Baristas vs Billionaires

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

This documentary film traces the struggle of Indian auto workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, near Delhi, in forming a union. Investigating the underbelly of class conflict and exposing a widespread system of injustice, the film focuses on the repression faced by the workers and their criminal prosecution.

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.

Documentary following dockers of Liverpool sacked in a labour dispute and their supporters’ group, Women of the Waterfront, as they receive support from around the world and seek solidarity at the TUC conference.

Delegates and workers discuss the issues that effect the Timberworkers’ Union, the reasons for the formation of the Combined Council of Timber Workers Delegates (CCD) and their industrial action.

When a group of baristas in Buffalo, New York announce their intention to start a labor union, Starbucks responds with an elaborate, illegal anti-union attack. Featuring on-the-ground footage from workers and organisers, Partners takes us to the front lines of the historic union campaign that catalysed America’s Gen Z labour revival.

A documentary about teachers' strikes in Iceland in the latter half of the 20th century with a special focus on 1995.

Short news featurette produced by Pathe-RKO after the Russians launched the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik. It is a patriotic 'call to arms' from the threat posed by this and the need for Americans to spend more on education in general and a college education in particular. A visit to the University of Buffalo highlights its science programs and the need for more graduates from all technical disciplines if America is to rise to the challenge. It bemoans the fact the PhDs earn less than a mechanic and the need to re-order priorities.

Documentary revealing all about the multinational, Seattle-based chain of coffeehouses.

Haya

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.

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.

Through the eyes of a Quebec Jewish activist, Lea Roback, feminist, unionist, pacifist and communist, A VISION IN THE DARKNESS proposes a modernist vision of Quebec history, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the period knows as « La Grande Noirceur », the Great Darkness.

This film takes us into the harsh realm of BC's early coal mines, canneries, and lumber camps; where primitve conditions and speed-ups often cost lives. Then, the film moves through the unemployed' struggles of the '30s, post WWII equity campaigns, and into more recent public sector strikes over union rights.

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.

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.

Across America, UPS workers come together to demand better working conditions as they go about criss-crossing the world, delivering packages and connecting lives.

Dominik Hašek, Olympic gold medalist and two-time Stanley Cup-winning goaltender, looks back on his life growing up in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia. His longest-tenured NHL team, the Buffalo Sabres, walk Hašek through his past to see how his love of hockey and the political and cultural influences of growing up in Pardubice molded him into one of the greatest goalies the sport has ever seen.

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.

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.