SOLIDARITY: Films About Labor Unions and Union Organizers – Jennifer Merin reports

With everyone in the movie industry preoccupied with the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes, and knowing that production is dead until agreement are reached, moviegoers who seek the pleasure of summertime blockbuster releases will have to turn elsewhere to satisfy their craving for moving image enjoyment. The current social discussion is all about solidarity and collective bargaining, and about what’s at stake for union members who are walking the picket lines. The power of collective bargaining will determine will determine how successful the unions will be in their demands for fair compensation for their members’ contributions to films released on screens large and small.

Meanwhile, millions of movie lovers and fans whose lives are shaped to some extent by cinema, watching to see how the negotiations will play out, this is an opportune time for a first, second or umpteenth look at movies — narrative and/or documentary — that center on labor negotiations for union members to attain fair wages, job security, worker benefits and safe conditions — all of the core issues at the heart of the WGA and SAG/AFTRA demands — in a wide range of industries that shape our lives as much as the movies do. Here is a list of suggestions in no particular order. Enjoy the trailers, too:

MADE IN DAGENHAM (2010)
Director Nigel Coles truth-based dramatization of the 1968 sewing machinists’ strike at Ford’s Dagenham car factory in Britain follows female workers who walked off their production lines in protest against sexual discrimination. Sally Hawkins stars as Rita O’Grady, a fictional character who is a self effacing wife whose husband also works at the Ford factory. Rita is traditional and conservative, a devoted mom and a compliant laborer — until she is pushed by the plant’s other female sewing machine operators to become their spokesperson and labor leader. As she is treated in ways that make her angry, she steps up to not only challenge the executives in her a male-dominated union to support the women in their demands, she also successfully argues for pay equity before British authorities. Hawkins brilliantly captures the complex character whose arc is one of enhanced empowerment and success. The successful Dagenham strike led to the Equal Pay Act 1970, which gave the women what they wanted and deserved. Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, Rosamund Pike, Andrea Riseborough, Jaime Winstone, Daniel Mays and Richard Schiff form the fine ensemble cast that brings a sense if authenticity to the fictionalized telling of the story of the Dagenham strike.

NORMA RAE (1979)
Directed by Martin Ritt, the film is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, a union activist during the long-lasting labor dispute at the J.P. Stevens mills in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. From (1963 to 1890) the Stevens company repeatedly harassed or fired union activists. In the dramatized version of Sutton’s story, Sally Field stars in the film as Norma Rae, a single mom who supports her family on her paltry wages she received from the company. Norma Rae is enlisted by the union rep to become a union organizer, to convince her co-workers to vote for unionization of the mill workers. When management notices what she’s what she’s doing, they fire her. Her family has worked at the mill for three generations, and she has no other job opportunities. Yet, she remains union strong. In the film’s most famous scene, Norma Rae stands on a work table in the factory and, holds high a cardboard placard with UNION handwritten on it in bold letters. Norma Rae and Sally Field were widely acclaimed: the film premiered at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d’Or, while Field won the Best Actress Prize. It was theatrically released to critical and commercial success. At the 52nd Academy Awards, the film was nominated for /Best Picture and three other awards, including its win for Best Actress for Field. And as recently as 2011, the film was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry.

HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A (1976)
Documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple chronicles the thirteen-month Brookside Strike, the 1973 protest by 189 coal miners and their families against work conditions in the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky. Kopple and her crew spent years following the families who were reluctant and suspicious of her at first, but she gained their trust to the point where they opened their homes to her, allowing her to document the the devastating hardships they faced — poverty and deprivation, black lung disease and abject depression — while they persisted in their strike for safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages. Koppel went with them to picket in front of the New York Stock Exchange, interviews miners affected by black lung disease, and recorded it when miners were shot at while striking. Koppel was a young filmmaker with a strong sense of justice. Harlan County, U.S.A. was her first feature documentary and she won the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 49th Academy Awards.

SILKWOOD (1983) Directed by Mike Nichols from a screenplay by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, this truth based drama is abut Karen Silkwood, the union organizer who blew the whistle on the dangerous workplace conditions at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant where workers were regularly exposed to death-dealing radiation. Silkwood was harassed, threatened and purposefully contaminated by the company. In one scene in the film, Karen activates a radiation alarm at the plant — and is shown to have 40 time the legally allowable amount of radioactive contamination in her body. Her death in a roadside accident was suspected (thought never proven) to be murder. After her death, the 1979 lawsuit, Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee, resulted in the jury granting a record $10 million in damages to the Silkwood estate, which eventually settled for $1.3 million. The film Silkwood is factually accurate in representing her story. The project was in development for nine years, originating a Warner Bros. with Jane Fonda slated to play Silkwood. But after legal complications involving the release of research materials, Warner Bros. withdrew and the film went to ABC Motion Pictures, with Nichols directing and Meryl Streep cast as Karen. Silklwood was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Actress for Streep, Best Supporting Actress for co-star Cher, Best Director for Nichols, Best Screenplay for Ephron and Arlen and Best Editing for Sam O’Steen.

MATEWAN (1983)
John Sayles wrote and directed this dramatizaton about the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia. At the start of the film, union organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper in his first onscreen role) arrives in Matewan, West Virginia to support and organize miners striking against wage cuts at Stone Mountain Coal Company. His (and our) his introduction to the town is seeing a mob of angry white miners beating up black miners who intended to cross the picket line. The scene immediately shows how racial tensions — specifically that local White miners don’t want to admit Black and Italian immigrant miners to the union — are dividing the workers and distracting them from the cause — higher pay and better working conditions — they have in common. The plot involves a lot of intensely engaging intrigue and action, with a company spy infiltrating the strikers’ ranks, attacks by ‘security; thugs hired by the company, and false accusations levied against Kenehan to sully his reputation and diminish his influence. The film launched Chris Cooper’s career. The supporting ensemble — including James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, David Strathairn, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp — brings true grit to the film, which won critical acclaim but was a box office bust that earned about half of what it cost to produce. Fortunately for movie lovers, it was rereleased by the Criterion Collection in 2019.

CAESAR CHAVEZ: AN AMERICAN HERO (2014)
Diego Luna directed this biopic about the life and times of Caesar Chavez, casting Michael Pena to star as the iconic American labor leader and civil rights activist. The film is a tribute to Chavez, showing his unwavering dedication and persistence to establish civil rights for farm workers and to seeking decent living wages, fair working conditions, health and housing benefits for legions of disenfranchised Mexican and Filipino migrant laborers. Along with Dolores Huerta (played in the film by Rosario Dawson), Chavez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. The biopic follows Chavez’s tireless leadership of farm workers and shows his nonviolent but effective tactics — including long term health endangering fasts — that earned him worldwide personal recognition and support for his cause. The biopic covers the Delano grape strike that began in 1966, when Chavez led farm workers on a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to demand that the California state government recognize the union and meet workers’ demands with laws that would guarantee farm workers the right to unionize and organize into a union and permit agreements too be set by collective bargaining. Carrying banners emblazoned with the workers’ symbolic black eagle and HUELGA (strike) and VIVA LA CAUSA (Long live our cause), the striking laborers and their supporters garnered recognition of the importance and dignity of all farm workers. If you want to snack while watching the film, nibble on grapes and lettuce in homage to the now unionized workers who pick them and ready them for delivery to you.

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
Designated by AFI as one if the greatest films ever made, On The Waterfront received 12 Academy Award nominations and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint (in her film debut), Best Director for Elia Kazan and Best Screenplay for Budd Schulberg. The film, inspired by a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in the now-defunct NY Sun newspaper, centers on Terry Malloy, an ex-prize boxer (Brando) who has left the ring to become a longshoreman who is coerced to support corrupt union leaders, one of whom is his older brother. His conscience is shaken when he witnesses a union-sanctioned murder and he ultimately takes a stand against the corrupt bosses. Schulberg’s script focuses not on collectivity, but on union disfunction and the greed of leaders. Despite the film’s enduring importance to the art of cinema and it’s themes concerning equity, loyalty and justice, the production is somewhat shrouded in lasting political controversy that comes into focus when issues of equity and solidarity — like those related to the current WGA and SAG/AFTRA strike — are front and center in the news. On The Waterfront was made shortly after both Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg had testified before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), the administration agency that was charged with identifying former members of the US Communist Party and questioned their current loyal to the US government and way of life. Recognizing cinema’s influence in shaping society, HUAC was intent upon blacklisting film workers who’d been Communist Party members during the 1930s so they couldn’t make subversive pro-Communist/Soviet films. Many film workers who were called to testify before HUAC refused to collaborate in what they deemed to be a witch hunt and took the blacklist status rather then expose colleagues to undue scrutiny by naming names. However, Kazan and Schulberg were among those who cooperated with HUAC, naming names and thereby destroying the careers and disrupting the personal lives of colleagues who’d been trusted friends. History has put various spins on Kazan’s and Schulberg’s HUAC collaboration — some justify it, others still hold Kazan and Schulberg accountable for ‘ratting.’ At this moment of American film worker solidarity, it’s interesting to look back to a Hollywood moment when solidarity was not expressed and to acknowledge the resulting grief that permeated the creative community.

SALT OF THE EARTH (1954)
Based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico, Director Herbert J. Biberman’s film, scripted by Michael Wilson, follows fictional characters who go on strike against their company for higher wages and better working conditions. The majority of the miners are Mexican-Americans who want wages and working conditions equal to those given to white workers who are doing the same or less demanding jobs. The unionized workers who go on strike. The company refuses to negotiate, then imposes a Taft-Hartley Act injunction on the union — allowing for the arrest of any miner who pickets. However, seeking safety by citing a loophole in the law, the miner’s wives walk the picket line in support of their husband’s demands. Watch the film to see what happens from there. Yes, continued hardships follow, but this film has a strongly feminist point of view (unusual for the early 50s) and women rally successfully and in complete collectivity to support the union and their working husbands. The film’s neorealist style is supported by casting actual miners and their families to act in the film, and the performances are beautifully authentic. It’s important to note, too, that both director Biberman and screenwriter Wilson had been called before HUAC, refused to name names and were blacklisted — yet they were able to make this beautifully crafted film about the power of solidarity and collectivity in demanding economic equity and social justice.