“It’s a political movie, and I have no problem with that, however, I think the trailer and other things sell the movie on the idea of two cultures coming together, perhaps clashing, perhaps getting along, and seeing what work is for each other.
The first third or so of the movie is exactly that, and it was good, I dug it.
But the bulk of the movie is about the attempt by the factory workers to unionize, and that was not so good.
Let’s be clear, it’s not a problem of politics for me. I’m pro-union, and I think there’s a special place in hell for that dweeb who works for a consulting firm that basically convinces people not to unionize with unpersuasive arguments that only work because they aren’t so much persuasion as they are thinly veiled threats.
I worked at Wal-Mart for a brief time, and one of the biggest chunks of on-boarding was a talk about why unionizing was bad. And they provided the same reasons here: A union doesn’t GUARANTEE you’ll get more money or better working conditions, a union just negotiates and you might end up better off, the same, or WORSE!
Which is true, a union doesn’t GUARANTEE you’ll be better off, but what does? Seems like a weak argument. “You shouldn’t go on vacation, there’s no GUARANTEE that Dollywood will be fun.” But, like, It will. It’s awesome.
I think the proof, for me, and maybe it’s not a great argument, is that companies spend lots of time and money to stop unions from coming in, and I have to ask why. If the benefits of being ununionized were clear and simple, I don’t think they’d have to do that. If the unions were as ineffective as we’re led to believe, then the companies really wouldn’t need to give a shit.
It’s pretty clear that unions affect the company’s bottom line, which is another way of saying, they have to pay people more or, you know, give you a break in a cool room for every 10 minutes you spend in a room where the temperature is nearly 200 degrees.
I do think there are some negative things about unions as well. I think a lot of the problems with policing, especially when officers are transferred around or hired after they really shouldn’t be cops anymore, I think a lot of that has to do with the police union, which is a pretty powerful one that might be contributing to something that’s…overall not great.
I do believe some of the tales of yore in Detroit and other cities, where auto workers got paid a ton, did very little work, and were nearly impossible to fire. I don’t believe ALL those stories, I don’t believe this was the way most workers viewed things or conducted themselves, and I don’t necessarily think the unions of today are looking for that setup. I think the abuses of unions in the past have made it difficult for unions in the present, which really sucks.
I got no problem with unions, and I got no problem with a movie about unions, but American Factory was kind of about unions when it sets the expectation that it’s about something else.
I guess it also fell a little flat for me because it’s kind of mixing in the Chinese business owners’ attitudes about American labor and laws and so on with the idea of unions, and because unions are kind of a hot debate in the U.S., let alone in international business, the mash-up of both things was maybe material better served by two separate stories.
Last, I guess if I can get a bit touchy for a minute, I think the head of the company comes off as pretty villainous, and…I think there might be some level of cultural misunderstanding here as well.
It seems that, in China, his style and his expectations of workers are the norm. The Chinese workers in the movie mostly seemed to feel that the Americans were not hardworking and were not dedicated to the job, and this seemed to bother them quite a bit.
I’m not advocating that people be worked to death or that the Chinese way is right, I am saying that I think viewers of this movie need to consider that there is a cultural difference here, and respecting and understanding other cultures sometimes is about respecting and understanding other cultures, even when we think they’re wrong.”