Brothers on the Line explores the extraordinary journey of the Reuther brothers – Walter, Roy, and Victor – union organizers whose unshakeable devotion led an army of workers into an epic human rights struggle.
Martin Sheen
as Narrator
A documentary about teachers' strikes in Iceland in the latter half of the 20th century with a special focus on 1995.
On the 5th of March 1985, a crowd gathered in a South Yorkshire pit village to watch a sight none of them had seen in a year. The villagers, many of them in tears, cheered and clapped as the men of Grimethorpe Colliery marched back to work accompanied by the village’s world-famous brass band. The miners and their families had endured months of hardship. It had all been for nothing. The miners had lost the strike called on March 6th 1984. They would lose a lot more in the years to come. But was it a good thing for the country that the miners lost their last battle?
An explosion in one of the largest chemical plants in Europe, the Petrochemical complex in Tarragona, triggers the labour struggle of a group of workers who demand what is fair for everyone.
When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.
A documentary centered on the union formed by Bolivian farmers in response to their government's (which was urged by the U.S.) effort eradicate coca crops, and the man who would come to represent them, Evo Morales.
A Century of Struggle chronicles the hundred-year history of the NZ Seamen’s Union from its formation in 1879. Using original film and archive footage, it examines the working lives of seamen and the battles fought by their union from the sailing ships of colonial days to the modern turbine-powered container vessels. Because the Seamen’s Union was frequently at the forefront of working-class struggle in New Zealand, its story involves most of the crucial issues and events in the history of the union movement generally, including the great maritime strikes of 1890 and 1913 and the waterfront dispute of 1951.
In their own words, this is the story of six women from the South Wales valleys and how they helped sustain the bitter year-long miners' strike, changing their lives forever.
Filmmaker Gary Kaunonen of KCC-TV in International Falls just released a new documentary about a pivotal time in Northern Minnesota’s labor history. It’s called “Northern Minnesota’s Labor Wars.” The years 1916 and 1917 brought major labor uprisings in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range and the lumber camps of the state’s far northern pine forests. These events not only shaped local history, but became vital turning points in the national and international labor movement.
Eugene Debs & the American Movement is an educational video that documents fifty years of long-suppressed history. Using extensively researched photographs, drawings and newsreel footage, it tells a story of the bloody strikes and brutal government reaction to the American workers' attempts to organize. This film is movingly narrated in Deb's own words, read from his speeches and writings, by his friend and comrade, Shubert Sebree.
This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.
Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
The early struggles of the working class are placed under a microscope in Plutocracy III: Class War, the latest chapter in an exceptionally well produced series which explores the origins of America's growing economic divide.
In a highly controversial move, the Justice Department used the RICO statute to take over the entire International Brotherhood of Teamsters, denying free speech and due process for 1.4 million union members over a 30 year period. 'Betrayal: When the Government Took Over the Teamsters Union' explores how the Justice Department violated the law and failed to protect constitutional rights of union members.
The inside story of Polmaise Colliery and the miners who were the first to walk out and the last to go back to work during the miners' strike.
Short documentary on the shunters in the Darling Island, Sydney, Australia railyard. Filmed in 1977.
History of US labor movements and their suppression. It includes sections on the American Constitution; the Civil War draft riots; Reconstruction; Industrialization; the evolution of the police; the robber barons; early American labor unions; and major mid-to-late 19th Century labor events including the uprising of 1877, the Haymarket Affair, the Homestead strike and the New Orleans General Strike. The introduction examines the West Virginian coal wars of the early 20th Century, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain.
How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.