Celebrate Your Mother Today and All Mothers Fighting For Workers' Rights Around The World, Then Read About Labor's Plan B

May 12th, 2013

We are into the third exciting day of the 2nd Annual Workers Unite Film Festival. We are proud to have a wonderful article written about one of the main films we are screening today, The Machinists, about the very brave women and men (the recently murdered labor organizer, Aminul Islam being among them) in Bangladesh who are fighting to form a union in the highly exploitive garment industries there.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-flynn/the-true-price-of-a-pair-_b_3247571.html

Julie Flynn Badal has done an excellent job in telling the story of exactly what "the true price of a pair of jeans" really is in human terms. Please go read this story and please come see this amazing film today at 7PM at the Cinema Village. We placed this film on Mothers Day particularly because so many of the workers involved in this movement are young women with young children. They are forced to work fifteen hour days, paid about 23 cents! an hour and must place their children with their own parents for safe-keeping. This means weeks can go by without Mothers even seeing their children, just in order to keep these oppressive sewing jobs. And as we now know, it isn't even the exploitation in these garment factories that is the worst part. These women and men risk their lives to go to work. There have been at least six major fires over the past two years, including the major fire at the Tazreen factory, killing over 300 workers. As horrible as this is, it pales in comparison to the recent collapse of the illegally built factory tower in Dakar, Bangladesh, has now murdered over 1000 innocent workers. Read Julie's article.

We are also honored to be showing an eye-opening new film from Italy, called the Women Workers War. This brilliant film shows what happens when one group of strong women sitdown in their own factory, stopping work for over a year. They send their story and message out over both social and regular media over the course of that year. They reach business owners and in particular, a women who decides to totally change her relationships in her own factory thanks to the enlightened message from the women on the sitdown strike. This is an incredible film about human relations and the power to change.

Earlier in the day we are screening several shorter films about The National Domestic Workers Alliance, based out of NYC, together with several films about domestic workers all over the world. Mujeres Pa'lante follows these often overlooked workers in Spain, where many of the domestic workers come from South America. Later this evening we see the epic Money and Honey, about Filipino women who travel to Taiwan to care for that country's aging population. The Director, Jasmine Lee, will be there to speak on the topic.

We are also lucky to have a short film on one of the fast growing local worker movements, Vamos Unidos, Judith: Portrait of a Street Vendor. This film shows the multiple battles these recent immigrant women must face. Harassed by the city and the INS, while trying to do their self- created jobs, they must often carry their very young babies on their backs as they push their loaded carts. This film is a testament to the strength and determination of women workers and all workers involved in this movement, to fight for their rights against enormous odds. Director Zahida Pirani will be at the screening with Vamos Unidos members to answer questions.

So for this Mothers Day, treat your Mom, treat yourself and the family to brunch, and a stroll, then come on over to the Cinema Village in the later afternoon for some powerful and entertaining films about Moms around the world who want exactly what your Mom wanted for you, and my Mom wanted for me: a safer life, a better life, a life filled with not only the material things you might need, but the freedom and ability to choose your own path, without exploitation and without oppression.

I want to thank my Mom, Elly Tilson, a lifetime trade union movement member and former Director of the 1199/SEIU Health and Pension Fund, for bringing my brothers and I up with those freedoms and with an education in what it means to be part of a a proud working class family. We were taught from day one the honor and dignity of working people and hopefully we are able to pass that message on to our own children and to as many of yours as  we can, through these wonderful films.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL!

 Please read this great article about the national labor movement - under Working America and other new groups, realizing that it's time to reach workers where they actually exist and organize them into thinking like workers first - then hopefully into organized workers fighting for their rights and then - hopefully into unions:

http://prospect.org/article/labors-plan-b

Thanks to Abby Rapoport of The American Prospect

Tomorrow Is The Start of the Festival! Check Us Out!

May 9th, 2013

After many months of planning, meetings, screenings, email, facebooking and hundreds of other tasks necessary to make an event like this work, we are finally here! Tomorrow May 10th is the opening night of the Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival - NYC Celebrates Global Labor Solidarity.

We are screening at Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street off University Place and just South of Union Square, from May 10th through May 16th. Screenings are from approximately 4PM each day, right through until 9PM to 10PM for the last films of the day. We continue the festival on Friday May 17th at the Brecht Forum, on the West Side Highway and Bank Street. The Festival continues for an extra day on May 20th, into the next week at the historic 1199 Martin Luther King Auditorium, on 43rd Street between Eighth to Ninth Avenues. This show is sponsored by 1199/SEIU United HealthCare Workers East and runs from 5:30PM to 8:30PM that evening. This event is free to friends and members of the 1199 family.

We have nearly fifty films screening in the coming week about workers and their daily lives, their unions - both good and sometimes not so good, and the efforts of many workers outside traditionally covered organizing groups, like farmworkers, like domestic workers, like taxi drivers, like part-time retail workers - like millions of very low wage workers around the world, who have decided enough is enough and they will fight back for their dignity and human rights.

One of our main point os this festival is that workplace rights are not some academic idea, not something "extra" that is nice for a workers lucky enough to get them. Rather we strongly feel and want to demonstrate through these films that workplace dignity and rights are civil rights here at home and human rights here and around the world. The time is long past for workers to be able to go to work with their heads held high and to be able to proudly say, "This work is hard, this work is dirty at times, this work is not a walk in the park, but I'm proud to have this job and I'm proud that my union has fought to protect my rights and dignity on the job so I can come in to work knowing that I am not a salve, or at the mercy of my boss, that I am a full human being, who deserves respect and dignity, no matter how dangerous or difficult my job may be.

If there was ever a week or two in this world when this should be glaringly apparent, it is these last several weeks when over 800!!! innocent workers were murdered at their sewing machines for the simple and non-existent crime of coming to work - a workplace where the average pay is some twenty-three cents an hour!

This was not an accident, nor was it unexpected. There had been numerous warnings from several inspectors, from union activists, from random people on the street who saw major cracks developing in these buildings. And this collapse came after several years of hundreds of deaths in these squalid sweatshops due to flash fires, where workers were locked in to burn to death, because factory owners feared they might not return to work after the fire was put out.

It is not only the callous disregard for human life and dignity shown by these factory owners, but the very same greed and inhumanity shown by major American retailers, including Tommy Hilfiger, who was exposed by Brian Williams on NBS Nightly News, with his excellent reporting n the story. Hilfiger, who at first tried to run and deny his garments were made in these factories, was forced to recant once hundreds of photos surfaced showing his brand name label merchandise covering the floors of the recently collapsed and burnt factories. He has since made efforts to address the gross negligence on the part of his contractors, but he is one among some 700!!! clothing companies that use these totally exploited workers to fatten their huge profit margins on selling clothes to our families.

So our Workers Unite Film Festival has an amazing film during the week, called The Machinists, screening on Mothers Day, May 12th@7PM. I hope you can make it because this film tells the equally sad, but uplifting story of all the Bengladeshi Moms who must work over 15 hours a day to make a living in these factories, never get to see their young children - who stay with grandparents - and are subject to a death sentence for simply going to work. As the film portrays - even when these workers organize in the face of terrible odds, they are subject to beatings and ultimately, disappearance and death. This is exactly what happened to Aminul Islam, one of the bravest organizers in Bangladesh. Read more about it here: http://www.laborrights.org/search/node/islam

We are happy to screen the film, sad that over 100 years!! after our own triangle Shirtwaist Fire here in NYC, that we are fighting these exact same battles to give workers the ability to come to work and then return home to their families safe and healthy. It is way past time for this to be the reality of working life.

Please check out the rest of the site, the schedule, the film descriptions and choose a bunch of films to come and see. You can buy tickets right from the site - at TIX.com - look for the yellow ribbon logo. You are also welcome to come to the theater or The Brecht Forum and buy your tickets the day of the show.

We intend to keep fighting, this week and every week to build a bigger and better worker's cultural outreach program, through this festival, through several more regional festival in the planning stages, through our partnerships with The Global Labor Film Festival this May and thru our online presence.

If you can donate online to help out this effort - great, but please come and see some powerful and insightful films on this topic this week.

In Solidaritry

Andrew

May Is Global Labor Film Festival Month

April 30th, 2013

The NYC based Workers Unite Film Festival is proud to join now with 18 other festivals around the world for a months of films clebrating workers and their stories. The Workers Unite Film Festival will celebrate this global event on May 16th here in NYC at The Cinema Village theater on 12th Street and University Place, just

South of Labor's historic gathering place, Union Square. As Chris Garlock, Director of The DC Labor Film Fest in Washington, DC and founder and Director of the GLobal Labor Film Festival has just written:

GLFF Update: And Then There Were 18: We’re pleased to welcome two more participants in the first annual Global Labor Film Festival: Labor Goes to the Movies (which is showing My Son the Fanatic) in New York City and the Progressive Film Club (which is showing the terrific new Ken Loach film The Angel’s Share) in Dublin, Ireland, bringing our total to an impressive 18! Big shout-out to London Labour Film Festival director Anna Burton whose “First Global Labor Film Festival Launches on May Day” column adapted our press release for the TUC’s blog and used the GLFF logo, linked to the GLFF, our list of labor film festivals, and of course the London Labour Film Festival’s GLFF screenings later this week. The AFL-CIO Now blog also ran a report on GLFF  on April 19, generating inquiries from across the country about organizing labor film festivals. 

Labor Film Festivals List Updated: With some labor film festivals coming up in May, schedules have been released so we’ve been busy updating our Current Labor Film Festivals list. Updates include the Australian International Labour Film Festival, which has an exciting program scheduled for May 4 in Wollongong; the WWMP/COSATU Labour Film Festival, which has an impressive line-up of films showing in 11 centres and townships nationwide from April 24 through May 22; as well as the Progressive Film Club in Dublin and  Labor Goes to the Movies in New York City, both mentioned above.  Another new addition is the Bristol Radical Film Festival in Bristol, South West England, which runs its main program in February but also does screenings during the rest of the year.

Check out all these festivals online and go to www.workersunitefilmfestival.org to see our schedule and buy tickets online @TIX.xom

Our Ticket Window Is Open for 2013

April 23rd, 2013

We have an amazing line-up of 26 programs at three venues for the Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival.

Films from HBO pros - Joe and Harry Gantz - American Winter - with a stellar panel of commentators, to brand new films from first time Directors, such as Mujeres Pa'alante (Women Moving Forward) about domestic workers in Spain fighting for workplace rights.

We have films about incredibly brave women and mothers in Bangladesh, many survivors of current day "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory" fires in the sweathsops in Bangladesh, risking their lives to form labor unions. Films came in from China, about the young workers from the world's largest workforce, in the age of Apple and Foxconn and their universal hopes and dreams - In Dreamworks China. 

And we are lucky to receive a beautiful new film, just premiered at the Museum of Modern Arts Documentary Fortnight in February of this year, Your Day Is My Night, by the film artist and social documentarian - Lynne Sachs. Her film brings us right into the lives of our neighbors in Chinatown, who share bedrooms in shifts out of economic necessity. We pass these wonderful people everyday - rushing through their neighborhood, but never really see them or the lives they lead. Lynne takes us there.

We have films from the incredible Tami Gold, on how teachers fighting for their rights in Oaxaca, Mexico really did start a revolution, won a major victory, then had to fight back again as the government tried to crush their victory and imprison their leaders- Land, Rain and Fire and Frozen Happiness.

Their are music videos about paying back the Fat Cats (I Wanna Be A Pirate) and short narrative films about workers taking their due from nasty owners(Let It Be War). We've tried to cover the range from educational to entertaining fun, with even a neat cartoon fairy tale about taxing the rich thrown in for good measure. (Tax The Rich: An Animated Fairytale).

So many films, so little time and you can see one program, one full day of entertaining and eye-opening films, or buy the full week pass for only $60! Full Day passes are $12, senior and students $9 and single program passes are $8, seniors and students $7.

Please check out our schedule, read about the films and click this link, here, or on our www.workersunitefilmfestival.org site and look for the TIX logo to buy your tickets.

Our 2013 Workers Unite Film Festival Schedule is Online!

April 10, 2013

After many months of searching out great new worker/labor films and going through the archives of historical labor films, we here at The Second Annual Workers Unite Film Festival have come up with an eight day long program plus an extra evening at one of the biggest unions in NYC, SEIU1199.

Our eight day schedule, which you can find on our website under "2013 Schedule" tab, covers many of the themes that effect working people today as the stuggle to make ends meet, or to find a new job, during this very difficult economy. We have films on being fifty and out of work, films about immigrants seeking to find a decent job in their new home - anxious to make a contribution to their new communities. Our films are as close as our own backyard, here in NYC (Cafe Wars and Judith:Portrait of a Street Vendor) to as far away as the men who tear apart de-commissioned oil tankers with their hands and simple tools in the deserts of Pakistan (Iron Slaves).

We have films about the African American men who fought for dignity on the job and in their union as steelworkers - one of the most dangerous jobs in America, to mothers in Bangladesh who must put their children with their own parents due to 15 hour days in the sewing factories of high fashion sweatshops. These are the same women who survived a recent "Triangle Shirtwaist" style fire in Bangladesh, where over 111 young women perished because the exit doors to the factory were padlocked shut. One hundred years plus after the deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC and we are still fighting the exact same battles.

Please look through the whole schedule. Find some programs that look intereseting, then go online - by next week - and buy tickets!! We have kept ticket prices as low as possible so as many of you as possible can attend at least one program, or one full day of amazing films. Tickets are $7.50 for one show (online sales may incur a service charge) $11.50 for a full day of films!! And $59.00 for a full 8 days of educational and emotional programming about the lives and struggles of workers and their unions all over the globe.

This year we are particularly honored to join with twenty other worker/labor film festivals around the world - known as The Global Labor Film and Video Festival on May 16th. On that day we will screen films on labor issues in China, Pakistan, Mexico, Slovakia, from all over the U.S. and a film about the merchant marines whose work took them from one end of the earth to the other. And that's just one day of the festival!

We plan to have either the directors or speakers at most of these events, many of them currently engaged in the worker struggles for labor rights and dignity in the workplace. We want to put these films into context so that we all come out of the theater with both a better understanding of our places in the global fight for labor rights and the motivation to get out their and participate in whatever actions are possible to make these rights a reality.

So please take a few minutes to check out the huge list of films and pick out at least a few to come view. If you can afford it, we'd love to have you visit our homepage and make a small donation to help keep building the festival for this year and coming seasons.

Finally - on April 17th at the Gap on 34th Street

Apr. 17: Protest at Gap in NYC -- End Sweatshop Death Traps Now!

April 17 • 12:00 pm

Gap store, 60 West 34th St (near Herald Square), New York, NY

Liana Foxvog (liana@ilrf.org, 413-320-7276)

Since 2006, more than 600 garment workers have died in preventable fires while sewing clothing for companies like Gap, H&M, and Walmart. Two years after 29 workers died in a fire at a Gap supplier in Bangladesh, Gap is still refusing to pay for reforms and join with other companies in a binding fire safety agreement that includes worker representation. Until there is real change, any day there could be another factory fire with workers locked inside.

JOIN A BANGLADESHI FACTORY FIRE SURVIVOR AND LOCAL ACTIVISTS TO CALL ON THE GAP TO PAY 10 CENTS MORE PER GARMENT TO SAVE WORKERS’ LIVES!

At the protest, meet:

SUMI ABEDIN is a Bangladeshi garment worker who survived the November 24, 2012, fire that killed 112 workers at Tazreen Fashions, a factory that supplied Walmart, Disney, Sears, Dickies, and produced US Marines logo apparel for Delta Apparel / Soffe. Sumi was working on the 4th floor of the factory at the time of the fire and survived after jumping from the burning building.

KALPONA AKTER is the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), one of Bangladesh’s most prominent labor rights advocacy organizations, and is herself a former child garment worker. BCWS is regarded by the international labor rights movement and by multinational apparel companies as among the most effective grassroots labor organizations in the country. Levi Strauss & Co. calls BCWS “a globally respected labor rights organization, which has played a vital role in documenting and working to remedy labor violations in the apparel industry in Bangladesh.” Kalpona is an internationally-recognized labor rights advocate and has traveled widely to speak about the deplorable conditions that Bangladesh garment workers face every day. She was interviewed extensively by local and international media following the deadly fire at Tazreen Fashions in November 2012.

This action is sponsored by Corporate Action Network, International Labor Rights Forum, Retail Action Project, SumOfUs, SweatFree Communities, and United Students Against Sweatshops.
More info: http://laborrights.org/gappetition

Spread the word on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/360229954083676/

For more than a decade, Gap, Walmart and other major brands have produced clothes in Bangladesh factories that they know are fire traps. As a result, since 2006, over 600 apparel workers, mostly young women, have died in what could have been preventable factory fires. Now, two major apparel makers—PVH/Tommy Hilfiger and the large German retailer, Tchibo—have signed a legally-binding fire safety agreement that calls for independent fire inspections of all of the Bangladesh factories they use and requires them to pay for the necessary measures to make these factories safe, and to give their workers a say in how to accomplish this. Gap and Walmart have refused to join that agreement and Walmart continues to obstruct efforts to achieve fire safety in the factories it uses in Bangladesh as reported in The New York Times on December 5, 2012 (“Documents Indicate Walmart Blocked Safety Push in Bangladesh”). It’s time for Gap and Walmart to address their history of deadly negligence and take responsibility for workers’ safety before one more avoidable tragedy occurs.