The American Dream Documentary - Movie Review Example

The American Dream Documentary What happened at Hormel from a union perspective and a management perspective The opening scenes of the documentary show the operating plant to be a harried slaughterhouse. The cost-effective technologically-advanced assembly line makes for unpleasant, grueling work and a near prison-like inexorable regimen. Following the introductory title the documentary moves on to set the stage nationally with a series of newscasts ranging from off-air remarks by President Reagan on the American economy being in a hell-of-a-mess, to a report from Dan Rather on a major set-back for unions in a Supreme Court ruling, and a Tom Brokaw news brief on the avowed Reagan politic of nationwide union busting. A series of vignettes effectively situates the strike at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, less as an event confined to a small Midwestern backwater town than part of a much broader travesty of justice played out in corporate America with a facile expenditure of rank-and-file workers across the nation sacrificed to fiscal posturing that weighs cost-effective corporate advantage against the lost jobs and hefty wage and benefit reductions of decidedly-expendable employees. The local Hormel conflict engages a national setting of financial hardship, plant closings, downsizing, mergers, buy-outs, layoffs, a thrust for corporate concessions, and the solidarity of international labor headquarters paralyzed by a dispirited, compromising leadership. In the Reagan political climate, corporate management, riveted on survival at any cost, perceive striking workers as mortal threats to efficiency and the bottom line. The timeline pauses to note that in 1984 the Hormel Company posted a massive twenty-nine- point-five-million dollars in profits and in that same year cut employee wages close to twenty-three percent from $10.69 to $8.75 an hour, reducing worker benefits some thirty percent in the bargain. The footage moves on to 1986 and Jesse Jackson preaching a passionate "enough is enough" challenge that some workers somewhere stand up to the nationwide injustice, as the responsive Austin audience rises spiritedly – and symbolically – in a standing ovation to the challenge. Hormel workers are stunned that management, disparaging the mounting record of workplace grievances, stipulates a twenty-three percent wage cut. The sizeable pay reduction in an exceedingly lucrative year for the company, arouses local labor leaders to negotiate for a fully just wage in view of the company windfall within the wider fiscal reality of a nationwide economic downturn. To be evenhanded, Kopple also brings in the underlying specter for the Hormel corporation of other failed meatpacker industries such as the Wilson company where workers lost their jobs entirely. The P-9 local union solicits the services of Ray Rogers and Corporate Campaign, Inc, to plan pressure strategies against the intractable Hormel CEOs. Ray Rogers proves to be a decidedly motivational speaker who rallies the labor membership into action. Local labor militants in the adjacent Twin Cities and concurring activists around the nation join the effort. The international union headquarters, however, opposes and undercuts the Hormel packinghouse division, reproving the P-9 local union for rescinding from a blanket Hormel contract approved by a network of other local divisions. Hormel workers take their rising exasperation out on the national Packinghouse Division Director Lewie Anderson, and a leadership that seems to capitulate easily to corporate avarice. As P-9s contract with Hormel terminates in August 1985, the local union initiates its historic strike. In retaliation the Hormel corporation coolly transfers production to its other plants across the nation. Though Austin union members personally contact these plants quite a few times, and build sympathies with activists, their efforts are frustrated by the international unions persistent negation of their objectives. Since the strike covers a depressed area where the economy is poor, Hormels public notice in January 1986 of the open hire of permanent stand-ins, attracts many outside job hopefuls to the plant. Backed by a myriad of associates from the Twin Cities and beyond, picketers act together to block the plant gates. Democratic Governor Rudy Perpich steps in to deploy the Minnesota National Guard and assist scabs to cross the picket lines. As the strike crumbles, the international union leadership spearheads a back-to-work drive among the strikers, and close to five hundred financially-strapped workers break their local picket lines to return awkwardly to their jobs, alongside the thousand or so new hires. Austins Local P-9 response activated a nationally publicized struggle with the Hormel meatpacking corporation. The focal point of that fight, the 1985-1986 strike, was roundly thwarted when management reopened the plant to newly-hired recruits and the five hundred P-9 employees who endured the taunts of fellow workers to cross the picket line in weary desperation. Substantial solidarity with their cause materialized nationwide, in spite of a major rift between the local union and the national parent United Food and Commercial Workers Union, but ultimately the local effort was crushed. Kopples exposé of this harsh period in U.S. labor history is arresting. Firsthand details of the dispute allow viewers to identify with the wounds festering in this small town, as rifts and discord divide church mem­bers, prior neighbors, fellow workers and long-time friends over diverse loyalties, long-held principles or high monetary stakes in the strike. In American Dream Kopple identifies a three-way conflict over the Hormel situation. The divergent viewpoints in the film comprise more than the local union and management. Most regrettably, the international union, reluctant to sponsor or sustain an effort that the shrewdest veterans among them recognize as doomed from the outset, have virtually surrendered to the prevailing national stance. Kopple takes exceptional advantage of the realism of plain-spoken interviews with locals and union representatives to develop the meat of the story through the multifaceted dynamics of the protagonists, as she delineates the story, sight-unseen, off-camera. Managements perspective is less personally represented, because the corporate heads decline interviews. Kopple employs snippets of footage on the national climate in the Reagan era to flesh out the corporate perspective on the whole picture. The Academy Award Winning Documentary (1990) illustrates the heart-breaking reality of family men and women anguished over incredibly daunting choices between the right thing to do and the sheer survival of families haunted with the protracted specter of looming financial crises. As the strike drags into weeks and the workers deal with assured failure, families are alienated, friends turn into foes, and the very survival of this everyday Minnesota town is at risk. The living dynamic of the powerful media coverage converges on the reality in such a way that the specifics of the local drama compellingly portray the nation-wide decline of the unionized workforce. The impasse between workers and management are manifestly the product of the capitalist economy on which this nation is built. Barbara Kopples portrayal of the American Dream, in fact the title itself, implies that the growing futility of union activity accentuates the ambivalence or ineptitude of the principles upon which the American Dream is hypothetically created – equal opportunity, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. As the camera makes a heart-breaking but candid incursion into the lives of the common folk affected by the strike, the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence seem to stand for little when confronted by the unabashed injustice demoralizing the rank-and-file workforce with the hardnosed reprisals of corporate entities. As Members of the Local P-9 began their strike with enthusiasm and resolve in August 1985 at the Hormel meatpacking plant they could hardly have dreamt what the upshot would be. The strike lasted over one and one-half years, created mass picket lines at Hormel and eventually prompted the deployment of the Minnesota National Guard. Hundreds of strikers and sympathizers were arrested, and more than a thousand of the most committed lost their jobs permanently. To their consternation, union members found themselves in hot dispute not only with corporate management and state government, but also with growing opposition and censure from the leadership in the international union headquarters. The solidarity indispensable to the clout of the labor unions was betrayed by the diffident labor administration. Packinghouse workers comprised only an insignificant minority of the United Food and Commercial Workers membership. Union management had clearly adopted a policy of bargaining for concessions, and even directed Hormel workers to weather the obviously futile battle till the storm spent itself, then pick their way out of the shambles. All the while local and national activists mobilized campaigns challenging the cowing union leaders to back the local union in the confrontation. The United Food and Commercial Workers parent leadership, the state and other national labor executives turned their backs on the strikers. If the rank-and-file were more than willing to jeopardize all to contest unwarranted corporate avarice, the apathetic, over-cautious international union leadership was not. A governor elected on a Democratic platform actually ordered in troops to contravene the strike, yet received no censure from the labor establishment. The National Guard as well as local and state police callously infringed on citizens rights to free speech and nonviolent assembly. The courts ruled inexorably for corporate interests that filed suit against the union, and, similarly, for the international union when it confronted the locals. Mum was the word. Buoyed by a contingent of well-funded corporate consultants or union busters, the Hormel management outwitted the coordinated local operations and demoralized any international union support. Hierarchical union power retreated from the shop floor and capitulated to concessions at the bargaining table. The efficiency of corporate profits outweighed fair wages, slashed benefits from pensions to health insurance, and prolonged the hours of work in unsafe conditions. George A. Hormel, the founder of the Company, it has been said, had a fine-tuned social conscience and originally provided royally for just and honest working conditions for his workforce. His successors in the company credibly survived the fiscal crisis, but imperially betrayed the American Dream of Hormels founding mission. Work Cited The American Dream. Dir. Barbara Kopple. Documentary. 1985. Videocassette. Prestige: Miramax Films. 1992. Read More