Great Labor Movies

the thread about Harlan County War got me thinking about other great labor movies. Matewan was the first that came to my mind, along with Salt of the Earth. I've found Matewan to be a great way of interesting some of my disengaged friends in labor issues.

Anybody else have a favorite labor/union movie?

Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers' union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Sam finds Maya a willing listener, she's also attracted to him. Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and management may be set to collide.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0212826/

i'll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip :thumbsup:

I forgot all about it. Great film.

they said it was very good (and my pa-in-law, especially, is very devout union)

I'm not a huge fan of Sally Field, but that film talked of a struggle to organize textile workers.

Don't know how I forgot that one :blush:

Good call, though ...

I can't remember if the movie specifically addresses a union aspect, but it definitely addresses labor issues ...

maybe not a "union" move per se, but it does a good job of looking at what happened to Flint, MI in the 1980s.

Michael Moore cut his teeth with this movie, and oh did he cut them. He set out to make Roger Smith look bad and he did it.

Made by Herbert Biberman in 1954, who had suffered at the hands of Joe McCarthy, the beauty of this film is that while it is the true story of the Zinc miners' strike in New Mexico, another issue given equal weight here is the importance of fighting male chauvenism while a "larger struggle" is being waged.
(According to imdb.com a dvd version of this is downloadable for free-- although if anyone is selling it, it deserves to be purchased).

an independent movie before there were independent movies, since several of those involved in the production were blacklisted. In addition to Biberman, the screenwriter (Michael Wilson) and lead actor (Will Geer) had also been blacklisted. Rosaura Revueltas was deported after the film came out.

And you're totally right about the gender angle--when I saw it, I think that's what surprised me most about it. :thumbsup:

while not specifically about organized labor, the central theme was the absolute poverty in the dust bowl days and the exploitation of people. The Joads go to California and work as replacement workers during a strike in a peach field. Then they learn that instead of 5 cents a pail, they're going to get 3 cents a pail and if they don't like it they can leave and someone else will work for that much. That's what started the strike to begin with. They don't seem to understand what a strike is.

Then, then Henry Fonda's soliloquy at the end tells it all.

It's on my list, but I've never actually seen it. Anything based on Steinbeck is bound to have a good labor message, though :thumbsup:

I love the scene where the flag falls off the truck, and Charlie starts waving it trying to get the driver's attention. Hilarious...