Roger & Me (1989), Heroes for Sale (1933), Edge of the City (1957), Bread and Roses (2000), The Garment Jungle (1957), F.I.S.T. (1978), Which Way Is Up? (1977), Native Land (1942) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Labor Union movies.
Storyline: A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.—Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
Plot Keywords: journalist, ceo, family, dark, bleak, amusing, factory ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The saga of Tom Holmes - a man of principles - from the Great War to the Great Depression. Will he ever get a break? His war heroics earn fame and a medal for someone else, and his wounds result in a morphine addiction that costs him a job, his reputation in his home town, and months in a clinic. He goes to Chicago, where he's enterprising and dedicated to his work and his fellow workers, but an invention he champions results in the opposite of his intentions, leading to loss of life and an unjust imprisonment. After release, during the Depression, he must face local "red squads" and vigilante groups jousting out jobless men. Will anyone see his true heroic character?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: veteran, soldier, businessman, communist, wife, doctor, bleak ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Drifter Axel North has just arrived in New York City, having traveled from city to city throughout the country. Given the name Charlie Malick as a contact by an acquaintance named Ed Faber, Axel is able to get a job working as a stevedore in Charlie's gang on the dockyards. Little did Axel know that Charlie is corrupt, requiring payola for that job, and is a racist. It is solely because of the color of his skin that Charlie hates his fellow gang boss, Tommy Tyler, a black man. It is also because he can see that Axel is a little wet behind the ears that Tommy tries to befriend him to get him out from under Charlie's thumb. Due solely to the reason that he is a drifter, Axel is slow to warm and open up to Tommy, eventually providing some basic information: that he is originally from Gary, Indiana, that his real surname is Nordmann, and that the only person he has ever really loved in his life was his older brother Andy, whose death exacerbated the already strained relationship he has with his police officer father. Axel is even slower to warm to the idea of a girlfriend, Tommy and his wife Lucy's friend Ellen Wilson who they are trying to match up with Axel. Although Axel says he is trying to find something in his life, in reality he is currently running away from a specific issue from his past. It is when Axel's past may catch up with him that he starts to return to his shell and contemplates running away as was his routine, despite having friends for the first time in a long time. An incident with Charlie and Tommy may bring all their issues to a head.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: dockworker, boss, friend, wife, manager, gritty, rousing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: 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.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: illegal alien, janitor, union organizer, sister, wife, manager, passionate ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: During the 1950s, the New York garment industry is going through a turmoil. On one side, the industry workers want to organize themselves into labor unions that will fight for them in obtaining better wages, better working conditions and other benefits. On the other side, the factory owners and their managers staunchly oppose unionization. At one of the largest garment companies, Roxton Fashions, the owner, Walter Mitchell, is fighting against his workers' wishes to unionize. For the past 15 years, Walter Mitchell has been using the mob muscle in order to protect his company against unions. His gangster friend Artie Ravidge, and his henchmen, provide Walter Mitchell and Roxton Fashions with such protection against union men who agitate the workers into forming their own union locals. This protection includes murder, whenever necessary, to eliminate stubborn union men. Unfortunately, when Walter Mitchell's business partner, Fred Kenner, argues in favor of allowing a union into their factory, he meets with a suspicious fatal accident. The freight elevator in which he was traveling plummets to the ground, after being serviced by a suspicious repair-man. After the funeral, Walter Mitchell's son, Alan Mitchell, who recently returns from the Korean War, starts asking questions about the rumors concerning Fred Kenner's assassination and about the role of the mob in his father's company. His father denies the rumors but his son becomes more suspicious. When a garment industry union organizer, Tulio Renata, comes into the factory and creates a scene, arguing with the factory owner and promising the forming of a union local for the workers, the owner's son starts making inquiries on his own, against his father's wishes. He befriends union man Tulio Renata in order to learn more about the just and fair aims of the union directed at the garment industry. First viewed with mistrust, the factory owner's son, gradually gains the respect and the trust of Renata, of the union men and the workers themselves. But this union-friendly attitude of Alan Mitchell draws the ire of his father who, once more, uses his gangster friend Artie Ravidge's services to eliminate his foes. Only, this time, his own son is on the side of the unions.—nufs68
Plot Keywords: business owner, gangster, father, son, henchman, brutal, fiery ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Johnny Kovak joins the Teamsters trade-union in a local chapter in the 1930s and works his way up in the organization. As he climbs higher and higher his methods become more ruthless and finally senator Madison starts a campaign to find the truth about the alleged connections with the Mob.—Mattias Thuresson
Plot Keywords: union boss, blue-collar worker, mobster, senator, intense, brooding, cleveland ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Richard Pryor plays three roles: Leroy Jones, a poor orange-picker who gets laid off for accidentally joining the workers' union during one of their demonstrations; Leroy's father, whom Leroy leaves behind with the rest of his family to go to Los Angeles; and Reverend Lenox Thomas, who gets Leroy's wife Annie Mae pregnant during Leroy's absence. In Los Angeles, Leroy ends up working for the same company that fired him back home; he is a manager at the company but is now distant from his former pals. Though married, he falls in love with labor organizer Vanetta and must divide his time between her and Annie Mae. When he discovers that Annie Mae is pregnant by Reverend Thomas, he puts the moves on Mrs. Thomas.—mts77
Plot Keywords: wife, father, union organizer, preacher, executive, hilarious, cheeky ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Paul Robeson narrates a mix of dramatizations and archival footage about the bill of rights being under attack during the 1930s by union busting corporations, their spies and contractors. In dramatizations, we see a Michigan farmer beaten for speaking up at a meeting, a union man murdered in an apartment in Cleveland, two sharecroppers near Fort Smith Arkansas shot by men deputized by the local sheriff, a spy stealing the names of union members, and a dead Chicago union man eulogized. In archival footage we witness police and goons beating lawfully assembled union organizers, and we see men at work and union families at play. The narration celebrates patriotism and democracy.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: farmer, union organizer, klansman, sharecropper, grocer, brutal, inspiring ...
Movie Details Click Here!