Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.
25-year-old philosophy major Marta faces the ugly truth for many young Italians — a complete lack of career opportunities. While babysitting for single mother Sonia, she starts to work as a telemarketer, experiencing first-hand the fanatical and exploitative rat-race culture pushed on employees while quickly rising through the ranks of the company. Around her revolve people like delusional supervisor Daniela, her womanizing boss Claudio, fragile coworker Lucio "2", and well-meaning but inconsistent union rep Giorgio.
A French-to-Spanish interpreter working for a food processing plant that hires seasonal workers from Guatemala is, at first determined to obey the sometimes excessive directives of the young boss, but she befriends the workers and tries to defend them against the exploitation they suffer.
Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.
Biographical portrait of the labor movement and left wing movement in Uruguay, "Conversations with Turiansky" combines two stories. The first portrays the son of immigrants, the engineer passionate about the mystery of electricity, the man in love, the movie buff. The other places the protagonist in his time: union struggles, the advance of authoritarianism, prison and the challenges of the present. In both are present the lucidity, commitment, discreet tenderness and humor of Wladimir Turiansky.
On March 25, 1911, a catastrophic fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. Trapped inside the upper floors of a ten-story building, 146 workers - mostly young immigrant women and teenage girls - were burned alive or forced to jump to their deaths to escape an inferno that consumed the factory in just 18 minutes. It was the worst disaster at a workplace in New York State until 9/11. The tragedy changed the course of history, paving the way for government to represent working people, not just business, for the first time, and helped an emerging American middle class to live the American Dream.
Documentary about the Radium Dial Company and the aftereffects experienced by its workers from repeated exposure to radioactive paint.
The sawmill in a northern Swedish village close down. Nils becomes unemployed. In order to cope with needs of his family, he is forced to travel south. His wife Karin and the children will stay in the village until further notice. Nils starts working at a factory. In addition to the job, he has been promised a good residence so that the family can move to him.
A mix of Rock and Roll and Blues are the secret for successful rebellion. When I took my camera to the middle of France where the GM&S factory was threatened by a permanent shut down, I felt like something extraordinary was about to take place. And it did. The lyrics were written by workers who have had enough! The tune was composed by people not afraid to go against even the rules of revolt! The volume was loud enough to attract the media. Their working-class concert spread across France like wild fire. I sat out of sight, camera in hand, filming like catching fish in a barrel.
Portugal, 1944. In a country oppressed by a brutal dictatorship, there are those who resist and mobilize the people to fight for bread and freedom, even if it cost them prison, torture or their lives.
The director, twenty-three-year-old Iwabuchi Hiroki, is a permanent part-timer who on weekdays does menial work at a factory for 1,250 yen an hour, and on weekends takes on casual temporary work in Tokyo, a city he is fascinated with. He joins a demonstration demanding rights for permanent part-timers, and is featured on TV as "a poor, unhappy temporary worker." Despite having made his own choice to live as a permanent part-timer, he says that "the days feel like drowning in shallow water." But during the diary-like documentation of his life, something changes...
The life of the cotton workers in the Chaco and its struggle for wages.
In a company trading maté, workers are treated as slaves. Some of them try to escape, but those who are caught suffer severe punishments.
For decades, migrant workers have worked the fields of Immokalee, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, oranges and other produce that is then shipped across the United States of America. Many of the workers are undocumented, and attempting to keep their jobs even as federal migration crackdowns hover over the town. The Fields of Immokalee film follows the daily lives of tomato workers, from the 5:00am trips to the parking lot in hopes of finding day labor, to work sessions in the scorching mid-day heat, to child detention centers for migrant youth that have been separated from their families. Via these vignettes, the film offers insight into the most volatile political issue of our time.
When Umi and Dwipa left Indonesia to work in an Ontario greenhouse as part of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program, they hoped the jobs would provide the opportunity and income for a better life. They didn't expect that fixers and false promises would lead to deception and exploitation. Sadly, their story is not uncommon. Min Sook Lee continues to speak truth to power with her commitment to providing a voice to the silenced, fulfilling documentary's capacity as a powerful tool for social change.
This powerful documentary explores the cruel realities of sweatshop labor and workplace injury in China, and one lawyer's mission to defend worker's rights.
Gurwinder comes from Punjab, he’s been working for years as a farm hand in Agro Pontino, not far from Rome. Since he first came in Italy, he’s been living with the rest of the Sikh community in Latina province. Hardeep is also Indian, but her stress is Roman, and she works as a cultural mediator. She, born and raised in Italy, is trying to free herself from the memories of a family that emigrated in another age, while he is forced, against his faith, to take methamphetamine and doping to bear the heavy work pace, to be able to send money in India.
During 2004 alone, 1400 people in Italy died at their workplace, 3.87 per day. Andrea is one of them.
