It’s going to be a tough run but its necessary, not only for this community and for the people out here but for everyone in this country because whatever happens here, labor is going to go that way.

Multinational corporations have so much greed and if they're able to do this here, they'll free to do it anywhere in the country.

[Curator's note: Two of our titles this week come from international actions held in solidarity with the ILWU, Local 30 workers in Australia and Canada. At both events, local miners from Boron were present. Country of origin for each video produced outside of the United States is noted following the title.]

ILWU30 Locked Out Rio Tinto Miners Speak In SF (2010)
Labor Video

Miners Stick with the Union (2010)
Producer Unknown

LA Labor Supports Rio Tinto Miners (2010)
LA County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

ILWU Supports Rio Tinto Miners (Canada, 2010)
Hip Photography

MUA Rally - Is Rio Tinto following the Avatar Movie Script? (Australia, 2010)

Maritime Union of Australia

For more information on Borax/Rio Tinto, please visit Borax Miners, the ILWU Local 30 campaign website.

Mine War on Blackberry Creek (Anne Lewis, 1986)

2010-04-19T18:50:00.000-07:00

Mine War on Blackberry Creek (1986)

Anne Lewis

Adapted from Anne Lewis and Creative Vision (2004) from the Center for Social Media at American University:

I come out of a movement to change media so that it engages ordinary people and creates opportunity for positive social change. I believe in the power of telling the truth with all the understanding that intellect can offer. I have practiced the art of documentary filmmaking—frequently with limited resources—since 1968. This combined intent to create meaningful work, tell the truth about the complex world of ordinary Americans, and contribute to the independent field has determined my creative work. My approach is inclusive, informed by social change, accessible, and non-dogmatic.

In 1973, I went with Barbara Kopple to Harlan County, Kentucky as associate director and assistant camerawoman of Harlan County, U.S.A. That experience radically changed my approach to filmmaking. I had been working on the film syncing dailies and reviewing material. Then a call came from the United Mineworkers that they needed someone to film in Harlan County or there would be a killing. Barbara, Kevin Keating, Richard Warner (our local liaison who had owned a sock store in Knoxville, Tennessee), and I flew to Knoxville, loaded into a station wagon with all the 16 mm gear, and drove across 2 lane roads to the picket line. We arrived at 5 am. On one side of the road there were about 30 state troopers looking mean. On the other side, there were an equal number of tough-looking women with clubs. Within an hour, we were filming violent arrests and women being dragged. Documentary filmmaking was no longer a distant and separate art. It was a way of being involved, being present. It was possible to be an active participant and still tell the truth—only from a more intimate and passionate perspective.

After production and rough cut editing was completed on Harlan County, I returned to the coalfields of Appalachia where I lived for the next twenty-five years.

In 1982, I began a long association with Appalshop of Whitesburg, Kentucky—a national arts center described by Pat Aufderheide as “an unsentimental exercise in authenticity.” I originally was hired to edit a feature length play, Red Fox, Second Hangin’, which had been shot in 1-inch video with 4 cameras and 3 performances. I then began working with Headwaters Television, a weekly half-hour television series that screened on the NBC affiliate in Hazard, Kentucky. Marty Newell handled the administration of the project and was the director of photography. I directed, did sound, and edited. We produced 27 half-hours a year that ranged in quality from the Hazard Community Choir performing Handel’s Messiah with the London (Kentucky) Symphony Orchestra to some wonderful programs about local musicians. After two years, we moved the series to Kentucky Public Television and produced seven half-hour shows a year. I am still proud of the work we produced — Peace Stories, stories of 3 veterans who decided that war was wrong (once more in active distribution); Yellow Creek, Kentucky, about a grassroots struggle against a toxic industry; Camp 18, about a state prison shotgun road crew; and a coal miners’ response to Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union. I described my work as “community directed”—I would involve community residents throughout the production. For example, in Yellow Creek, Kentucky, a community resident gives us a tour of the creek, introducing us to his neighbors on the way. I asked members of the Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens to suggest questions for the City Attorney, then asked the attorney those questions, showed the material back to the citizens, taped their responses, and edited the pieces together. I also discovered that it is possible to find depth and vitality at home—even if that home is rural and poor. It is not necessary to travel long distances or interview famous people, to find stories that have meaning and energy.

Bill Moyers in a recent interview with Terry Gross spoke about two kinds of documentaries—ones that are made and ones that are found. I would see my documentaries as the found variety—finding truth rather than inventing it.

We live in a time when ideologues preach through the media. Evidence is spun; we see ourselves as consumers instead of citizens; we live in fear of our neighbors; the market is the only determiner of value. The independent documentary field—in spite of a lack of public funding—is one of the few places where the freedom can be found to lift some of this distortion and pervasive fear. Without that truth telling, we are in danger of living in a closed and repressive society.

Please visit AppalShop for more information on this title.

The Judges Weigh In: What Makes a Great Short Labor Film?

2010-04-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

Look Back invited the judges of the LabourStart Labour Video of the Year competition to respond to the question: What makes a great short labor film?

LYDIA CHAMMAS, DC LaborFilmFest

The short films that really caught my attention were in fact "short films," not PowerPoint presentations or collages of still frames set to music, with the length playing an important part: anything much longer than two minutes and the impact of the film's message became lost, confused or diminished. An engaging video, with a clear, concise message and some clean production work really came across as fresh, and with some humor, heart or mixture of both, truly stood out as a winner.

CHRIS GARLOCK, DC Labor FilmFest

Brevity -- 2 minutes or less -- wit, creativity, strong visuals and music.

JON GARLOCK, Rochester Labor Film Series

Having screened a large number of the labor short submissions I'd start by noting my reaction to a great many of them: NEEDS CONTEXT. That the format does not lend itself to documentary was demonstrated by the compressed, fragmented coverage of labor issues in these shorts. Perhaps this resulted from stitching together real-time video footage, often depending on sound from the video. While such pieces may be comprehensible to actual participants, they are difficult if not impossible for the casual viewer to follow.

In contrast, the pieces that I enjoyed and was informed by were scripted, directed and acted and relied on verbal or visual irony to make their points:

What Have the Unions Ever Done For Us? sets up the clever premise of employees attempting to badmouth unions but discovering in the process just how much unions have accomplished. (It helps that the group's leader is very well acted!)

Just Another Cog in the Machine has neither actors nor voice-over and relies solely on a series of placards which, read in one sequence, describe a worker's disaffection from the workplace but, read in a different sequence, show a very satisfied worker. This unique minimalism works brilliantly, forcing the viewer to attend to the words and feelings communicated on the placards.

The CUPE ads, a series of very brief two-person skits devoted to a university labor struggle, though unequally clever or convincing, still succeed in laying out the issues and inviting the viewer to take a side.

Probably the best labor short I've seen, The Job (not one of those reviewed) is also a well-thought out and well-acted skit which turns the immigrant day labor issue on its head by showing a latino in a pick-up truck arriving at a corporate office building to hire for the day accountants and other professional workers, who then hop into his mariachi-blaring vehicle. It's deliciously ironic and right on point and is more persuasive than many a feature documentary...

From my own responses, then, I deduce that a successful labor short film responds to a widely-relevant labor issue and approaches it with originality, humor and perhaps with oblique irony. It also eschews documentary.

ERIC LEE, LabourStart

I voted for the winning video (What have unions ever done for us?) for a number of reasons. First of all, it was very funny. Second, it was highly professional -- you could sense just how good the actors were, how well-written the script was, the first-rate camera work and sound. Third, it took a well-known story (from Monty Python's Life of Brian) and gave it a nice twist, and it was an appropriate choice of story to give that twist to. But fourth and most important, it was effective -- the video was part of a very successful campaign by the trade union movement to put union rights, and the role of unions, into the center of Australian politics. The result was a crushing electoral defeat for the right-wing Howard government and the victory for the party of the unions, the Australian Labor Party. What could better define what we want from a union video than that?

I also liked The Janitor and the CUPE strike ads (which were also a variation on the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads) and thought that John Wood's Just another cog in the machine were all excellent.

I did not, however, like two of the videos that made it to the shortlist and I'll explain why.

The climate change video [A call to action] to me seemed superficial and cliched. I learned nothing from it, I was not convinced of anything by it, and it didn't make me laugh. Other than holding up a sign and saying unions should care about this issue, and that we do, I didn't really get the point. My guess is that people voted for it because they too want to highlight concern about climate change, not because this was especially interesting.

The Vale video, however, [VALE INCO's CEO Roger Fuhrer Loses His Fight...] was the worst of the lot even though it got a lot of votes -- I think mostly in sympathy with the strikers at Vale Inco. But this video does them no service. First of all, it's been done before. I've seen this very same clip from Downfall with various amusing subtitles added. Second, it required no effort to do. (Compare this to the amount of work that went into all the other videos.) But third and most important, I found it morally offensive. You simply cannot use Hitler every time you don't like someone or something. It trivializes the Holocaust, and by turning Hitler into the symbol of every bad thing, you contribute to a "normalization" of how we view Nazism. After all, if the head of a company is just as bad as Hitler was, it means that Hitler was no worse than a company boss. Obviously the film-makers (or subtitlers, to be honest) would disagree, and this was obviously not their intention, but I oppose the use of this kind of material for this purpose.

FRANK SAPTEL, Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF)

I haven’t always found it easy to describe what a labour video/film is, but the best definition is one of the unofficial slogans for CLiFF: the festival being about work, workers and issues affecting either (or both).

The best labour film is a short one. I prefer under three minutes, but under ten also works well. Because we are a national festival, we have a package called “Festival in a Box” where we choose films and send them to Location Coordinators who don’t have the time to organise absolutely everything. In this way, we can send out a greater number of films to many more places, familiarising their audiences with more issues.

A good labour film is also one that is funny and pokes fun at ourselves. Too many people get in and stay in because of a passionate reason (as they should). That is also the reason they ultimately leave.

A good labour film should transcend only problems, and should make us celebrate and laugh as well as making us angry and cry.

While none of us may be able to properly describe what a good labour video is, we may be able to describe what it should do.

A good labour video should make us think and make us act!

ADAM WRIGHT, Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO

It needs to grab your attention within the first 10 seconds... either with great graphics, intriguing photography, emotive music, or all of the above.

There needs to be high quality production... no-one likes watching an out-of-focus and hard-to-hear video.

Short, simple and creative is the way to go. The more imaginative and creative, the better it will be received. A good example is Just Another Cog - it's short, very simple, yet very creative and imaginative.

And last, but not least, it needs to have a strong work/labor/union angle.

JOSHUA AMBERG, Look Back Labor

Assured understanding of both message and audience; production values aren't that much of a concern for me as long as there is a clear and definite vision or objective motivating what you are trying to communicate. Do not, however, overlook the importance of sensible sound design, particularly the appropriate use of any extraneous soundtrack elements, and balancing foreground - especially spoken dialogue from an in-frame source - and background sound.

Our Song (Delta AFA, 2010)

2010-03-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

Our Song (2010)
Delta Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA)

From "A Song for All of Us," (Delta AFA):

Delta flight attendants who gathered in Atlanta for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day march last month cheered a new song written by MSP-based Delta flight attendant Jarrod Anderson, echoing our campaign theme—Opportunity. Unity. Respect. (“OUR Song”). Led by Jarrod, we sang the song in celebration not only of Dr. King’s legacy, but the legacy we’re building now at Delta.

The song was such a big hit that Jarrod took it into the studio when he returned to Minneapolis, accompanied by his band, Soulacious, and with the help of JBay Productions, which has produced a Soulacious CD. Jarrod also got a big assist from his fellow Delta flight attendants with the production of a new music video for "OUR Song", the latest Delta AFA hit.

For more information on the "Opportunity. Unity. Respect." campaign, please visit Delta AFA

'A Fighter to the End' - Crystal Lee Sutton

2010-03-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

Crystal Lee Sutton, the Real 'Norma Rae,' Was a Fighter to the End
Bruce Rayner, Huffington Post (September, 2009)
Bruce Raynor is President of Workers United, an SEIU affiliate union

Our nation has lost a great hero and champion of working people. Crystal Lee Sutton was a courageous woman who stood up for herself and her coworkers under the most difficult circumstances. She was an inspiration to organizers in this union and beyond, particularly Southern women who went on to lead their own campaigns after learning from her example.

It's well known that Crystal's story was the inspiration for the academy award winning 1979 film Norma Rae, but I wish more people knew the real story of Crystal Lee Sutton and her co-workers, and the strength and honor they showed as they fought to organize the textile giant JP Stevens. They stood up and proved that workers in the South could organize and change their jobs and their lives against all odds--across racial lines, and over the objections of anti-worker companies.

For decades, JP Stevens called the shots in Roanoke Rapid, N.C., paying poverty wages and offering deplorably unsafe working conditions. Workers routinely lost fingers, inhaled cotton dust, and lost hearing due to the deafening drone of machinery. JP Stevens was so vehemently anti-union that it systematically purchased small unionized textile mills in the south only to close them down. But as determined as JP Stevens was to keep its workers down, Crystal Lee Sutton was even more determined to lift them up and bring them a union.

Sutton knew that she and her co-workers deserved more out of their employer, and in 1973 she found a way to bring that change when she agreed to help organize the plant with the assistance of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) and its lead organizer, Eli Zivkovich.

JP Stevens mounted the most vigorously hostile union-busting efforts ever seen in US history, amounting in over 122 unfair labor practice findings. But Sutton could not be deterred and at the end of a 10-year boycott, the 3,000 workers at JP Stevens won their 17-year fight with a strong contract.

She fought her whole life for working people, and as she fought cancer, she continued to be an advocate for the needs of working people. Once again, Crystal's story is of both an extraordinary woman and of every woman. Like so many other working families, after a lifetime of paying premiums her health insurance failed her. She took her challenges head on, and never stopped fighting for what was right. While she fought cancer she spoke out about the struggle she had with the health care system and the toll it was taking on her family.

Crystal Lee Sutton is an inspiration to every worker who holds out hope and is prepared to fight for justice and respect at work. Our condolences go to her family, but they should know that we will not forget her, and she continues to inspire our union and workers throughout the world.

For more on Crystal Lee Sutton, visit the Crystal Lee Collection made available by Alamance Community College (Graham, North Carolina)

3 from the IBEW

2010-03-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

"The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) represents approximately 725,000 members who work in a wide variety of fields, including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government. The IBEW has members in both the United States and Canada and stands out among the American unions in the AFL-CIO because it is among the largest and has members in so many skilled occupations."

The Henry Miller Story (2009)

"Henry Miller, who died more than 110-years ago, was the founder, first president and driving force behind the first union of electrical workers in North America the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Despite the key role he played in the history of the IBEW and the early labor movement, little is known about Millers life and career.

This short film from the IBEW Media Department sheds some light on the life and times of Brother Miller and the dawn of the IBEW."

Volunteers in Action (2009)

"Unemployed IBEW members in Jacksonville, FL volunteer their time to help organize nonunion electricians."

IBEW Brings Superbowl XLIV to Life (2010)

"Superbowl XLIV was the most watched event in U.S. TV history -- and it was brought to you live thanks to members of the IBEW."

Hugo Boss Workers Fight to Save their Jobs (2010)

2010-03-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

Hugo Boss Workers Fight to Save their Jobs (2010)
Workers United

Memo to Hollywood: Hugo Boss Not Fashionable For This Year's Oscars, Kate Thomas (SEIU)

Dear Hollywood actors and celebrities,

Even though you may not have realized it, you were once supporting our nation's economic recovery, American jobs and Cleveland's rich 150+ year tradition of suit manufacturing...all with the simple act of purchasing the suits you love from Hugo Boss.

Now Hugo Boss says they are planning to close their last U.S. suit-making factory, forcing over 300 workers onto the unemployment line. So in one months' time, unless you help us do something to stop it, those suits will be cheaply made in an overseas factory by an abysmally low-paid worker.

So now if you purchase or wear Hugo Boss, instead of supporting good American jobs and boosting our economy, you'll essentially be supporting the exploitation of unskilled workers in Turkey or Eastern Europe. Not to mention contributing directly to the rate at which the U.S.'s dwindling manufacturing jobs are disappearing overseas.

Not exactly the kind of feel-good clothing you want to be wearing at most highly anticipated Hollywood awards show of the year, is it?

Danny Glover doesn't think so--and he's taking a stand with Workers United on behalf of the 300+ Hugo Boss workers in Cleveland expected to lose their jobs as a result of the plant closing. Glover is calling on his friends in the business to boycott the designer on the Red Carpet at Sunday's Academy Awards, and sport pins in solidarity.

Academy Award attendees Glover has sent his letter and a pin to include big names such as:

Matt Damon | George Clooney | Jeff Bridges | Sean Penn | Neil Patrick Harris | Colin Firth | Morgan Freeman | Philip Seymour Hoffman | James Cameron | Woody Harrelson | Jeremy Renner | Stanley Tucci | Lee Daniels

We've already found out that frequent Hugo Boss wearer and best actor nominee Colin Firth will be wearing Tom Ford this year, and that Jeff Bridges is choosing to wear Gucci. Menswear company Joseph Abboud--who regularly provides American-made tuxedos for high-profile NBA coaches and players and actors such as Tracy Morgan--has added his support for the Red Carpet boycott.

For more information about this campaign, please visit Tell Hollywood

"Educate the State" - A Day of Action in California (2010)

2010-03-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

March 4 Stand Up for Schools (2010)
California Teachers Association

Cal Students Rally to "Educate the State" on Day of Action (2010)
Youth Media International

CSU Monterey Bay's Day of Action, March 4th (2010)
CSUMB Teledramatic Arts and Technologies Department

March 4, 2010 Day Of Action in San Diego, CA (2010)
Jesse Marie Di Carlo-Wagner

UC Santa Cruz - March 4 - Noon Rally (2010)
Producer Unknown

March 4 Day of Action Ripples Through California and Beyond, Paul Abowd (Labor Notes)

Walkouts, student strikes, and marches shook every level of California’s embattled public education system on March 4. University of California students blocked access to campus entrances at Berkeley and Santa Cruz in the morning. In the afternoon, college students joined forces with K-12 students and teachers in downtown Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

The rallies numbered in the thousands—some estimate the gathering in front of San Francisco's Civic Center at 20,000. In Oakland and Sacramento, hundreds of marchers confronted police after taking their protests onto the freeways.

The call for action against crippling state budget cuts—$17 billion in two years to the state’s education fund—and the UC administration’s crisis of priorities was taken up on every UC and state college campus—and echoed by students, teachers, and campus union activists in 32 states. [1]

A major target is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators who ready their machetes as another $20 billion budget deficit approaches this year. The state’s unwillingness, and inability, to raise revenue has already taken a toll, and organizing has been underway for months leading up to the day of action. The state’s three-tiered education system—10 UC campuses, and dozens of state and community colleges—has taken a 20 percent funding cut from the state in three years. Student fees at state schools have exploded by 182 percent since 2002. [2]

While state funds drop, student fees at colleges have spiked, and programs and classes have been cut, while lecturers and campus unions face layoffs and furloughs.

K-12 schools are under siege too: districts are privatizing, and President Obama’s education funding plan cheers them on [3]. In Los Angeles, K-12 teachers joined students at an after-school march downtown. Teachers and school district employees got word that 5,200 more layoffs are coming this year. Some jobs were saved with stimulus money after the union’s protracted battle last year, [4] but class sizes are exploding nonetheless. In Oakland and San Francisco schools, students and teachers walked out of class during a morning “disaster drill” called jointly by unions and school districts.

The scope of the problem has resulted in a broad list of demands, many of them more like long-term goals. Organizing committees in the north and south formed out of a late October conference of 800 people at Berkeley which initiated the March 4 day of action. Debates within those groups resulted in a list of demands. In Oakland, organizers are calling for fully funded, free, quality public education—pre-school through higher ed; an end to the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the Race to the Top competition; a restoration of all public sector cuts and an expansion of public services; full citizenship rights for immigrants and an end to ICE raids and foreclosures, to name a few.

UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff is sponsoring a long-shot ballot initiative to overturn the two-thirds majority requirement that allows a handful of anti-tax Republicans to create perennial gridlock in the state legislature. Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative approved by voters, created the two-thirds rule and also capped commercial property tax rates.

At UC, campus unions and students have organized together for months [5]—led by two Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA) strikes over the past half year. This time UPTE gained a tentative agreement with raises days before March 4. No unions struck, but campus workers joined marches statewide.

Students contend the problem does not reside entirely in Sacramento. Though many argue for a diversity of tactics to target school administrators and state legislators, campus organizers were critical of the decision by a progressive faculty group to bus hundreds of students and teachers to Sacramento for the day. Dick Miller, a professor with the faculty-based group SAVE Our University that organized the trip, explained the action as a way to bring together pressure from all levels of the education system to the capital.

Students who blocked the entrance to Berkeley’s campus this morning say that’s just what their march to Oakland, which brought more than 1,000 of campus activists to City Hall, was meant to do. Meanwhile, they maintain, the growing movement must not let UC administrators—taking in fat executive salaries—off the hook either.

The week before March 4, students took over Durant Hall, formerly an East Asian Languages building. Now it’s being renovated—with money leveraged from the recently announced 32 percent fee hike—for use by deans. It’s “another administration building,” as the students call it. And by pursuing private fundraising to stay afloat, and cutting costs and union power through private contracting of campus services, the university is looking for corporate solutions to a public concern.

While the UC regents blame the state for their financial straits (UC head Mark Yudof latched onto the March 4 protests yesterday [6]), students are calling them out over how they use money the school does have.

Campus expansion proceeds apace, including a recent multi-million dollar proposal to renovate Berkeley’s football stadium. [7] Months of library and building takeovers, forums, and experiments in democratic organizing throughout the state have been animated by a call for free public education, to democratize the regents (who are appointed), and more transparency around the UC’s spending, salaries, and investments. A state senator initiated a full audit of the UC [8] administration and its budget this month.

The crisis of priorities—and resulting student fee hikes—is exacerbating long-standing problems of access to higher education for working-class students and students of color. Black and Latino students are vastly underrepresented at UC campuses: 1 percent of UCLA’s 26,000 undergrads, for example, are Black. The fight for racial justice at the university far precedes the budget crisis—and has become a major element of the March 4 mobilization.

At UC San Diego, a campus whose freshman class is composed of only 1 percent Black students, administrators tried to tamp down anger over a racist fraternity party defended by a student-run television station and in a student “humor” magazine. Days later, students mobilized in the hundreds demanding “real action” after walking out of a university-sponsored teach-in on race relations. The madness continued: a noose was discovered hung in a school library (a student turned herself in, claiming she didn’t know it had hateful connotations). Then, a KKK-style hood was found on a statue outside the school’s library.

Students and faculty supporters say the incidents are the result of institutional policies that have marginalized people of color on campus—creating the conditions for racism to fester. The state’s ban on affirmative action programs in 1996 spurred a drop in Black and Latino enrollment in UC schools. Eric Gardner, a member of the student-worker coalition that organized for March 4 at UCLA, says the fight for racial justice is intimately tied to the battle against budget cuts and privatization. “More fees, more cuts to programs that serve underrepresented communities—it’s all serving the re-segregation of the university,” he said.

Walkouts and marches also happened on hundreds of campuses and cities across the country—including big rallies and building takeovers in New York. In the face of continuing budget problems nationwide threatening to stamp out a dwindling number of public institutions, March 4 organizers know more cuts are coming. But they’re equally aware of the importance of a short-term victory: the unprecedented mobilization across states, unions, and generations. “I had gotten very pessimistic over time, but I’m not now,” says long-time Oakland teacher activist Jack Gerson. “We’re starting to see a mass movement, and this is just the beginning.”

For more information, please visit Defend Education and Stand Up For Schools

Minneapolis Truckers Make History (2009)

2010-03-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Minneapolis Truckers Make History (2009)
University of Minnesota Labor Education Service (LES)

"The film and [accompanying] website are a project of LES; the website was developed by labor educator Deborah Rosenstein with assistance from John See and Sarah Wolf; the film was produced by Randy Croce, based on Labor's Turning Point, by John DeGraaf."

Remembering the Truckers Strike of 1934, Iric Nathanson:

Meridel LeSeur was there on that steamy July afternoon in 1934 as the funeral cortege moved slowly through downtown Minneapolis. "We passed through six blocks of tenements, through a sea of grim faces, and there was not a sound. There was a curious shuffle of thousands of feet, without drum or bugle, in ominous silence, not heavy as the military, but very light, exactly with the heart beat," LeSeur recalled. The noted author and social activist was part of a crowd of 100,000 that had turned out for the funeral of Henry Ness.

A week earlier, on July 20, the union loyalist had been shot and fatally wounded by the Minneapolis police during a violent confrontation with striking truck drivers in the city's market district. Bloody Friday, as it came to be known, was the climax of a bitter strike that had convulsed Minneapolis throughout the summer of 1934, at the height of the Great Depression. The strike, one of the bitterest in Minneapolis' history, had pitted the militant Teamsters Local 574 against a group of employers backed by the powerful anti-union Citizens Alliance. For decades, the Alliance had maintained a tight grip on the city's economy and thwarted union organizing efforts.

Led by the charismatic Vince Dunne, Local 574 had challenged the employers group by organizing a strike against a group of produce firms in the city's market district. What started as a labor action against 11 relatively small wholesale distributors soon escalated into a major confrontation between the Teamsters and the city's business establishment. Working behind the scenes, the Citizens Alliance soon recognized the union's potential to upset the economic status quo in Minneapolis. With the backing of Minneapolis Mayor A.G. "Buzz" Bainbridge and his police chief, Michael Johannes, the League was determined to break the strike.

While the union faced staunch foes in City Hall, it had an ally, albeit a tentative one, at the State Capitol in St. Paul. Minnesota Gov. Floyd Olson, as a Farmer-Laborite, was sympathetic to the union cause, but he had to balance his labor sympathies with his gubernatorial responsibilities to maintain law and order. Throughout the summer, Olson pressured the employers to accept a settlement proposed by federal mediators. In May, after an earlier confrontation between the union and employers, it appeared that the mediators had obtained acquiescence from the employers for some modest demands put forward by Local 574. But the agreement soon unraveled and the union called for a new strike to take effect on July 11.  As sporadic violence broke out around the city between union picketers and strike-breaking truck drivers, Olson declared martial law and called out the National Guard to maintain order in the streets of Minneapolis. But the strike remained in effect and tensions continued to build as the month wore on. 

On July 20, police cordoned off an area around the Slocum Bergren Co. in the warehouse district. That afternoon, a produce truck driven by scabs began moving out of the district accompanied by fleet of squad cars carrying police armed with shot guns. Just as it was turning onto Third Street, another truck filled with striking union members cut in ahead of the strike breaker's vehicle. Police rushed onto the scene and opened fire on the unarmed pickets. More than 60 picketers were wounded during the police attack. Two, including Henry Ness, later died from their wounds. 

Bloody Friday threatened to provoke full-scale economic warfare in the streets of Minneapolis, but the crisis soon passed after a distinguished visitor from Washington paid a visit to Minnesota. In early August, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Rochester for a ceremony honoring the Mayo brothers. While he was there, Olson briefed him on the strike and its devastating impact on the state. While Minnesota's governor was meeting with the president, the editor of the Minneapolis Labor Review, Robley Cramer, conferred with Roosevelt's chief aide, Louis Howe. Cramer told Howe that the Roosevelt administration needed to pressure Minneapolis businessmen to settle the strike. Soon after Roosevelt's visit, Jesse Jones, the head of the administration's Reconstruction Finance Agency, began making calls to local industrialists in Minnesota who relied on Jones' agency to meet their credit needs.

Jones' calls, urging a prompt strike settlement, clearly had an impact. On Aug. 22, with little advance notice, the strike was ended when employers agreed to a new plan proposed by federal mediators. While some employers would later seek to subvert the settlement, the tight hold of the Citizens Alliance had been broken and unions would face a more level playing field as they negotiated for higher wages and improved working conditions in Minneapolis. More than 70 years later, the truckers strike of 1934 points up the indispensable role that political leadership has played in the past in redressing economic inequities and that it can play again in 21st century America.

Please visit, Minneapolis Truckers Make History for more information.

Pesticides in the Air, Kids at Risk (2010)

2010-02-22T17:58:00.000-08:00

Pesticides in the Air, Kids at Risk (2010)
Producer, Earthjustice

[Note: United Farm Workers of America's (UFW) partner, Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm, released the following advocacy video in support of their efforts to petition the Environmental Protection Agency to address the issue of pesticide drift exposure in farming communities.]

From Earthjustice.org:

Each year, nearly a billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed in fields and orchards across the country. As the families who live nearby can tell you: those pesticides don't always stay in the fields and orchards where they're sprayed. For well over a decade, Earthjustice has been battling in the courts to curtail the use of dangerous pesticides that poison workers and their families. While we have succeeded in having some nasty pesticides banned, we are still fighting over a dozen others to keep people from being poisoned where they live, play, or work.

...

Many of our cases are trying to protect people from the very pesticides that caused these poisonings. Most recently, Earthjustice has partnered with farmworker and public health groups around the country in an effort to gain federal protections from pesticide drift for agricultural communities nationwide. Earthjustice attorneys filed a petition in October 2009 asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set safety standards protecting children who grow up near farms from the harmful effects of pesticide drift -- the toxic spray or vapor that travels from treated fields. The petition also asks the agency to immediately adopt no-spray buffer zones around homes, schools, parks and daycare centers for the most dangerous and drift-prone pesticides.

In response to the petition, the EPA opened up the group's petition for public comment. While a promising sign, EPA has not yet committed to put the necessary protections in place. Now comes the hard work of making sure that decision-makers hear that children need and deserve immediate protection from poisons in the air where they live, play, and go to school. They'll surely be getting an earful from the pesticide industry telling them to keep the status quo. Industry interests have already started putting the pressure on EPA.

But as powerful as these industry groups may be, they'll be hard-pressed to dull the spirits of the brave rural residents fighting to protect the children in their communities from pesticides. Or to outnumber the growing ranks of people around the country rallying in support of these safety measures. Join them today!

For more on this campaign, please visit the UFW

Fiat Chrysler Bailout Bandit - DC Auto Show (2010)

2010-02-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

Fiat Chrysler Bailout Bandit - DC Auto Show (2010)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters

From Teamster.org:

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Today, dozens of Teamsters who deliver new cars for a living, along with consumer activists from CarBuyersBeware.com, handbilled outside the Washington, D.C. Auto Show and staged a song and dance action inside the show venue to demand Fiat/Chrysler not destroy the jobs that support them and their families.

Fiat/Chrysler received $14 billion in the taxpayer-funded auto bailout that was meant to help the economy and save jobs. However, the company is now moving work away from the professional carhaul companies that have delivered their vehicles to dealerships for many years. The loss of this work could put these carriers out of business, leaving up to 5,000 people without jobs and health care. And by using cut-rate carriers, Chrysler risks new cars being damaged when delivered.

“Fiat/Chrysler is moving work to less-experienced companies whose drivers are not well-trained,” said Teamsters Carhaul Division Director Fred Zuckerman. “If improperly secured and transported, new cars can sustain hidden damages to tires, rims, axles and the overall frame. This can threaten your safety and can lead to costly repair bills in the future.”

Outside the auto show, consumer activists and union members handed out leaflets to attendees that read, “Fiat/Chrysler Buyers Beware: Hidden Damages On New Cars?” while inside, demonstrators broke into a song and dance routine to raise attention of these issues to auto show attendees.

“After Fiat/Chrysler received so much taxpayer money, it’s outrageous that they would outsource good jobs to low-wage contractors,” Zuckerman said. “In this economy, America cannot afford to lose even more good jobs with good benefits. American car buyers and taxpayers, who thought Fiat/Chrysler would repay them with gratitude and loyalty instead of greed, are being betrayed."

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was founded in 1903 and represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

For more on the campaign, please visit: CarBuyersBeware.com

Operation Hey Mackey! Whole Foods, Oakland (2009)

2010-02-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

Operation Hey Mackey! Whole Foods, Oakland (2009)
Jamie LeJeune, Cassidy Friedman

From In These Times, by Russell Mokhiber:

It was a beautiful Friday night in Oakland.

California that is.

Things were going swimmingly at the Oakland Whole Foods.

And then...

And then at 6 p.m., musicians started arriving.

More than 40 of them.

Trombone.

Clarinet.

Drums.

Singers.

And they gathered in the back of the store.

And began singing a song.

It was a take off of Toni Basil's 1982 pop hit "Hey Mickey."

(Hey Mickey You're So Fine
You're So Fine You Blow my Mind
Hey Mickey
Hey Mickey.)

But these were former Whole Foods shoppers.

Boycotters now.

Who were turned off by the CEO, John Mackey, when he pronounced in August in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that health care was not a human right.

So, they adapted the song - just for him.

"Hey Mackey, you're a swine, you're a swine, you blow my mind, Hey Mackey."
"Oh Mackey what a pity, you don't seem to care."
"We're not as rich as you, but we still need healthcare."
"Oh Mackey you're so greedy can't you understand."
"It's guys like you Mackey"
"What you do, what you do Mackey"
"Don't break my heart Mackey."

Max Bell Alper, a union organizer for AFSCME, was one of the organizers of the Whole Foods musical protest in Oakland.

"We were all disappointed in Mackey's Wall Street Journal op-ed," Alper said. "We came up with this song, got some musicians together, choreographed a dance number, and we went to Whole Foods in Oakland and did it."

The group handed out flyers that read in part: "Whole Foods is sickening . . . Sustainability cannot endure without preserving the dignity and health of not only the planet but our fellow people."

Alper said that customers reacted positively to the musical protest.

"There were people who came up to us afterward and told us - you are right, I'm going to boycott Whole Foods also," Alper said. "Or they would say - I was boycotting Whole Foods after Mackey made his statement, then I started slacking, now you have shaken me up, and I'm going to start boycotting again."

Alper said that the employees were most excited - "they came from behind their counters and started clapping along with us."

Alper said that Whole Foods managers are regularly given training on union avoidance.

"That's code for union busting," Alper said.

Oakland police and homeland security police were called - but there were no arrests.

For more information on the boycott, please visit http://wholeboycott.com/

The Battle of Local 5668 (2009)

2009-12-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Battle of Local 5668 (2009)
Shawn Bennett
Watch more free documentaries

"Shawn Bennett, was born and raised in Parkersburg, WV. His father worked for the Ravenswood Aluminum plant for decades. This is Mr. Bennett's first feature documentary. It was shot on video by Bennett and New York native Nicole Wittig over the course of five years starting in 2002. The 54 minute film was edited by Kevin Jones who recently edited "A Lion in the House" by Academy Award nominated filmmaker Julia Reichert. The original soundtrack was written, composed and scored by San Diego native Daniel Fickle of the band The Station Myth.

The film centers on local union 5668 of the United Steelworkers of America. In 1992, the prospects for labor were bleak. Reagan had just fired the air traffic controllers, big business was given free reign. 1700 men and women in rural West Virginia refused to give in to Big Business and fought for their rights as workers and individuals. It is a story that depicts a modern-day David and Goliath story.

This film is an in depth, straight journalistic account told by the men and women who were directly involved in the dispute. Even with 10 years reflection the passion and tenacity of the steelworkers in the small town of Ravenswood, WV still shocks and amazes.

Shawn Bennett is a community activist living and working in Los Angeles CA in the music video and television commercial industry. He has worked with Ang Lee, Wong Kar Wai, Guy Ritchie, Alejandro González Iñárritu (director of "Babel"), Bob Richardson, Lance Acord, Julian Temple, Alison MacLean, and others. This is his first feature length documentary. He has produced a number of short films and has written and produced a feature currently being edited. He is currently involved in the struggle to unionize production managers and coordinators in the entertainment industry."

From, "New WV Labor Films at WVLA State Conference Oct. 2"
West Virginia Library Association

For more, please visit The Battle of Local 5668 on MySpace

Jon Garlock, Founder, Rochester Film Series - On the Importance of the Public Screening of Labor Films (2009)

2009-11-24T14:34:00.000-08:00

Workers' Republic (in production)

2009-11-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

Workers Republic (in production)
Andrew Friend

"Workers' Republic is a 60-minute documentary that chronicles one of the most important labor victories in recent memory.

Three weeks before Christmas 2008, in the depths of the economic crisis, Chicago company Republic Windows and Doors announced the factory's closure. They informed their work force that they would not be paid for their final week or receive their accrued vacation pay. Insurance benefits were cut immediately, and the workers were denied the 60-day severance guaranteed under the federal WARN Act.

What those ordinary people did next reminded the working class it possesses a power long forgotten. In a move that harkened back to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, they occupied the doomed factory day and night for nearly a week, declaring they would not leave until they were given what their employer owed them.

The workers won over the public to their cause and the story made headlines all over the world. 'Workers' Republic' conveys the courage, the creativity, and the solidarity of those window-builders who vowed to stand up for their rights. From the opening moments to the eventual victory, and culminating in the surprise fate of the Chicago factory, the film shows radical action can be a solution to exploitation.

First time filmmaker Andrew Friend has assembled the accounts of several of the main fighters in the Republic struggle, including front line workers, the organizers of their small union, and a few of the thousand people that supported them through small acts of solidarity.
In our turbulent times of economic strife, 'Workers' Republic' is an anthem of future possibility and opportunity."

Please consider donating funds for the completion of this film, more information is available at http://workersrepublic.tv/

The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW (in production)

2009-11-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW (in production)
Marissa Aroy

From SF360, by Michael Fox:

The trailer for The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW opens with the smooth, lush strains of a Nat King Cole song, hardly the vibe one anticipates from a historical doc about rural California, immigration, organized labor and racism. Next-generation filmmaker Marissa Aroy may have a non-conformist streak, but the tune isn’t a non sequitur. Her film excavates the history and contributions of Filipino farmworkers in the Golden State since the 1920s, and the song happens to be a Filipino standard. “There’s a connection between the U.S. and the Philippines that not a lot of people know about—the colonial relationship—and having Nat King Cole brings together the ties of the two countries in an unusual way,” Aroy says.

A Boston native who earned her Master’s in journalism at U.C. Berkeley and teaches digital filmmaking at Berkeley City College, Aroy produced the half-hour doc Little Manila: Filipinos in California’s Heartland, which aired nationally on PBS. (The film enjoys special status among Filipino Americans, Aroy jokes, largely because of the paucity of films on the Filipino American experience.) She readily acknowledges that one of her central challenges is broadening the appeal of The Delano Manongs beyond the core audience. One hurdle is its (working) title, a recognized term of respect in the community, as certified by the film’s 600 Facebook friends, that doesn’t resonate with the broader population. The presence of one household name in particular will help, though.

“Cesar Chavez was more of a civil rights leader,” the East Bay filmmaker notes. “The leaders of the Filipino movement—Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz and Pete Velasco—were more interested in defending the workers that were in the fields. It was less about a social movement and more about getting a wage increase, getting water, getting toilets, all very practical things. People don’t realize that the [1965 grape] strike was really instigated by the Filipinos. They had a long history of instigating and forming labor unions up and down the West Coast.”

The roots of that activism date to the 1920s, when Filipinos came to California to pick crops. “Most of the men were single and they had this notion, having had American teachers in the Philippines, that they would be accepted as Americans,” Aroy relates. “They had the notion that they were free to see anyone because there were very few Filipino women who could immigrate. They either turned to prostitutes or women of other races. This caused the greatest amount of racial tension. In the ‘30s it was about competition for jobs, but it was also that Filipinos had the audacity to date white women.”

Without wives or children to support, the Filipino workers sent money home that was used to educate the generation that arrived in the U.S. in the 1960s with nursing and engineering degrees. This was the generation of Aroy’s parents, and their immigrant experience, needless to say, differed greatly from their parents’.

“My whole goal is for Filipino Americans to see what happened to these farmworkers, and how they fought for their rights,” Aroy declares. “Even now, the Filipinos are the third largest Asian group in the U.S., but they’re sort of invisible. There’s no teeth, no strength to them politically. There was a time when Filipinos were up in arms here; they realized they were being treated as second-class citizens, they couldn’t own property or marry who they wanted to.”

Aroy’s grandfather was a sugarcane worker (sakada) in Hawaii who came through San Francisco en route to Stockton, where he worked in the asparagus fields. He settled in Delano, where he eventually rented is farm to Chavez and the UFW before they had their own land and headquarters. It’s a compelling saga, but may not make it into the final film.

“We’re sort of in the middle of figuring that out,” Aroy says candidly. “We tried to put in my family’s personal history, but it took the spotlight away from the Filipino leaders who were in the UFW. My grandfather was very colorful but not very socially acceptable—he had a bar that had illegal gambling, he was paying off the sheriff, he [rented] housing behind the bar where I was told prostitutes would go. Whether he was part of that or not, I don’t know. He has sort of a sordid past. It’s all interesting, but it takes away from the UFW story.”

Aroy, who makes a cameo appearance in husband Niall McKay’s personal doc The Bass Player: A Song For Dad (screened last month in the Mill Valley Film Festival), has received development grants for The Delano Manongs from ITVS and the California Council for the Humanities, production grants from the Pacific Pioneer Fund and CCH Humanities, and a completion grant from the Center for Asian American Media. She aims to finish in 2010, although she doesn’t have a funder-imposed deadline. She’s located some splendid archival footage but is mulling some considerably more ambitious elements.

“Dorothea Lange did take photos, which we used in Little Manila and I’m hoping to use more,” Aroy says. “The question is, how do you tell the story without zooming in on one photo for three minutes? I can probably say for people younger than me that it’s very boring. I originally wanted to have animation, and musical performances tracing the arc from the ‘30s on up to the ‘60s. It all has to do with budget. Do we just finish it with the money we have, or do we write for more grants and search for money to do some of the fancy things we’d like to do in postproduction?”

Ah, the eternal dilemma. For more information about the project and to view the trailer, visit delanomanongs.com

Labor Day (2009) - Now Playing in New York and Chicago!

2009-11-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

Labor Day (2009)
Glen Silber, Claudia Vianello

Director's Statement from Labor Day - The Movie:

I never really started out to make a documentary about SEIU’s role in the 2008 Presidential campaign, but as a filmmaker and producer I’m always looking for a big or inspiring story. I found both in what became Labor Day, a feature documentary that chronicles 18 months in the life of a major labor union, and their members’ role in Barack Obama’s historic win.

After George W. Bush’s disastrous administration, the country seemed like it was teetering on the brink: Iraq and Afghanistan, the fallout from Katrina, the housing bubble, Wall Street excess, and the massively expensive financial meltdown that followed. As the 2008 Presidential campaign began, millions of Americans, myself included, were desperate for change.

At the same time, I was ready for a career change. For the previous twenty years, I’d been happily producing for a string of primetime TV newsmagazines at CBS and ABC News, the last ten with 20/20. Wanting to somehow be part of the “change” I wanted to see, I decided to take a break from broadcast journalism and set up my own shop again.

My partner and wife Claudia Vianello and I decided to restart our company, Catalyst Media Productions, the same banner under which I’d produced a number of award-winning independent feature documentaries earlier in my career, including An American Ism: Joe McCarthy, The War At Home, El Salvador: Another Vietnam, and Troupers. These films were witness to dramatic, political conflict in our nation’s history, and as the 2008 campaign approached, I felt America was heading into another such historic moment.

By early 2007, the Presidential Campaign was already looming large on the political landscape and the stakes for the Labor Movement could not have been higher. As the nation’s second-largest union with more than two million members, SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) was determined not to let this election be a repeat of the bitter defeats of 2000 and 2004.

This election was a chance for regular working people – SEIU members - to make a difference in their own lives by fighting for what was important to them: healthcare reform, the economy, and workers rights. For too long the issues and concerns of working people had been invisible to government and to the media. I knew from my years at the networks that labor was a story they generally ignored.

Our company, Catalyst Media Productions, produced a number of short videos for the union, including a ten-minute video about the SEIU’s history with Obama in Illinois. After he won the Democratic Nomination, I began to sense the possibility of doing something bigger.

SEIU was about to launch the biggest ground operation ever by a single organization in a presidential campaign. By early summer, thousands of union members were recruited and were leaving their jobs and families to spend months working in key swing states — battlegrounds that would likely determine the outcome of the election.

I was convinced there was a big story unfolding here that went beyond the union—a remarkable story others would want to see after all the votes were counted. The risk? If Obama lost, no one would want to watch it.

That summer, we covered the events from the Democratic National Convention to SEIU’s “Take Back Labor Day” concert in St. Paul outside the Republican Convention.

Shooting SEIU’s Get Out The Vote action in the last month of the campaign was all pretty much done on the fly.

We never had the time to “cast” which members would be featured at any given location. Our video crew would just show up in a swing state, catch up with SEIU’s ground game and simply do our best to keep up with it. We had crews covering the action in eight swing states to document the union’s final push to help seal Obama’s victory. One member political organizer, Loretta Reddy, a nursing assistant from Florida, undoubtedly spoke for many calling the 2008 campaign “a life-changing experience for us”.

The resulting film, Labor Day, chronicles how one labor union, thousands of activists and sheer determination helped elect the candidate they believed could make the changes most important to them.

As we approach the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election, I see Labor Day as an inspiring story that shows how regular working people, when mobilized and empowered, played a key role in helping to elect Obama President. A year later, they’re still hoping and waiting to see the “change” they believe in come true. It’s time.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered: Labor Struggle in the Post Office (1980)

2009-10-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

Signed, Sealed and Delivered: Labor Struggle in the Post Office (1980)
Producers, Tami Gold, Dan Gordon, Erik Lewis

"On July 21, 1978 thousands of postal workers across the country walked off their jobs when their contract expired, saying 'No' to mandatory overtime, forced speedups and hazardous working conditions. As a result of this wildcat strike, six hundred thousand postal workers won a better contract. But two hundred workers were arbitrarily fired by management to teach all postal workers a lesson.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered is the story of the struggle these postal workers waged to win back their jobs. It follows their fight into the streets, onto the floor of the American Postal Workers Union's National Convention and among workers and communities nationwide. But it took the tragic death of Michael McDermott, a 25 year old mailhandler who was sucked into a conveyor belt and crushed to death, to bring their hazardous working conditions to national attention."

Signed, Sealed and Delivered speaks loudly and clearly to people everywhere who are organizing for safe and humane conditions in the workplace."

4 from the Labor Video Project

2009-10-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

The Labor Video Project is a regional media production group located in San Francisco that has been producing content since 1983, including the series Labor on the Job and Labor Line. Much of their work is available for purchase and may be viewed online here.

Rat Monday (1988)
Labor Video Project

"Thousands of San Francisco unionized construction workers walked off the job on March 7, 1988 to protest the anti-labor Associated Building Contractor's ABC convention which was being held at the Moscone convention center in San Francisco. This demonstration was one of the largest construction workers protests in San Francisco in the last thiry years. The Labor Video Project was there to record the action as well as interview many of the participants in this historic demonstration. The ABC has not been back to San Francisco since this 1988 labor protest."

Hanging Iron, After The Quake of '89 (1989)
Labor Video Project

"Hanging Iron After The Quake of '89 is a 30 minute documentary that recounts the story of the Loma Prieta Earthquake which struck the bay area on October 17, 1989. It shows how organized labor played a major role in saving lives on the collapsed Cypress Freeway and in rebuilding the collapsed section of the East Bay Span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in only 30 days. This is the story of two unions in particular-the Iron Workers and Operating Engineers who worked around the clock to get the Bay Area back on its feet."

Western States Brick and Tile Contest (2006)
Labor Video Project

Apprentice Bricklayers and Tile Setters from throughout the Western United States participated in their annual contest of their skills on June 3, 2006 next to the South End Rowing Club in Fisheman's Wharf in San Francisco. This documentary video shows who these apprentices are, how they do the work, how the contest works and why the union apprentice program is vital for young workers in developing and building their skills. "

Oakland Port Protest by Teachers & Community (2007)
Labor Video Project

"On May 19,2007 OEA Oakland [California] teachers, trade unionists and community activists set up picket lines at the Port Of Oakland SSA Terminal to protest the Iraq war and to demand that the Port help fund education in the city schools. ILWU Local 10&34 members refused to cross the picket line and the terminal was closed for two shifts."

3 from Chicago - The Congress Hotel Strikes

2009-10-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

From President Pickets Congress.org:

"On June 15, 2003, members of UNITE HERE Local 1 working at the Congress Hotel went out on strike after the hotel decided to freeze wages and slash benefits. To ensure that hotel jobs in this city are strong, family-sustaining jobs, Congress strikers have taken the fight to the streets of Chicago and around the world. Now six years and running, the Congress Hotel strike stands as the longest hotel strike in history.

Today, Chicago housekeepers earn $14.60 an hour, while the Congress Hotel still pays 2002 wages – just $8.83 an hour. Working families in Chicago have made astounding gains in recent years because the Congress strikers have refused to settle for substandard wages.

UNITE HERE Local 1 and our community allies are working hard to close the gap and find a way to end the strike. Since January of 2009, strikers have led over 500 actions in Chicago, confronting top city leaders and national convention planners, who bring big business to the hotel. As a result, we have moved $700,000 worth of business from the Congress Hotel. In the last few months, three major conventions have stopped using the Congress, while students at DePaul University and Northside College Prep have pulled school events from the hotel."

The Congress Hotel Strike: A 6th Anniversary Retrospective (2009)
Annemarie Strassel

Hotel Workers Protest, Chicago, Illinois, Congress Hotel June 15, 2009 (2009)
Producer Unknown

Congress Hotel '08 (2008)
Labor Beat

For more information, please visit Unite Here

Winners of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) 60 Second Ad Contest

2009-09-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

"The results are in for the TUC ‘60 Second Ad’ Contest [sponsored by the Trade Union Congress in the UK]. The judging panel, which included Frances O’Grady and Nigel Stanley of the TUC and English television and film director Pete Travis, selected the following winners."

Photobooth (2009)
Director Paul Rey-Burns

Why Should I Join a Union? (2009)
Directors James, Sean, Bridie and Ruby of Chesterfield High School (UK)

I Have My Union (2009)
Director Thomas Weaver (Malta General Workers Union)

You Deserve Better – Join a Union (2009)
Director Andy Belfield

To view all of the entries, click here to visit the TUC 60 Second Ad Contest YouTube page

From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks: The Life and Times of Harry Bridges (2007)

2009-09-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

From Wharf Rats to Lords of The Dock, directed by Academy Award winning director and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, is the film of a truly unique event – Ian Ruskin performing his one-man to a packed house of 1000 longshore workers in San Pedro, California. The result, with appearances by Elliott Gould, Edward Asner and members of ILWU Local 13, and with music by Jackson Browne, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Tim Reynolds, Ciro Hurtado and others (including the world premiere of Woody Guthrie’s song about Harry, sung by his granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie) is an inspiring story. It is an intimate exploration of the life and times of this extraordinary man – “a hero or the devil incarnate, it all depends on your point of view” – full of the high drama and biting humor that ran through his life. And it is a springboard into understanding the parallel issues – globalization, global responsibilities, wars on terrorism, surveillance and privacy, and the widening gap between rich and poor, that we face today.

From The Harry Bridges Project

Please check your local PBS affiliate for September broadcasts (or follow the above link), and purchase the DVD

The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant (2009)

2009-09-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Coming this season to the HBO Documentary Film Series -

The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant (2009)
Home Box Office

From the HBO press release:

On Dec. 23, 2008, two days before Christmas, the General Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio shut its doors. As a result, 2,500 workers and 200 management staff were left without jobs, while the closing is also sure to trigger the loss of thousands of related jobs and businesses. But the GM workers lost much more than jobs, including the pride they share in their work and the camaraderie built through the years. To the natives of Moraine and the greater Dayton area, General Motors wasn't just a car company - it was the lifeblood of the community.

THE LAST TRUCK views the final months of the plant through the workers' eyes as they reflect on their work and consider their next steps. In revealing interviews with people who considered themselves more family than co-workers, the film reveals the emotional toll of losing not just a job, but a sense of self.

The employees share poignant moments, such as the day every worker must remove his or her toolbox and give up their GM ID card. THE LAST TRUCK closes with footage of the actual "last truck" to be produced at Moraine Assembly.

Among those interviewed in the documentary are: Kathy (body shop) - A 47-year-old mother of three with six grandchildren, Kathy viewed her co-workers as a second family.

Kim (electrician) - A tearful Kim believes that working at the plant was "the greatest job I ever had." He recounts how everyone finished their work on the line and followed the last truck until all the work had been done. Then they all came together as a big group, a family saying goodbye.

Popeye (toolmaker) - Popeye sees the bigger picture, viewing the plant's closing as the end of the good life, the end of American manufacturing as we know it. "My grandson will have a worse life than I had," he says at a nearby bar.

Kate (forklift operator) - After the plant closes, Kate poignantly describes it as a "gentle dragon" taking its last breath before dying.

While the film focuses on Moraine, the plant's closing reflects profound changes in the American manufacturing landscape as a whole. THE LAST TRUCK bears witness to the experience of job loss and offers a snapshot of a moment that may portend the end of the nation's blue-collar middle class.

Directors and producers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert won an Primetime Emmy® for their documentary "A Lion in the House," which followed children fighting cancer for five years. Bognar has shown four films at Sundance, including "Personal Belongings" and "Picture Day." Reichert has twice been nominated for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar®, for "Union Maids" and "Seeing Red."

More @AFL-CIO Now, The Last Truck: HBO Looks at Plant Closing Through Workers’ Eyes

2 by Hubley and Save NUMMI

2009-08-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Animator John Hubley is known not only for his many contributions to the art of the moving graphic image in the United States, but for being a good friend and ally to progressive and pro-labor causes. Hubley was one of many animators at Disney that left the studio during the contentious labor strike of 1941 who would subsequently help form United Productions of America (UPA). At UPA, Hubley was responsible for playing a significant role in defining the innovative house style of the studio, but was later forced to resign from the company after refusing to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By the late 1950s, he would form Storyboard Studios with his wife, Faith, where the pair would continue to produce award-winning animation until his death in 1977.

Brotherhood of Man (1946)
United Productions of America in partnership with the United Auto Workers

The Hole (1962)
Storyboard Studios
1963 Academy Award Winner for Best Short Subject, Cartoon

Stop the Shutdown - UAW NUMMI Workers Speak Out (2009)
Labor Video Project

For more information, visit UAW, Local 2244

"Gerry Horgan: A Voice In The Union" (n.d.)

2009-08-13T14:56:00.000-07:00

From CWA, Local 1103:

"This is the story of CWA Chief Steward E Gerald “Gerry” Horgan. Gerry died on Aug 15, 1989 from injuries sustained after being struck by a car, driven by a scab, while walking the picket line. On strike against the NYNEX Corporation fighting for medical benefits Gerry was the only CWA Member ever killed on a picket line. He was 34 years old."

Producer, Director, Susan Macaluso with the assistance of Murdock Communications, Inc. and the men and women of CWA, Local 1103. If you worked on or appeared in "Voice," please contact LookBack if you would like to contribute notes or reflections on the making of this memorial to this site.

"Struggle in the Heartland: A.E. Staley Workers Fight Back" (1995)

2009-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Documentary on Decatur, Illinois workers struggling against the anti-union efforts of A.E. Staley, a division of industrial ingredient manufacturer Tate & Lyle. Producer, Editor, Rose Feurer with the additional support of members of LaborVision, Labor Beat, UAW Local 974 and UPIU Local 7837. This film was produced during 1992 - 1995. Please contact LookBack if you worked on or appeared in "Struggle" and are interested in contributing notes or reflections on the making of this film to this site.

A Fair Deal: The UAW in America's Playground, Atlantic City

2009-07-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Since its first victories in 2002 for casino workers in Detroit, the UAW has played a key role in expanding organized labor's presence in the casino industry for dealers and related gaming staff. In March of this year, the UAW in partnership with the AFL-CIO, SEIU and Transport Workers formed the Gaming Workers Council - a new group meant to coordinate organizing and bargaining efforts for casino employees. One of the first major goals of the GWC is to assist workers in Atlantic City who are still struggling in good faith to receive employer recognition after successfully passing landmark victories in favor of UAW representation in many of the major casinos. Our titles this week spotlight organizing activities that have taken place in Atlantic City, as well as two titles from UAW efforts on behalf of workers at the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut. Please note, many of these titles have not been officially distributed by the UAW and their veracity have not been verified.

For more information about the UAW's current activities in Atlantic City please visit: http://fairdealforacdealers.org/

A Change for the Better (2007)

Coverage of June 22 rally in support of Atlantic City casino workers - related New York Times article, "Pushing for Union Contracts, Casino Workers Stage Rally" (June 22, 2008)

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger

New Jersey Governor John Corzine

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez

Casino dealer, Sharon Masino

UAW @ Foxwoods

Time for a Change (2007)

UAW Petitions for Foxwood Resort Casino Dealers (2007)