Books and films
Books and films that help us understand collective action.
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West of the Tracks
Wang Bing’s striking three-part documentary West of the Tracks (French title: À l’Ouest des rails) observes the gradual decay of Tie Xi, a vast industrial zone in Shenyang that had flourished during China’s socialist period. Filmed from 1999 to 2001, as the country underwent far-reaching economic transformations at the beginning of the twenty-first…
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Eila
A cleaning lady, Aila, is focused on helping her son—she needs money, not trouble. That’s why she didn’t join her colleagues when they went on strike.
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An Injury to One
An experimental documentary exploring the turn-of-century lynching of union organizer Frank Little in Butte, Montana.
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The Wire (2 Season)
The Local 1514 of the International Brotherhood of Longshoremen (IBS) leadership, headed by Frank Sobotka, is in Baltimore, Maryland, selling stolen cargo from the port to the Greek mafia and trying to bribe officials to secure funding in the city budget for the expansion of the port terminals. Their lobbying campaign is on the verge of success.
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La Huelga de los Locos / Crazy Strike
Documentary about the so-called "Crazy Strike", a strike carried out by members of the Federation of Workers in Naval Constructions-Autonomous (FOCN) between October 1956 and November 1957, the largest of the Argentine working class in the century XX.
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Los lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun
Spanish film offers a raw and realistic portrait of a group of unemployed workers in a coastal city in Galicia. The story follows the lives of these men as they struggle to find work in a collapsing economy, exploring themes such as unemployment, labor alienation, and solidarity among comrades.
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10,000 Black Men Named George
During the Depression, jobs were catastrophically scarce. The only job available to Black men was as porters for the Pullman Royal Company.
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American Standoff
In this 95-minute drama, we follow the months-long strike of members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (the truck drivers' union) against the freight delivery company "Overnite Transportation." The situation is complicated by the fact that most of the company's workers are non-union, and within the union itself, there is a tense struggle…
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Miss Fiat / Signorina Effe
Documentary about Maria Teresa Arisio, employed at Fiat in Turin for 33 years, from 1961 to 1994.
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McDonald's: Smile on the Conveyor
The McDonald's Corporation is a global leader in the fast food industry. What is the secret to its success?
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The Navigators
Paul, Mike, Len, and Jerry work as railroad repairmen in Yorkshire. Jerry, a union activist, aims to improve the everyday lives of the workers, but management isn’t welcoming.
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Dr. Dolittle 2
The film stars Eddie Murphy in the title role. The Black doctor has a miraculous gift—he understands the language of animals.
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Live Nude Girls Unite!
Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining…
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FIAT, AUTUMN '80
Sounds of the workers' struggle at Fiat in the autumn of 1980, thirty-five days of hard mobilization to defend their jobs. "This is the first step of a more ambitious and broad project dedicated to the other history of Fiat, that of the workers who worked there, from the birth of the Turin industrial giant to today.
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Billy Elliot
Set in County Durham in North East England during the 1984–1985 miners' strike, a father and his eldest son fight for the working class, while the youngest son has a passion for ballet and uses every opportunity to learn a new pas. Parallel to the great miners' battle, a dramatic fight occurs within the family — the elders see Billy's choice as an…
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Bread and Roses
A young Mexican woman, Maya, arrives in the U.S. illegally.
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Harlan County War
The story is based on real events in the mountain region of Kentucky. Ruby's husband works for a mining company in a small town and nearly dies in an underground accident.
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The Replacements
The film is based on the well-known conflict between the players of the National Football League (NFL) and team owners in 1987. The players initiated a strike, even joining the cheerleading teams.
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Cradle Will Rock;
Marc Blitzstein, a composer, finishes his work on a provocative musical called The Cradle Will Rock.The infamous director Orson Welles decides to direct it. However, the authorities, frightened by strikes and socialist sentiments in society, banned the musical from being staged in the Federal Theatre.
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Prairie Fire: The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919
On May 15, 1919, the largest labour uprising in Canadian history saw 25,000 people, virtually every working man and woman in Canada's third largest city, walk off their jobs. Winnipeg was paralyzed.
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Human Resources
The story centers around a young intern who is doing a placement in the management of a large company. The more successful his work becomes, the worse his relationships with those around him, his family, and former friends get.
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Humpback Bridge-98
In the summer of 1998, the miners arrived directly to the lawn in front of the White House in Moscow where Prime Minister S.V. Kiriyenko and his cabinet were meeting.
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Defying the Law
On July 14, 1946, a group of steelworkers poured out of Hamilton's Playhouse Theatre and set up pickets around the country's largest steel mill. Their action sparked one of the most important strikes in our country's history--a strike which many consider to be the birth of the modern Canadian labour movement.
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Seinfeld, Sesong 9, episode 10 - THE STRIKE
Strikes are of course a serious thing, but they can also be hilariously funny, like in the Seinfeld episode “The Strike,” where Kramer goes on strike!
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The Fight in the Fields
A large two-hour film traces the entire history of the United Farmworkers union (UFW) and its founder, Cesar Chavez, from his birth in Arizona to the creation of the union, the collective struggle for workers' rights, and up to the current leaders of UFW.
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The Road Taken
The documentary that explores the history of Black railway porters in Canada, focusing on their struggle against discrimination and their fight for dignity, fair treatment, and better working conditions. Through archival footage and interviews, the film highlights how these men—many of whom were immigrants from the Caribbean—formed one of Canada’s first…
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Poznan 56
In June 1956, events unfolded in Poznań that would forever be etched in the history of the labor movement in Poland and Eastern Europe. These events involved mass demonstrations by striking workers and anti-communist protests, which were suppressed with the help of tanks after fierce resistance from the strikers.
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Brassed Off
The story is set in a small British town during the major miners' strike of 1984-1985. Inspector Gloria Mullins from the administration arrives to assess the scheduled closure of the mine and the lockout of a thousand miners.
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The Flickering Flame
Ken Loach's film tells the story of one of the toughest and longest labor conflicts in the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century—the Liverpool dockers' strike, which began in 1995. The strike took place in an atmosphere of media silence and conditional support from the union, ultimately ending in the dismissal of 500 workers and the signing of an…
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A. Philip Randolph For Jobs and Freedom
A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom is a documentary about the life and legacy of A.