The tagline on one of the movie posters of American Dream is “The film that corporate America doesn’t want you to see.” I think that’s comical. Because after sitting through the roughly 100 minutes of this documentary, you will probably also conclude that labor unions don’t want you to see it either. That might explain what the Oscar-winning documentary made by acclaimed filmmaker Barbara Kopple remains mostly obscure more than 30 years after it was released.
I’ve not been able to find it on any streaming services, including YouTube. However, it is on Internet Archives, that little nugget for obscure some bootleg movies, TV shows, and other media off from the mainstream. Kopple had rose to fame after Harlan County, USA, which was a documentary on the coal miners’ strike of Harlan County, Kentucky in the early 1970s. That documentary had a clear “Us vs. Them” tone. However, I think Kopple found herself dealing with a different beast with this one as she went north to Austin, Minn. to document the 1985-1986 strike at the Hormel plant.
And it’s no surprise the strike started in the summer of 1985, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s second term. Reagan, who ironically served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, stood up to the striking air traffic controllers and fired them during his first term (even though some had to be rehired.) Many people took that as a sign that the labor union era that emerged in the post-WWII years was over. And Hormel was more than willing to cut any corners they felt necessary.
Most of the workers were averaging about $10.69 an hour which in 1985 was the equivalent of $30.50, serious money for people working in a meat-packing plant in the Mid-West. The town of Austin, Min.. is near the Iowa border so it’s apparent the entire community of about 23,000 revolved somewhat around the plant. And Hormel was going to cut the wages by about a fourth down to $8.25 an hour. This meant many workers would lose about $80 a week, of about $4,000 a year before deductibles. Even taking home $2,500-3,000 less in the mid-1980s was detrimental. That was house and car payments. That was money that could be used to put in the kids’ college fund or even they could use for a family trip to DisneyWorld or a second honeymoon in Cabo.
So, when the local P-9 of the Union Food and Commercial Workers went on strike, you initially feel for them watching this documentary. It wasn’t just pay. They wanted safer work conditions. There were about 1,500 workers at the plant but that’s 1,500 families losing a good percentage of their income. But something went seriously wrong early in the strike. Rather than bring in the negotiators from the international headquarters, the locals decided they needed someone else. So, they brought in Ray Rogers, a notorious labor activist who does thing totally different.
How different? Rogers’ whole tactic is to scream loud enough that his voice and opinion is the only that matters. He comes to the tight-knit community and begins to push around anyone who questions him. Rogers is infamous for his hatred for corporations and his tactics have been questioned over the years. Soon, sides are taken among family members and friends causing a huge riff. All Hormel had to do was sit back and watch them fight amongst each other. And that’s what they did. Things turn violent as knock-down drag-out fights start at unions meetings.
Finally, Lewie Anderson, a top official and negotiator at the international level, is brought in, but he is shocked at how the locals have screwed up lamenting they made the mistake of “opening the whole contract” essentially hurting everything the union has spent decades trying to build. Anderson feels the locals should compromise but Rogers gets everyone fired up on not compromising. Hormel locks workers out and hires new people, aka “scabs,” so in a critical move, Rogers gets them to block miles of roadway with their vehicles leading to the plant. The rest of the community takes a hit too as bills go unpaid. It’s probably no surprise the U.S. Census reported that by 1990, Austin had dropped about 1,100 in its population.
In the end, the International office declares the strike illegal, seizes control of the local P-9 and negotiates with Hormel. But the damage was already been done that only 20 percent of the strikers get their jobs back. By the end of the 1980s, Hormel has closed half of the plant and rents it to another meatpacker company who only pays $6.50 an hour which would be $16 an hour today. While the documentary is an example on the dangers of Reaganomics in which it was more important to put corporate profits over employee paychecks and benefits, it also shows you what happens when communities turn against each other.
One of the famous episodes of The Twilight Zone is “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” which was seen as a metaphor for the Red Scare as people of a neighborhood turn against each other following an unsuspected blackout. The fact that this exact same thing happens in real life makes that episode all the more disturbing. To say this is an anti-union documentary is a little harsh. If anything else, it shows why many went away during the 1980s.
This strike lasted one year, three weeks and six days. And Kopple films with her usual cinema verite style like a fly on the wall observing everything. I think even she wasn’t aware of what she had filmed and spent years with her editing staff of Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke and Lawrence Silk (who acted also as co-directors) trying to piece it all together. There’s no way of presenting this strike with any clear winners or losers. Some of the workers who did cross the picket lines are shown in a sympathetic light, but other strikers are portayed as bullies and have a cult-ish mob mentality we’ve seen all too much lately from both sides of the political aisles.
The 2023 year has already seen the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike along with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists with the current strike of the United Auto Workers going on strike within the last few days. Ironically, the 1960 SAG strike which occured the same time as the WGA went on strike was when Reagan was president of SAG. He resigned three months after he began. Earlier this year, UPS workers were able to come to a deal mainly because everyone understand how damaging a prolonged strike.
In the recent 10-15 years, unions have gained strength. But sometimes like the Hormel strike, the unions don’t always win. Take the case in which some saw the recall attempts of former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as something that was orchestrated by the teachers unions. Some could argue that taxpayer dollars were wasted as the recall failed. Granted, Walker is no angel and his nit-picking with the unions stirred a sleeping giant among labor unions to grow more in the 2010s and into the 2020s.
American Dream won the Oscar in 1991 for Best Documentary and received universal praise from critics. It’s no wonder many streaming services, all owned by major media conglomerates, don’t want to show the documentary. It shows what happens when people don’t work together. Even worse, it shows how corporate greed and tactics can ruin a community. They want you to still see them as “job creators.” But with wages stagnant, they more or less want you to pay for permission to come to work. And while some may say meatpackers shouldn’t be paid so much, ask yourself, why you think they should be paid so little?
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 