Barbara Kopple's 1976 film Harlan County, USA is widely regarded as one of the finest documentaries ever made, and a definitive depiction of the issues surrounding the fair treatment of workers and the labor movement since the latter part of the 20th century. Kopple originally intended the film to be focused on the 1969 United Mine Workers Of America election between William Anthony "Tony" Boyle and Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, which ultimately ended in stuffed ballot boxes and the assassination of a family. That event is touched on in the film, but Harlan County, USA instead focuses on how the larger issues of economic fairness affect the lives of people in Harlan County, Kentucky. In the early 1970s, workers at Harlan's Brookside Mine went out on strike against Duke Power demanding safer conditions and fairer wages for people who were living in company provided homes which had no running water. What Kopple's camera catches is years of struggle and strife, as picketers—and Kopple—are shot at by company hired scabs and "gun thugs," workers die painful deaths from black lung disease, and the blue collar people who fight against all of this encounter a system which is stacked against them, even in the institutions and people who were supposed to help them get a just contract.
What makes the movie stand out is how well the viewer gets to know the people in Harlan, and how fundamental and small, in the grand scheme of things, their hopes and dreams are. At the end of the day, what the workers in the film are asking for is not some huge payday or golden parachute. If they somehow got everything they wanted, they'd still be working a dangerous job and living slightly above the poverty line, just with a contract which keeps pace with the cost of living. In the 43 years since Harlan County, USA, the same struggle to make it to the next paycheck, and pray no one ever gets sick or a need for a large expense ever materializes, is a reality which seems to envelop more and more Americans every day.
In 2008, the General Motors truck assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, not far from Dayton, was shuttered in the wake of rising fuel prices, the financial crisis, and GM mismanagement. About 2,400 people lost their jobs, along with all of the damaging effects on the local economy being realized. This became the basis for filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s documentary The Last Truck, which chronicled the lives of workers as the plant closed. In 2014, the Moraine complex was purchased by the China-based manufacturer Fuyao. The new automotive glass factory reopens under Chinese management, “melding two cultures” by becoming a joint operation between Chinese workers brought to Ohio by Fuyao to be trainers and unemployed American laborers who had seen their lives ravaged by the GM closing.
The new jobs and the resurrection of the plant was promoted by politicians and the media as a success and mined as a feel good story. But the truth was a bit more complicated. Chinese managers expect American workers to adopt Chinese working standards, with lax safety compliance while working longer hours for about half the pay they were getting with General Motors. The Chinese workers brought in to train live in spartan condition, packed into apartments which are more like dormitory, working 6-7 days a week, and rarely being able to return home to see their families. Company executives grumble about the lack of productivity among Americans, claiming they are “not efficient, and output is low … when we try to manage them, they threaten to get help from a union.”
These dynamics are the basis for Netflix’s American Factory, Bognar and Reichert’s follow up to The Last Truck, wherein we meet the people who make Moraine’s Fuyao plant function, and see how the clash of cultures are buffeted by economic forces grinding people down in the name of output. The film, which is being released by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground Productions, concerns much of its narrative by the the question of whether the Fuyao plant will be unionized, and the threats which occur after the possibility of joining with the United Auto Workers becomes an issue to both management and local leaders.
From Sheelah Kolhatkar at The New Yorker:
Many of the workers have suffered since the closing of the G.M. plant. One says that her house was foreclosed on. “Ever since then, I have struggled to try to get back to middle class,” she notes, adding that she is currently living in her sister’s basement. Another worker becomes emotional explaining that he hasn’t had a regular job in a year and a half … Although the workers are happy to be employed again, they know that their circumstances are never going to be what they were. One worker explains that, under G.M., she made twenty-nine dollars an hour. Working for Fuyao, she is paid $12.84. “Back then, if my kids wanted a pair of new gym shoes, I could just get them,” she says. “I can’t just do that now.” Early in the movie, an executive explains that the Moraine plant will be staffed with three different shifts with one unpaid, half-hour lunch break. Upon hearing this, one of the American workers asks, “Is this a union shop?” The answer from management is a resounding no.
The Americans are not prepared for Fuyao’s way of doing things. The Chinese employees are accustomed to working six or seven days a week at the Fuyao plant in Fuqing. They typically live dormitory-style, several people to an apartment. Leaving work in time to get home for family dinner is not part of their routine. (One Chinese worker explains that she only gets to see her child once a year, when she travels from the factory to her home town.) The company attempts to bring some approximation of these labor standards to the U.S., but the Americans, many of whom had previously been members of the United Auto Workers union, begin to complain about their working conditions.
The contrasting views illustrate an economic tension that reaches well beyond Ohio. The United States and China are locked in a battle for global economic primacy, a race which has, for decades, placed American workers at a disadvantage. The tech world, in particular, has made note of the willingness of tech employees in China to work punishing hours without complaint. In January, 2018, the venture capitalist Michael Moritz wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times titled “Silicon Valley Would Be Wise to Follow China’s Lead.” In it, he criticizes the American tech industry for being preoccupied with discussions about political correctness and parental leave, whereas in China such conversations are absent and “the pace of work is furious.” His basic point seems to be that, if Western companies don’t try harder to emulate their Chinese counterparts, the Chinese companies will become dominant.
If the tone of the final paragraph above seems concerning, it should be. While I would never argue against American business doing what they can to be “competitive,” that term should not be a justification for a race to the bottom as jobs are squeezed by outsourcing and technological advancements furthering automation. I’m sure things might be more profitable and even efficient if we throw out most labor law, but profit and efficiency becomes a matter of perspective. Because the viewpoint espoused above is not one which concerns itself with the well-being of individuals or quality of life, but is instead a love of things. It’s a lust of organizations, corporations, nation-states, tall buildings with lots of glass, and the bottom line for groups of rich assholes.
That’s the central crux at the heart of American Factory’s narrative. Beyond just a culture clash between Chinese and American workers, there’s an underlying battle, that both sides share in, about the nature of labor and its ultimate goal. In a world where employment is discussed like a football game, where jobs are discussed as numbers in a score keeping which has no regard for whether those jobs are the foundation for a career or working at Walmart, employment itself becomes a means to an end in furtherance of political agendas and community zoning more than a consideration of how it represents an aspect of a person’s identity and their overall happiness.
Working just to survive and keep the lights on is not really living. And, if that’s all it is, then it’s just slavery with some extra steps.
The usual suspects among the press corps have dubbed the film the Barack and Michelle Obama’s “first big anti-Trump statement,” as a criticism of the current regime’s record of producing their promised meaningful manufacturing jobs for the 2020 presidential race. The truth is the film is about more than that. It’s largely a contemplation on the future we seem to be making where the choices seem to become more limited day after day for blue collar workers.
The workers at Fusayo are no different in that respect. Many of the American workers are happy just to be employed again, and the Chinese workers brought in to train the Americans in the proper way of doing things lead lives defined by their service to the company out of a mix of corporate pride and patriotism. But as time goes on, the difference in culture and perspective become more exacerbated. American workers chafe at the fact they’re doing more work for less pay, in dangerous conditions, with no protections to prevent them from being fired on the spot based on a manager’s whims. The idea of unionization, which was breached when Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) mentioned UAW membership at the factory’s opening ceremony, is deeply rejected by Fuyao executives, who threaten to shutter the factory if such an event occurs. Conservative Ohio leaders warn workers against listening to “outside forces” advocating a union. And Chinese workers who are now living in the “land of the free” go without meals to meet work quotas, as well as foregoing seeing their own family for extended periods in service of a corporation.
Overall, if this is a portent of the future of manufacturing work—or work in general—it’s not a pretty picture. And if any of the appeal for the right-wing xenophobia we’ve endured over the past four years is made worse by “economic anxiety,” the current dynamics indicate those concerns will only get worse before they ever get better.
From Josh Rottenberg of The Los Angeles Times:
Q: Despite that culture clash, the film shows that, in the end, the Chinese workers and the American workers are all being buffeted by the same forces of globalization and automation.
Steven Bognar: We’re hoping the film can spark a conversation about that. Big tectonic plates around the world are disrupting the lives of working people. We hope the film can say: Is this sustainable? What are we going to do about it? Is it fair? Is it right?
Julia Reichert: I think our film looks at: What is the fate of the American working class? It’s very unclear. If the unions keep being beaten down by these anti-union forces, if wages are kept low the way they are and the billionaire class gets more and more billions — there’s something just wrong in the world that we have to do something about.