The history of workers’ struggle is the history of the portion of humanity that identifies itself as being alienated from its meaning of economic production and which is subjugated by the wage labor system. It is the history of the emancipation of humankind from capitalism altogether.
Brought together by a shared interest in making visible workers’ history and labor’s current struggles, AWC in cooperation with labournet.tv, a collective and an online archive of films from labor movements worldwide, has selected a variety of films addressing current and historical working conditions, migration fluxes, and forms of self-organization.
The selected films, presented on AWC and labournet.tv channels, highlight axes of oppression that cross, situated struggles, and illustrate the interconnectedness between unprotected workers' rights, restrictions on trade union organization, and the extent of exploitation - especially of migrant and women workers.
We open AWC’s selection from labournet.tv with a focus on the landscape of contemporary labor conditions and struggles. Since the 1970s, with the inception of neo-liberalism as the dominant ideology, there has been an increased curtailment of workers' rights and conditions achieved through labor offshoring, wage suppression, exploitation of shift labor, and the weakening and vilifying of labor unions and other forms of resistance. These histories draw the outlines of the picture we have today: dock workers in Hong Kong working 24 to 48-hour shifts with no breaks in dangerous conditions; delivery app workers employed by companies maneuvering their shift system and exploitation of migrant workers to avoid unionizing and legal striking; strikers met with police intervention and violence, unprotected by basic worker rights.
Each of the films was selected from the labornet.tv archive deepens the collective narrative narrative of popular unrest and striking. History tells us that striking is a crucial tool for the empowerment of workers. A way to demand rights, and, above all, to develop self-consciousness as cohesive groups standing together for common demands. Striking and labor laws reveal the core principles of an epoch's labor-capital dynamics, indicating whether society prioritizes worker protection and fairness, or company interests.
Following this thread, the first movie “The Year of The Beaver” (1985) is a documentary about the strikes of a mostly migrant and female workforce from the Grunwick film processing factory in Northwest London in the late 1970s. The film captures this transitional time in the history of the English working class as the country was moving into the advancing liberalization of the economy culminating in the election of Margaret Thatcher, and a changing cultural disposition on labor issues. It was a time of the deregulation of companies and the financial sector for maximum wealth accumulation, a philosophy that is inherently anti-union as unions and increased labor costs disrupt the desired growth cycles. The consequence of this was increasingly heavy police interventions against strikers, mass arrests, media vilification and political defamation of workers, the refusal to recognize union groups, and the devaluation of labor power. The results of which we still see today along with a continuation of similar “reforms”. As expressed by the narrator in the film, looking back at the battles and changes of the period; “[We came] to see Grunwick [strikes] not as something that is in the past, but a model for capitalism's future. To see how a strike for the most basic trade union rights, supported by all the official structures of the labor movement, could come to be so easily defeated.” The speaker couldn’t have been more right in his predictions about the future as we look at the labor struggles of today.
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Next, we move on to "Speech Duygu Kaya" (2023) a film about extremely topical issues, which documents a protest that came before the Berlin-Brandenburg labor court in 2023 challenging the striking laws in Germany. The strike in question was organized specifically in support of the workers for delivery apps such as Gorillas and Flink, and against their dismissal of workers for striking for better conditions. The film unpicks the structure behind the labor market of the gig economy and sheds light on outdated German labor laws, which do not protect workers' interests and have not adapted to changes in the industry. In the case of the emerging “platform economy” of gig and shift work with digital service companies, employers do everything they can to prevent unionizing and paying liveable wages. As explained by the organizer Duygu Kaya, “The transitions in these workplaces, the temporary contracts, the frequent turnover, the dependencies, such as [of] residence, visa, etc., do not make it possible for long-term unionizing.” Without a way to unionize, the workers become subject to extreme exploitation with no protection. They are forced to fight against their employers with huge legal resources and find no support from the government. This was the case when the Gorillas workers tried to sue the company for wrongful termination citing a constitutional right to strike.
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Our third pick "Dockers Strike in Hong Kong" (2013) gives visibility to the strikes in 2013 of dock workers in Hong Kong who are in charge of managing a vital shipping container port. These ports and harbors have become the icons of modern global capitalism. With extremely high turnover quotas to meet global demand, the owners of the harbor don’t leave a minute's rest for workers while money can be made. Along with devastatingly bad working conditions - the dock workers hadn’t received a raise in the 10 years prior, despite inflation having reached 4% by 2013. Hired by subcontracted companies, the management claimed no need to negotiate the demands of the strikers, especially after the economic crisis generated by the SARS outbreak. The employers deployed rhetoric to their workers such as “We all have to share the pain”, and “We are all on the same boat”, as they justified taking 10 dollars per shift away from the workers to compensate (themselves) for the bad economy. Nevertheless, the 200 workers demanding better wages and working conditions gathered with beautiful and dedicated solidarity. The film offers a classic example of the current reality, where profits and capital are ever-growing while wage and labor sectors are left with the bare minimum and workers scarcely protected.
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labournet.tv is an online archive for films from the labor movement - old and new - from all parts of the world.
This collaboration is facilitated by Noa Jaari, Mia Ribeiro Alonso, Line Lange, and Annalisa Giacinti.
- IMAGE CREDITS
Cover: Still, Speech Duygu Kaya, 2023
fig. 1: Still, The Year of The Beaver, 1985
fig. 2: Still, Dockers Strike in Hong Kong, 2013
