UNION TOWN (TIFF 2026) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Ostensibly about the power of unions and workers uniting for better wages and improved job conditions in the microcosm of New York City, Union Town truly creates empathy and even admiration for the people who keep the Big Apple and America moving, one delivery at a time.
The film, which aired at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, hopscotches among three labor battles from 2023 through 2025 involving UPS, Amazon, and bicycle deliverers, or deliveristas, for apps such as GrubHub and DoorDash.
The Teamsters union represents the UPS workers and tries to make inroads with Amazon over the course of the film. The app workers fall under the grassroots Workers Justice Project, which provides connection and advocacy for workers providing anything from prescription drug deliveries to cleaning services.
At times, the three storylines are disparate enough that one wishes director Barbara Kopple (Gumbo Coalition) had focused more on one versus another. Yet it all becomes a modern portrait of corporate greed and heartlessness like the films that won Kopple Oscars earlier in her career: 1976’s Harlan County U.S.A. and 1990’s American Dream, about a strike at the Hormel Foods Corporation.
Union Town notes these workers are responsible for delivering 2.5 million packages and 500,000 meals daily across New York City—with some of them scheduled just shy of a forty-hour workweek to avoid paying healthcare and other benefits.
The UPS workers argue for having air-conditioning in the trucks and raising the part-time wages from $15.50 an hour. Meanwhile, the Amazon deliverers—some of whom schlep packages on foot or in bicycle-powered jitneys—explain that they’re not really workers but subcontractors. Amazon can cut their pay if they take a blurry photograph of a delivery or if they’re unable to leave a package at someone’s doorstep, leading some to ring every neighbor’s doorbell in a secure building in the hopes someone will buzz them inside.
Amazon spent $26 million on anti-union employees in 2025 and fired over a hundred drivers in Queens after a six-day strike, the film notes. As of earlier this year, the company continued to balk at the National Labor Relations Board over bargaining with the Teamsters.
Some of the most moving interviews and footage involves the deliveristas. They share stories in Spanish about immigrating here for the American dream, only to find grueling work that treats them as disposable. Their wages at the start of the film are just $7 an hour, before expenses and tips, and they ride in all sorts of weather. (GoPro-style footage provides a harrowing few moments of these riders’ viewpoints in traffic.) One worker who studied music in college in Colombia shared how he’s been robbed at gunpoint. A woman looking for work through a cleaning app sobbed relating how a man wanted her to clean naked and then threatened to have her deported when she walked away.
Union Town includes some hard-won victories for these workers in particular, such as news footage where New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement with DoorDash over withholding millions in deliverers’ tips. By and large, Union Town skirts politics, though one wishes the film had explored more of this when one Teamsters leader notes that by favoring Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, members would vote against their self-interests.
It should go without saying that people deserve to earn a living wage and work for places that treat them with dignity and respect. However, Union Town emphasizes how much of that we take for granted—and how such solidarity is more crucial than ever.
Consider the footage toward the end of the film of a humanoid robot sorting packages in a warehouse. “I like that,” says Carol Tomé, the CEO of UPS. “Robots don’t get sick. They don’t call out. They don’t have an attitude …”
