Strength in numbers: what have 50 years of labor union documentaries shown us?

Since the release of defining 70s doc Harlan County, USA, film-makers have captured workers’ tenacity and solidarity “We better start pulling together or, by God, they’re going to bury us,” says a meat packer during a union meeting in Barbara Kopple’s 1990 documentary American Dream. It’s a desperate plea for survival; “they” are the Hormel Foods Corporation, who took advantage of union disorder to replace a huge portion of their workforce during a costly strike. American Dream sees the 1985-86