Union Town
If there’s one thing that we can rely on with absolute certainty, it’s the endless capacity of major businesses to exploit their most vulnerable employees. That’s what we see in Union Town, where the battle begins for contract delivery workers in New York City. Since their employment doesn’t fall under traditional workplace protections, they’re very much left to fend for themselves – if a company isn’t required to provide certain benefits, they’re almost certainly not going to do it out of the goodness of their heart.
So it’s left up to the workers to fight for their own rights, navigating a field where rules are being written on the fly since there’s no legislation on the books for their class of employment. Union Town captures the energy of a movement determined to force the issue, creating guidelines and a bare minimum of benefits for the employees of companies like Amazon, FedEx, UPS, and Doordash. It highlights how these workers were able to organize – in spite of pressure from their employers, mind you – not just within their companies but across the entire delivery sector, proving how much can be accomplished when people stand together.
But although Union Town attempts to delve into the complexities of this sprawling union movement and the many different factions that exist within it, there are plenty of moments where it touches on something interesting and then quickly moves away rather than examining it. It would have been great to see more about the complicated position of undocumented workers who want to engage in the movement, but are intimidated into avoiding active protest by the threat of deportation, for example.
We also spend some time with the conflict between older (arguably more jaded) union organizers who are willing to take an imperfect deal rather than nothing at all, and younger activists who are frustrated by the slow pace of change. But here again, we aren’t given the opportunity to explore this internal difference of opinions in any depth. Part of why strikes and union action can be so difficult to orchestrate is because of all the different factors and concerns that impact its members, and it almost feels like in attempting to cover a huge amount of ground, documentarian Barbara Kopple (who won Academy Awards for Harlan County, USA and American Dream) created something that is compelling but ultimately fairly surface-level.
Still, it does capture the frenetic energy of a union rally, the frayed nerves as people on the same side almost come to blows over their disagreements on what success looks like and how to achieve it. We see clearly the sacrifices made by the members of these unions and the hardships that come along with standing up for themselves, often making them even more vulnerable and disenfranchised than they were to begin with. But all of this underscores how important their work is, and how much every victory should be celebrated, even when it perhaps doesn’t go as far as some organizers would hope. They live to fight another day, and are emboldened by every inch of ground their corporate overlords cede.
Union Town backs away from some of its more interesting components rather than fully embracing them, and that can make the film less richly textured. But that doesn’t mean Kopple’s work here isn’t an achievement, one that comes at exactly the right time, as financially strapped Americans become more and more disillusioned by the corporations in power. Ultimately, its fly on the wall approach highlights a community of activists fighting the good fight, and proving that any action, even if it comes with a concession or two, is better than no action at all.
Directed by Barbara Kopple
Runtime 110 min
Language English, Spanish