Laborfest: Films from Turkey, China, UK, Australia

6:00
Women On Strike (23 min.) 2010 Turkey
Directed by Güliz Saglam, Feryal Sayg?l?gil
A critique of our consumer-driven model of economic growth and its supreme cost to our planet and the quality of our lives. This film outlines what drives the US economy and why the market is breaking down. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/print/wefa.html

6:30
Red Dust (20 min.) (2010) - China
By Karin T. Mak
Red cadmium dust drifted freely in China’s nickel-cadmium battery factories owned and operated by GP BATTERIES (GP), one of the world’s top battery manufacturers. Ren, a migrant worker originally from Sichuan, suffers from frequent headaches and breathing difficulties. If untreated, the cadmium poisoning can lead to kidney failure, cancer, and even death.
RED DUST tells an unexamined side of China’s economic development: the resistance, courage, and hope of workers battling occupational disease, demanding justice from the local government and global capital. Chinese migrant workers are deemed disposable by factory owners and are stereotypically viewed as quiet and passive victims. However, Ren and other GP workers (Min, Fu, and Wu) fight back. Labor issues are very sensitive in China, and workers who publicly discuss their struggles do so at great risk. The audience discovers along with the filmmaker, a Chinese American, the horrors of the global assembly line. http://www.reddustdocumentary.org

7:00
Whose Conspitacy, Justice For The Shrewsbury Pickets
(40 min.) (2010) - UK
By Chris Reeves of Platform Films
This documentary shows the frame up and political victimization of 24 Shrewsbury building trades workers after their successful 1972 building trades workers strike. Two of them Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson were jailed for years on conspiracy charges after the original criminal charges were dropped against the workers in order to make them an example of what happens to trade unionists when you fight back. The video includes interviews with Des Warren and other workers about how this struggle affected their lives. This has important lessons for all US workers who face an effort to criminalize effective trade unionism from the use of the Taft-Hartley to growing anti-labor legislation aimed at destroying organizing labor. Discussion to follow the film. Platform.films [at] virgin.net http://www.shrewsburypicketscampaign.org.uk/
(Discussion follows)

8:30
Last Stand At Mymboida (56 min.) Australia
By Jeff Bird
Thirty miners in an Australian primitive mine in the Nymboida Valley in Northern New South Wales are faced with the sack in 1975 but in a last desperate action to save the jobs, they decide to take over the mine and run it themselves. Although this was illegal under the law and they had no management experience, they decided that they had no other choice. “Their enthusiasm and hard work lead to a miraculous transformation – and against all expectations the mine was soon turning a profit!” This story of workers control was a important experience of the ability of workers to take over and run their jobs without corporate management. Despite all odds the workers were successful. On March 11, 1975 the company capitulated and the company handed over the mine to the men and their union, the Miners Federation. This historic battle can now be seen in America.
http://www.nymboidadoco.com.au/

See also:
http://www.laborfest.net/2011/2011Films.htm#5
http://www.laborfest.net/2011/2011schedule.htm#2