American Factory might be more famous now for who produced it\nthan for its content; it’s the first film from Higher Ground Productions, Barack\nand Michelle Obama’s production company, which has a deal with Netflix (where\nyou can find this film). It’s also nominated for an Academy Award for Best\nDocumentary Feature, with a strong case for the honor because of how much work\nclearly went into this endeavor and how timely its themes are \u2013 globalization, automation,\nanti-union sentiment, and people voting against their own interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie starts with the closing of a long-running General\nMotors plant in Moraine, Ohio, which had operated for more than a half-century\nand provided thousands of jobs for local residents. About seven years after its\nclosure, the Chinese conglomerate Fuyao acquired and reopened the plant as\nFuyao Glass, a move that was initially welcomed by the community for the jobs it\nwould re-create. Fuyao also brought over hundreds of employees from China to\ntry to integrate their operations and improve the efficiency of the new plant,\nbut over time the Chinese management’s practices, including much lower hourly\npay, dubious safety procedures, and a staunch anti-union policy, begin to alienate\nthe American workers, even though they and their Chinese counterparts have\nestablished stronger relations on the factory floor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
American Factory <\/em>documents the entire process over\nseven years, from acquisition to re-opening, through a failed unionization\nvote, with a level of access that seems comical given how often the Chinese\nmanagers essentially confess on camera to violating American labor and work\nsafety laws. There’s no question here who the bad guys are \u2013 it’s primarily Fuyao’s\nbillionaire founder and chairman Cao Dewang and a few of his lackeys, who think\nAmerican workers are lazy and have “fat fingers,” and who go out of\ntheir way to crush any attempts to unionize, a bit ironic from a company\nfounded in the ostensibly still-communist country of the People’s Republic of\nChina. (Workers of the world, take what we give you!) The managers openly\nretaliate against workers involved in organizing or encouraging people to vote\nyes, while the firm brings in expensive consultants to lecture employees on how\nthere’s actually zero difference between good things and bad things and they\nshould all vote no against their own interests so the billionaire can make more\nmoney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film may have a clear tilt in the direction of the\nAmerican workers, but that doesn’t make it less powerful, and the filmmakers manage\nto keep the documentary more interesting by with some of the funniest bits\nyou’ll see in a movie this year. None is more cringe-comedic than the scenes of\nthe Fuyao company celebration, with a half-dozen Moraine workers flown to China\nto participate, including a choreographed routine of a corporate song that\nsounds like a mediocre pop track but has lyrics that sound more like the East\nGerman anthem from Top Secret<\/em>, with lines like “Noble sentiments\nare transparent!” amidst blind praise of the company and its leaders. Many\nscenes of culture shock in both directions are simultaneously funny and\nalarming, as they underline the magnitude of the gap between the two nations’\ndiffering ideas on work (one Chinese manager can’t understand why Americans\nwon’t work six or seven days a week) and ‘loyalty.’ The ultimate outcome in\nsuch cases will always favor capital over labor; the workers here try to\norganize and fail in the face of the company’s overt and expensive efforts to\nconvince them unionizing would somehow be bad for them*, and Fuyao’s vengeance\nis swift. Paying the workers less than half of what they made under General\nMotors isn’t enough for Fuyao; workers apparently should say “thank you,\nsir, may I have another?” while accepting lower pay and reduced safety conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * The economics of unionization are certainly more complex\nthan just “unions good!” but unions almost invariably benefit\nmembers; negative economic effects are far more likely to hit consumers or\nnon-member workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s no narration in American Factory<\/em>, and no\nartificial framing device; the Fuyao executives are indicted by their own words,\noften said as if they forgot the cameras were running or that they were saying\nsuch things in a country where workers have more rights than they do in China (for\nnow). The film is full of amusing vignettes to provide some levity, but the slope\nof this story’s curve is negative and logarithmic. It’s a powerful piece with a\ncall to action and no action available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American Factory might be more famous now for who produced it than for its content; it’s the first film from Higher Ground Productions, Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, which has a deal with Netflix (where you can find this film). It’s also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, with a strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1149,1077,612,844,161],"class_list":["post-8195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2019-best-documentary-feature-nominees","tag-2019-movies","tag-documentaries","tag-economics","tag-highly-recommended","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8196,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions\/8196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}