Union Town

Two-time Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple nabbed her first in 1976 for Harlan County, USA, which chronicled Kentucky coal miners’ bitter but ultimately successful strike for better working conditions. American Dream (1990) was less upbeat: Threatened with pay cuts or no jobs at all, Minnesota meatpacking plant workers found a decade of Reaganomics had thoroughly weakened their bargaining power. Decades later, the director’s focus is a whole new labor sector as she completes the trilogy she began fifty years ago. Those who serve UPS, Amazon, and apps like Door Dash deliver 2.4 million packages every day within New York City alone. Many aren’t official employees, but rather third-party contractors sans benefits or job protection, their toil frequently underpaid, exhausting, and sometimes downright dangerous. Meanwhile, the corporations themselves make astronomical profits. Can unions, activism, and strikes still secure livable wages, among other basic needs that are rapidly disappearing for many in the twenty-first century? Full of real-life drama and compelling personalities, Kopple’s latest is a true sign of our times.