|
 Part 1: Step by Step
Introduction to what unions do; addresses some common misconceptions; concludes with a lively animated rap sequence. Discussion starter on differences between labor history and other types of history, and on the origins of workers' rights. 6 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 2: "No Danger From Strikes Among Them"
Examines the rise of the California labor movement and its first major statewide political formation, the Workingmen's Party, which faced a choice between two programs: pro-union vs Chinese exclusion. Anti-immigrant politics in California began here. The parallels between this nineteenth century phenomenon and present-day choices are clear. 15 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
 Part 3: "Bombs and Ballot Boxes"
Explores differences for working people between union town San Francisco and its open shop neighbor to the south, Los Angeles, around the turn of the century. Sam Gompers, Clarence Darrow, and Eugene Debs make guest appearances in the Los Angeles story, which weaves the bombing of the anti-union Los Angeles Times by ironworkers together with the labor-backed campaign for mayor of Socialist Job Harriman. Meanwhile P. H. McCarthy and the powerful Building Trades Council, the great City Front Strike of 1901, the Union Labor Party, the San Francisco earthquake, Wage Earners Suffrage League and a brutal streetcar strike star up north. Also featured: the Oxnard Beet Workers strike of 1903, with the first farm labor union and strike in California, led by the Japanese-Mexican Labor Alliance. 24 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 4: "Not So Jazzy"
From the Wheatland Hop Riot of 1913 and the framing of Tom Mooney to the Wall Street Crash, the realities behind the nostalgia for "the jazz age" are exposed. Prosperity for some people contrasts with low wages and terrible working conditions in the mass production industries for most workers. A repressive political atmosphere sends immigrants back "home" and stops unionism-both AFL craft and IWW industrial varieties-in its tracks. 10 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
 Part 5: "Labor on the March"
The Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal provide the background for a look at the explosion of militancy in the west coast maritime trades, culminating in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934. The Upton Sinclair campaign for Governor brings the movies into California politics, transforming the political process. Farm labor strife in the central valley and a huge growth in union membership attends the rise of the CIO, which, due to its philosophy of industrial unionism, is a civil rights movement as well as a labor movement. 18 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 6: "Battling for Democracy"
The home front during World War II, California style: northern California shipyards and southern California aircraft factories provide a magnet for African-American, "Okie" and women workers. Their entry into the workforce poses a dilemma for unions: inclusive or exclusive membership policies? The federal government brokers a deal between labor and capital: a "no strike pledge" in return for union recognition, dues checkoff and grievance procedures. And under pressure from C. L. Dellums and A. Phillip Randolph, FDR signs Executive Order 8802, mandating fair employment practices in wartime industries for the duration of the war. 8 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 7: "We Called It A Work Holiday"
Post-war tensions are revealed by a strike of mostly women retail clerks in two downtown Oakland department stores, which expands to become the last city-wide General Strike in US history. When the video repeats a newsreel segment with alternative voiceovers, viewers learn how "news"-like history itself-is constructed from a point of view. And through the exemplary solidarity of streetcar driver Al Brown, we learn how workers can make history, too. We also gain a unique insight into the longest running farm labor dispute until the 1960s, the DiGiorgio strike of 1947-50, through the footage of a "lost film" made by Hollywood supporters of the strike. 17 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 8: "Building the House They Lived In"
Behind the prosperous surface of the fifties and labor's high point in membership figures, California working people face new challenges: the effects of the Cold War in labor, how the struggle for a fair employment practices law creates a labor/community/civil rights coalition, and the threat of the right to work campaign of 1958, culminating in the reunification of California AFL and CIO three years after the national merger. 28 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
 Part 9: "Against the Tide"
Two bright areas emerge in the 60s and 70s from the crossroads of labor and civil rights movements. Farmworker organizing soars around the Delano grape strike of 1965; and California teachers, like other public sector workers, demand and achieve collective bargaining laws. But these are bright spots in a darkening picture of automation, deindustrialization, capital flight, antiunion government policies and labor's own failure to organize new sectors of the economy. The struggle of auto workers at GM Van Nuys against a threatened plant closure typifies this era for industrial workers, their families and communities. 21 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
Part 10: "Golden Lands, New Demands"
The PATCO strike signals the end of the post-World War II social compact between labor and capital. In its place, a new corporate regime ruthlessly replaces full-time "middle class" union jobs with part-time, temporary, 'disposable' employment. In response, a new organizing mood emerges among California working people grappling with the effects of the global economy, spurring struggles for full-time work, living wages, health care and dignity. 22 minutes
Watch an excerpt from the video
|
