5 unsung films that dramatize America's rich labor history

Check out 'Metropolis', 'I'm All Right, Jack' and the wonderful 'Carry On At Your Convenience'. But most of all, Alan Bleasdale's outstanding TV series 'Boys From the Black Stuff' - Yosser Hughes (Bernard Hill) became an iconic figure in Thatcher's Britain.

Unions, like governments, work better in theory. In reality, they often become politicised, infiltrated by organised crime and behave in an increasingly dictatorial manner (the 'closed shop'). Ideally balancing employer power to deliver fair wages, they can choke a business through strikes and exacerbate inflation (cf. Britain in the 70s, British Leyland). Management, for their part, often treat the company as their personal piggy bank, syphon off profits and create a toxic wage pyramid, where those who do all the work get paid the least, and those who do the least work, pay themselves the most.

No wonder the planet is a mess.

As synonyms go, "rich" is a strange stand-in for "horrific". And no mention here of the 'Pinkertons', the thugs routinely hired by Corporate as 'strikebreakers' with clubs and guns and murder back in the day. And another unmentioned notable labor story was the exponential rise of unions just after WWII and the unprecedented rise in the welfare and fortunes of American 'labor' when hundreds of thousands of trained, former battle experienced young men trained to work together returned home from WAR and demanded fair treatment and Corporate understood who had the 'power' at that time. That 'power' has been slowly whittled away over the subsequent generations but, maybe, we might see a return to that balance given the decline in credibility the Corporate voice has been having with the internet, the increase in choice of 'voices', and a decrease in the power of monopolistic, dishonest Corporate media. And the Brave New World continues on... who knows? We may even have a return to the Top 100 of that golden oldie and old favorite of labor organizers "The Internationale". Quite a tune when sung right in French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQFxUdzT-m0

"samuraivunylAug. 26 04:16 pm JST

Considering this is an online Japanese publication, why would anyone care about ' America's rich labor history ' any more than that of any other country??? America is not, as most Americans tend to believe, the centre of the world and most people actually don't give a hoot about the place ."

It's the same 'interest' that makes 'crime drama' so popular in the world's media. Psychopaths are always way more 'interesting' than just plain normal average folks. Taking out the garbage, feeding the cats and the dogs, getting up on Monday morning and contemplating 'work' are things that don't lend themselves to high 'Human interest' to the extent that psychopathic behavior seems to arouse in us. Shōganai, ne...