Labor on the Screen

In time for Labor Day here is a non-representative sample of four of my favorite on-screen depictions of organized labor from U.S. history:

(1) Matewan: John Sayle's account of the 1920 strike by coalminers in the West Virginia town of Matewan conveys better than any other film I've seen the lives, struggles and issues surrounding workers in the U.S. at the opening of the 20th century. The film digs not only into the relationship of workers and bosses, showing the extreme measures undertaken by companies to stop unionization, but also addresses how the racial and ethnic diversity of the U.S. (this was a time when being an Italian or a Pole or a Jew set one apart from the white Anglo-Saxon norm) played into labor's fights. A fascinating sequel is yet to be made depicting the West Virginia Mine Wars that the Matewan incident ignited. That conflict culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, where around 10,000 armed miners fought against private security forces, state militia and eventually federal troops (who even used bomber planes from World War I) in the largest insurrection in U.S. history since the Civil War.

Here's a key scene from Matewan that plays as an excellent (if slightly didactic) primer on race and labor, with a lot of resonance for today:




(2) Salt of the Earth: Of the films on this list this is certainly the forthrightly propagandistic. The film is based on a real strike by mainly Mexican-American workers against the Empire Zinc Company in 1951. Salt of the Earth has achieved a level of infamy because many of the key figures who made it were members or allies of the Communist Party and the union it examined, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, was expelled from the CIO in 1950 for its leaderships' communist affiliations. Given the film's 1954 release, it suffered the full effects of McCarthyism, going largely unseen at the time of its release and only slowly becoming recognized as a classic of political film making. Most of the actors and actresses are non-professionals and in fact are the very people the story is based on. While partially worth viewing purely for its historical value, Salt of the Earth is also remarkable in its forthright feminism, as the union men learn to respect their female comrades (remember this is at least a decade before the "second-wave" feminist movement truly came into its own). Additionally, the portrait of conflicts between Mexican-American and "Anglo" workers carries obvious importance for today.

Here are the first ten minutes:




(3) Norma Rae: It's really too bad Sally Fields' "you like me" Oscar speech is better remembered than the message of Norma Rae. The film is somewhat similar to Matewan in its exploration of the tensions between an outside union organizer and the local workers. Based on the life of Crystal Lee Sutton and the campaign by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to organize the J.P. Stevens company, a notoriously anti-union company based largely in the South (in Sutton's case, North Carolina). It's also an important film for delving fully into the added difficulties faced by women workers (who are now or soon will be the majority of union members) and by having a female protagonist it helps cut against the cinematic stereotype of union workers as burly, white men. Also a great film to see because of its focus on labor in the New South during the 1970s, a decade that's increasingly being recognized as pivotal to understanding our present, including the fate of workers in the U.S.

Here's the classic "Union" scene:



[Minor Spoilers Ahead]

(4) The Wire, Season 2: In the show's second season we move from the inner city to the port of Baltimore and the trials and travails of a local dockworkers' union (which is closely based on the International Longshoreman's Association, that provided the inspiration for On the Waterfront). In particular, the season focuses on the efforts (legal and illegal) of the local's secretary-general, Frank Sobotka, to save his union and the decent life it has provided. The second season is sometimes seen as a detour from the main plot of the show, however thematically it is vital to understanding the modern U.S. In exploring why the drug trade proves so attractive to so many in the inner city, one must understand the impacts of deindustrialization and the failure to make the new, service heavy economy, one that produces not only jobs, but good jobs. The timing of deindustrialization is also critical for understanding the plight of so many inner city African-American communities. After World War II, many southern African-American communities increasingly moved northward to secure well-paid manufacturing work in a second Great Migration. Yet, they moved north just as those same jobs began to move south, as companies sought out less union-friendly locales, first in southern states and then overseas, leaving northern African-American communities without a strong economic base.

Put another way, what we see starting to happen with the hopelessness and turn to crime of Nick and Ziggy Sobotka is what happened to the parents and grandparents of Avon Barksdale or Bodie.

There's so much more to be said, but I'll leave it with this scene in which the police arrive at the union local's headquarters to serve subpoenas on several members. In response, Frank Sobotka delivers an impassioned speech (starting at minute 2:00) about the resilience of the unions in the face of problems caused by their own corruption, as well as attacks by business and government.