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Labor Studies

INVISIBLE HANDS

Director: Shraysi Tandon

'Invisible Hands' is the first feature documentary to expose child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world's biggest companies. It is a harrowing account of children as young as 6 years old making the products we use every day. 'Invisible Hands' marks the directorial debut of journalist Shraysi Tandon and is produced by Oscar winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson.

Participants include Kailash Satyarthi, Nicholas Kristof, Ben Skinner, Siddharth Kara and Mark Barenberg.

DVD / 2018 / 75 minutes

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WE THE WORKERS

By Wen Hai, Zeng Jinyan

Shot over a six-year period (2009-2015) in the industrial heartland of south China, a major hub in the global supply chain, WE THE WORKERS follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers, helping them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions. Threats, attacks, detention and boredom become part of their daily lives as they struggle to strengthen worker solidarity in the face of threats and pressures from the police and their employers. In the process, we see in their words and actions the emergence of a nascent working class consciousness and labor movement in China.

DVD (English, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 174 minutes

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BITTER MONEY

By Wang Bing

BITTER MONEY documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou, one of the busiest cities of eastern China (with the highest number of part-time workers), to labor in its textile factories. But what they find are few opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. The camera follows Xiao Min, Ling Ling, and Lao Yeh closely, capturing the emotions of their daily hard work and disappointments upon receiving their wages. The film deals directly with the effects of 21st-century capitalism, as filmmaker Wang Bing acts as witness to the lives of people forced to adapt to a new economic landscape.

DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 152 minutes

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LOVE & SOLIDARITY: JAMES LAWSON & NONVIOLENCE IN THE SEARCH FOR WORKERS' RIGHTS

Directed by Michael Honey

An exploration of nonviolence and organizing through the life and teachings of Rev. James Lawson.

LOVE & SOLIDARITY is an exploration of nonviolence and organizing through the life and teachings of Rev. James Lawson. Lawson provided crucial strategic guidance while working with Martin Luther King, Jr., in southern freedom struggles and the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968. Moving to Los Angeles in 1974, Lawson continued his nonviolence organizing in multi-racial community and worker coalitions that have helped to remake the LA labor movement.

Through interviews and historical documents, acclaimed labor and civil rights historian Michael Honey and award-winning filmmaker Errol Webber put Lawson's discourse on nonviolent direct action on the front burner of today's struggles against economic inequality, racism and violence, and for human rights, peace, and economic justice.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 38 minutes

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MAID FOR EACH, A

By Maher Abi Samra

Domestic work is a real market in Lebanon, segmented according to the national and ethnic origins of the workers and in which the Lebanese employer is master and the worker the property. Zein owns a domestic worker agency in Beirut. He arranges for Asian and African women to work in Lebanese households and assists his clients in choosing "mail-order" housemaids that will best suit their needs. Advertisement, justice, police are on his side. He decides to open his agency for us.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 67 minutes

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ENEMY WITHIN, THE

Directed by Owen Gower

The story of Britain's longest strike, the 1984-85 miners' strike, when Margaret Thatcher declared war on the unions, as told by those who lived through it.

THE ENEMY WITHIN provides unique insight into one of the most dramatic events in British history: the 1984-85 Miners' Strike. No experts. No politicians. Thirty years on, this is the raw first-hand experience of those who lived through Britain's longest strike. Follow the highs and lows of that life-changing year.

In 1984, a Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war on Britain's unions, taking on the strongest in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers. Following a secret plan, the government began announcing the closure of coal mines, threatening not just an industry but whole communities and a way of life.

Against all the forces the government could throw at them, 160,000 coal miners took up the fight. THE ENEMY WITHIN tells the story of a group of miners and supporters who were on the frontline of that strike for an entire year. These were people that Margaret Thatcher labelled "the enemy within".

Using interviews and a wealth of rare and never before seen archival footage, THE ENEMY WITHIN draws together personal experiences - whether they're tragic, funny or terrifying - to take the audience on an emotionally powerful journey through the dramatic events of that year.

DVD / 2014 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 112 minutes

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HAND THAT FEEDS, THE

Directed by Rachel Lears, Robin Blotnick

Shy sandwich-maker Mahoma Lopez unites his undocumented immigrant coworkers to fight abusive conditions at a popular New York restaurant chain.

At a popular bakery cafe, residents of New York's Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma Lopez has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.

Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.

DVD / 2014 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 84 minutes

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MINERS SHOT DOWN

By Rehad Desai

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress it, killing 34 and injuring many more. The police insisted that they shot in selfdefense. MINERS SHOT DOWN tells a different story, one that unfolds in real time over seven days, like a ticking time bomb.

The film weaves together the central point of view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling police footage, TV archive and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre. What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa's nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a twenty year old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all.

A campaigning film, beautifully shot, sensitively told, with a haunting soundtrack, MINERS SHOT DOWN reveals how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 86 minutes

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STORM MAKERS, THE

Director: Guillaume Suon

Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians work abroad, and over a third have been sold as slaves. Most are young women, held prisoner and forced to work in horrific conditions, sometimes as prostitutes. Featuring brutally candid testimony, The Storm Makers is a chilling expose of Cambodia's human trafficking underworld and an eye-opening look at the complex cycle of poverty, despair and greed that fuels this modern slave trade.

At the age of 16, Aya was sold to work as a maid in Malaysia. She was exploited, beaten and eventually ran away, only to be captured and raped. When she returns to Cambodia with an infant son, just as poor as when she left, her mother greets her not with joy, but with anger that her daughter has come back with yet another mouth to feed instead of money. "I should have died over there," says Aya in a singsong, childlike voice that masks the horrors she endured.

Pou Houy, 52, is a successful trafficker who runs a recruitment agency in Phnom Penh and claims to have sold more than 500 girls. Shockingly outspoken and expressing no remorse, he sees himself as a smart businessman and good Christian.

Pou Houy's enterprise relies on local recruiters who bring him candidates from their rural communities. One of these is Ming Dy, who sold her own daughter and continues to supply Houy with new recruits from her village. In one wrenching scene, Ming Dy's husband cannot bring himself to speak to his daughter when she calls from a new job abroad, where she earns a dollar a day. "I told my wife not to sell young people from the village," he says. "Buddha condemns those who sell people like animals."

As Amnesty International, the United Nations, other NGOs, and governments argue over the best way to protect vulnerable migrants, The Storm Makers shows the real consequences for individuals, their families and communities.

DVD (Khmer with English Subtitles) / 2014 / 66 minutes

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COAL MINER'S DAY, THE

By Gael Mocaer

"That's the fire emergency system. If there's a fire, it bursts and the water falls down," one of the mineworkers explains. He is talking about a few bags of water, all the size of a fist, somewhat haphazardly hung from the low ceiling of the mineshaft. "Like a huge waterfall."

Every day hundreds of men risk life and limb going down into the Buzhanska mine in the Ukraine to mine coal with rusty old tools from the Soviet era. It is heavy, unhealthy, hazardous work, which thanks to the relatively high pay - two to four times what people earn in the city - is nevertheless tempting to many young men. Once a year, they are honored during the Day of the Mineworker - another relic from the Soviet era, when the most deserving workers receive a rose from the director of the mine in a kitschy ceremony.

For the rest of the year the workers are ignored, pestered or intimidated by their bosses, and no one is concerned with their safety. THE COAL MINER'S DAY documents their work underground, their comradeship and dissatisfaction in and around the mine over the course of a year. Gradually overcoming the skepticism of the mineworkers, the filmmaker captures a series of oppressive, revealing moments.

DVD (Color) / 2013 / 80 minutes

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DETROPIA

Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

A vivid portrait of Detroit, America's first major post-industrial city, as it struggles to deal with the consequences of a broken economic system.

Detroit's story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century...the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

With its vivid, painterly palette and haunting score, DETROPIA sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution. These soulful pragmatists and stalwart philosophers strive to make ends meet and make sense of it all, refusing to abandon hope or resistance. Their grit and pluck embody the spirit of the Motor City as it struggles to survive postindustrial America and begins to envision a radically different future.

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 86 minutes

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HOUSEMAIDS

By Gabriel Mascaro

Housemaids are an integral part of the household in Brazil, and participate in the day-to-day life of the family. The employment of housemaids is almost obligatory among the middle and upper classes of the country. The vast majority of these housemaids are black women, who face high levels of inequality based on their gender, race and social class. Their role in the household raises important questions about public and private space, endurance and choice, and labor and family life.

For HOUSEMAIDS, director Gabriel Mascaro asked seven adolescents to film their family's housemaids for one week, and hand the footage over to him. Their images uncover the complex relationship that exists between housemaids and their employers, a relationship that confuses intimacy and power in the workplace and provides us with an insight into the echoes of a colonial past that linger in contemporary Brazil.

HOUSEMAIDS exposes and explores a hidden daily reality of Brazilian life.

DVD (Color) / 2012 / 76 minutes

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MEN AT LUNCH

Directorr: Sean O Cualain

New York City, 1932. The country is in the throes of the Great Depression, the previous decade's boom of Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants has led to unprecedented urban expansion, and in the midst of an unseasonably warm autumn, steelworkers risk life and limb building skyscrapers high above the streets of Manhattan.

In Men at Lunch, director Sean O Cualain tells the story of "Lunch atop a Skyscraper", the iconic photograph taken during the construction of the GE Building that depicts eleven workmen taking their lunch break while casually perched along a steel girder - boots dangling 850 feet above the sidewalk of 41st Street .This documentary takes the audience into the archival halls of Rockefeller Center and the Corbis collection to reveal never-before-seen artifacts from the news outlets of the Great Depression.

Part homage, part historical investigation, Men at Lunch is the revealing tale of an American icon, an unprecedented race to the sky and the immigrant workers that built New York. For 80 years, the identity of the eleven men - and the photographer that immortalized them - remained a mystery: their stories, lost in time, subsumed by the fame of the image itself.

DVD / 2012 / 67 minutes

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SHIFT CHANGE

Directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin

Investigates employee-owned businesses that provide secure, dignified jobs in democratic workplaces even in today's economic crisis.

Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work tells the little known stories of employee-owned businesses that compete successfully in today's economy while providing secure, dignified jobs in democratic workplaces.

With the long decline in US manufacturing and today's economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box, to reinvent our failing economy in order to restore long term community stability and a more egalitarian way of life.

There is growing interest in firms that are owned and managed by their workers. Such firms tend to be more profitable and innovative, and more committed to the communities where they are based. Yet the public has little knowledge of their success, and the promise they offer for a better life.

Amongst the organizations featured in SHIFT CHANGE are:

Mondragon Cooperative Corporation - Begun in the 1950s, the Mondragon co-ops have transformed a depressed area of Spain into one of the most productive in Europe with a high standard of living and an egalitarian way of life. They are owned and managed by their workers. Seeing the achievements of the MCC helps to overcome the idea-widespread in North America-that worker run cooperatives can only exist on the economic fringe.

The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, OH - This is an ambitious urban redevelopment model, directly inspired by Mondragon, where local institutions and public officials are supporting green cooperatives of previously marginalized, predominantly African American workers, who provide commercial laundry services, install solar energy systems, and grow vegetables in vast urban greenhouses.

Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, San Francisco, California - Started 30 years ago, there are now six of these independent worker owned and managed cooperative bakeries that work together to provide the financial and legal services they need, and to incubate new coop bakeries.

Equal Exchange, Boston MA: Founded in 1986, Equal Exchange is one of the largest roasters of fair trade coffee in the world.

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 69 minutes

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TIMBER GANG (AKA LAST LUMBERJACKS) (MU BANG)

Directed by YU Guangyi

Yu Guangyi's stunning debut explores a grueling winter amongst loggers in Northeast China as they employ traditional practices through one last, fateful expedition. A lasting testament to disappearing traditions, Last Lumberjacks "is a fascinating glimpse at a rare way of life that few will ever witness" (Ain't It Cool News)

For generations, the lumberjacks of Heilongjiang, China have made their living harvesting timber amidst a barren, wintry landscape. These woodcutters confront the elements, living in makeshift cabins surrounded by snow and ice. hand tools, sleds and horses are the only technology they employ to drag massive trees down the perilous slopes of Black Bear Valley. At constant risk of injury and death, they attempt to appease the mountain gods with ancient rituals and sacrifices. Despite their heroic efforts to subsist, the deforestation caused by their decades-long customs my lead to their ultimate demise.

DVD (Color, Northeastern Chinese dialect with English subtitles) / 2012 / 90 minutes

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INHERITORS, THE

By Eugenio Polgovsky

The most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years, THE INHERITORS by Eugenio Polgovsky immerses us in the daily lives of children who, with their families, survive only by their unrelenting labor.

The film takes us into the agricultural fields, where children barely bigger than the buckets they carry, work long hours, in often hazardous conditions, picking tomatoes, peppers, or beans, for which they are paid by weight. Infants in baskets are left alone in the hot sun, or are breast-fed by mothers while they pick crops.

THE INHERITORS also observes other labor routines, including the production of earthen bricks, cutting cane, gathering firewood, ox-plowing fields and planting by hand, and even more artistic endeavors such as carving wooden figures and weaving baskets to sell.

The indelible impression conveyed by THE INHERITORS, in which everyone-from the frailest elders to the smallest of toddlers-must work reveals how the cycle of poverty is passed on, from one generation to another.

DVD (Color) / 2008 / 90 minutes

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DEVIL'S MINER, THE

Director: Kief Davidson & Richard Ladkani

The Devil's Miner is an astonishing portrait of two brothers, 14-year-old Basilio and 12-year-old Bernardino, who work deep inside the silver mines of Cerro Rico, Bolivia. Raised without a father and living on the slopes of the mine, Basilio and his brother must work the mines when they are not in school to help support their family and afford supplies vital to their education.

In the mines, which date back to the 16th century, it is an ancient belief that the Devil determines the fate of those who enter. Basilio and his brother place their faith in the mountain devil's generosity, hoping to earn enough money so they can continue going to school - their only chance of escaping their destiny in the silver mines.

DVD (Spanish with English Subtitles) / 2006 / 82 minutes

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MOTHERHOOD MANIFESTO, THE

Looks at the obstacles facing working mothers and families and the employer and public policy changes needed to restore work-life balance.

Did you know that...

Only four countries in the world- Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea and the United States-fail to provide paid maternity leave to all workers? Canada now guarantees a full year of paid parental leave and California recently became the first state in the U.S. to provide such paid leave? Businesses that create flexible work environments find that productivity goes up, they attract more talent, turnover is reduced and their bottom line is improved?

Moving personal stories combined with humorous animation, expert commentary and hilarious old film clips tell the tale of what happens to working mothers and their families in America. See how enlightened employers and public policy can make paid family leave, flexible working hours, part-time parity, universal healthcare, excellent childcare, after-school programs and realistic living wages a reality for American families.

The film is based on the book The Motherhood Manifesto by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe- Finkbeiner.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned, With Guide) / 2006 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 58 minutes

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TRANSNATIONAL TRADESWOMEN

By Vivian Price

Inspired by organizers at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, former construction worker Vivian Price spent years documenting the current and historical roles of women in the construction industry in Asia - discovering several startling facts. Capturing footage that shatters any stereotypes of delicate, submissive Asian women, Price discovers that women in many parts of Asia have been doing construction labor for centuries. But conversations with these women show that development and the resulting mechanization are pushing them out of the industry. Their stories disturb the notion of "progress" that many people hold and show how globalization, modernization, education and technology don't always result in gender equality and the alleviation of poverty.

Celebrating a range of women workers - from a Japanese truck driver, to two young Pakistani women working on a construction site in Lahore, to a Taiwanese woman doing concrete work along side her husband - this film deftly probes the connections in their experiences. In a segment exploring the history of the Samsui women in Singapore (Chinese women who were recruited as construction laborers in the 1920's until they lost their jobs to mechanization in the 1970's) unique archival footage and interviews with surviving Samsui offer an importation perspective on the historical and global scope of women workers' struggles.

DVD (Chinese, Japanese,Thai, Tamil and Urdu, Color) / 2006 / 62 minutes

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CLARA LEMLICH: A STRIKE LEADER'S DIARY

By Alex Szalat

On November 22, 1909, New York City garment workers gathered in a mass meeting at Cooper Union to discuss pay cuts, unsafe working conditions and other grievances. After two hours of indecisive speeches by male union leaders, a young Jewish woman strode down the aisle and demanded the floor. Speaking in Yiddish, she passionately urged her coworkers to go out on strike. Clara Lemlich, a fledgling union organizer, thus launched the 'Uprising of the 20,000,' when, two days later, garment workers walked out of shops all over the city, effectively bringing production to a halt.

A dramatization of that incident, re-created in the Hollywood film I'm Not Rappaport, movingly introduces the documentary portrait CLARA LEMLICH, which recounts the life of the Ukrainian-born immigrant. Like thousands of other young women, Lemlich found work in a clothing factory where she worked 7 days a week, from 60 to 80 hours, for less than a living wage. In her burning desire to get an education Lemlich read widely and organized a study group to discuss women's problems. Her success as an organizer, which included numerous arrests and beatings by strikebreakers, eventually led to her election to the executive board of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union.

Lemlich's story is movingly recounted through interviews with her daughter and grandchildren, dramatic readings from her diary, family photos and archival footage, strike songs in Yiddish, an interview with labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris, a visit to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and excerpts from silent films of the era.

In addition to its biographical portrait, CLARA LEMLICH also chronicles the historic ILGWU strike, which demonstrated to the male leadership that women could be good union members and strikers. The union negotiated a settlement in February 1910 that led to improvements in wages as well as working and safety conditions. One of the companies that refused to sign the agreement was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where, the following year, a fire resulted in the death of 146 young women, a tragedy that galvanized public support for the union movement.

DVD (Color / Black and White) / 2004 / 51 minutes

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PHANTOM OF THE OPERATOR, THE

By Caroline Martel

This wry and delightful found-footage film reveals a little-known chapter in labor history: the story of female telephone operators' central place in the development of global communications. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Caroline Martel assembles a dazzling array of clips - more than one hundred remarkable, rarely seen industrial, advertising and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989 by Bell and Western Electric - and transforms them into a dreamlike montage documentary.

As the first agents of globalization, this invisible army of women offered a way for companies to feminize and glamorize what was a highly stressful, underpaid and difficult job. Not merely "Voices with a Smile", telephone operators were shooting stars in a universe of infinite progress, test pilots for new management systems, and the face of shrewd public relations campaigns. As the work of operators has been eclipsed by the advent of automated systems, this artful piece of labor history also offers an insightful comment on women's work, industrialization and communications technology. Refreshing and hilarious, The Phantom of the Operator provides a wry yet ethereal portrait of human society in the technocratic age.

DVD (French, Color, Black & White) / 2004 / 66 minutes

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LIFE 3: CHEATED OF CHILDHOOD

The International Labor Organization tries to rescue and rehabilitate the street children of St. Petersburg.

Once the glittering capital of Russia, the city of St. Petersburg and its magnificent metro stations have become home to a generation of street children who survive by begging, informal child labor or prostitution. The end of communism may have brought many positive economic changes in the lives of ordinary Russians, but it's also led to soaring rates of unemployment, alcoholism and family breakdown-driving children as young as seven to leave home to seek some kind of a living on the streets.

There are believed to be over a million homeless children in Russia, and in St. Petersburg alone, 16,000 children live on the streets. President Vladimir Putin has described the situation as the "most threatening of his country's economic and social indicators".

This installment of LIFE looks at the work of the International Labor Organization, whose efforts to rescue and rehabilitate these street children are a wholly new phenomenon.

With the support of the International Labor Organization; and the European Commission Directorate General for Development to promote better understanding of development issues.

DVD (Color) / 2002 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 23 minutes

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LIFE 3: DANGER - CHILDREN AT WORK

Guatemalan agencies try to discourage child labor and fireworks production by poor families.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in Central America; most Guatemalans exist on subsistence farming. But in the San Juan Sacatepequez region, where the land is poor, many have turned to producing fireworks at home. The practice has become the major source of income for 80% of the local people. It is a labor intensive process, and children often start working at the task by the age of six. There are no guarantees on how much families are paid for their labor, and no safety controls. Accidents are frequent. Many are fatal.

This LIFE installment looks at campaigns to persuade local people to consider safer ways of earning a living-ways that can also allow their children to go to school and gain the education necessary for sustainable development.

With the support of the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor of the International Labor Organization; the European Commission Directorate General for Development to promote better understanding of development issues; the Directorate General for the Environment.

DVD (Color) / 2002 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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CITY LIFE: STOP THE TRAFFICK

Investigates horror of child sex industry in Cambodia.

Thirty years of war has left Cambodia ravaged and poverty-stricken. Since the end of the brutal Khmer Rouge rule, poverty, corruption and global tourism have combined to make it particularly vulnerable to the child labor industry. Children as young as ten years old are trafficked into cities from rural areas to become sex workers or trafficked out to comparatively wealthy Thailand to work as beggars, domestic laborers, or laborers on construction sites. Most of the sex workers are girls, although some of the boys on the streets are working as prostitutes too.

With seventy percent of the Cambodian population living in rural areas, international trafficking gangs target poor rural families, often striking when times are hardest. They offer 'loans' in return for the children which then accumulate huge interest repayments, leaving the children trapped in 'debt bondage' for life.

This program from the City Life series investigates the trade and new efforts by the International Labor Organization and local groups to rescue the children and stop the traffic.

DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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STRUGGLE (ZHENG ZHA)

Directed by SHU Haolun

This powerful documentary explores the cruel realities of sweatshop labor and workplace injury in China, and one lawyer's mission to defend worker's rights.

Shenzhen, one of China's most prosperous cities, attracts thousands of migrant workers every year. These workers come with dreams of opportunity and success, but many find themselves in dangerous working conditions with no regulations to protect them. STRUGGLE tells the story of three workers who lost their limbs in factory accidents that are all too common in China.

The workers describe 17-hour shifts that leave them exhausted while operating heavy machinery, leading to disaster. Management denies responsibility for the accidents, often refusing to pay medical bills or compensate injured workers. But a crusading lawyer takes on the bosses, leading to a groundbreaking lawsuit that changes workplace regulations in China.

STRUGGLE examines one of China's most crucial problems underlying its booming economic production: the lack of worker's rights. With first-person interviews and rare courtroom footage, director Shu Haolun explains the exploitive policies and practices of government officials and factory bosses, and how lawyer Zhou Litai has taken up the cause of worker's rights. STRUGGLE reveals the harsh realities of sweatshop labor in China, and shows the inspirational efforts of those seeking justice and reform.

DVD (Color, Mandarin with English subtitles) / 2001 / 50 minutes

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LIFE: UNTOUCHABLE?

The caste system and bonded labor are still alive and well in India.

Veerasamy takes in washing for his living. He lives in a small village in southern India where all the inhabitants are dalits -- outcasts or 'untouchables' as they're known in India.

But even among the dalits, there are divisions, and Veerasamy belongs to the lowest scale of the hierarchy. The only payment he receives for back-breaking work, washing and steaming and drying the village's laundry, is to receive the left-overs from their meals to feed his small family.

Discrimination based on caste membership has been, theoretically, illegal since India first gained independence in 1947. But, as this Life program from Danish director Poul Kjar shows only too plainly, it's an accepted part of everyday life across the continent.

Whole families of dalit people exist effectively as bonded or slave laborers, cutting up rocks with their bare hands in a Tamil Nadu quarry. Eight-year-old children -- prized for their docility, hard work and dexterity -- work ten 12-hour days in India's silk factories.

There are an estimated 100 million child laborers in India. Human Rights organizations are now, finally, taking up the dalits' cause and, as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu urges in the introduction to the film, calling for the end of a system of discrimination as heinous as the former apartheid system he and his generation fought against in South Africa.

DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 24 minutes

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WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD

By Marie France Collard

Focusing on Levi Strauss & Co., WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD follows the relocation of garment production from Western countries to nations such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, where low wages are the rule and employee rights are nonexistent.

The film introduces us to women like Yanti, a 26-year-old Indonesian who works ten hours a day, six days a week, for $60 a month (the price of a pair of Levi's in Jakarta). Conditions at the factory are dreadful. There are five filthy toilets for 2000 women, and with no ventilation, the factory is an inferno. Any protest is met with immediate intimidation and increased surveillance until the offender quits.

WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD also presents the stories of her western counterparts who are losing their jobs. Maria Therese worked in the Levis factory in Yser La Basse, France, and was a union representative there. In interviews, she describes the work, the wage structure, and her negotiations with management and the government after the closure announcement.

Behind the new gospel of free trade are the real lives of women in the North and South. Filmed in Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, France, and Belgium, WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD puts these women's stories into the larger history and development of globalization.

DVD (Color) / 2000 / 53 minutes

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IT TAKES A CHILD: CRAIG KIELBURGER'S STORY - A JOURNEY INTO CHILD LABOUR

15 year-old child labor activist, Craig Kielburger, works for reform around the world.

Craig Kielburger was 12 years old when child labor activist Iqbal Massih was killed in Pakistan. He immediately went on a seven-week trip to South Asia. What he learned has turned him into a passionate, articulate and effective advocate on behalf of child laborers everywhere. He is determined to put child labor on the international agenda. He is 15 years old in this film.

He started a child-run organization called Free the Children, which now has 10,000 members worldwide. It directs lobbying and petition efforts at governments and big business. F.I.F.A. now won't put its logo on any soccer balls that are made with child labor. Free the Children has raised over $150,000 to buy children out of bondage and create a school for them, while raising world awareness.

Craig Kielburger has won the Roosevelt Freedom Medal and the State of the World Forum Award, and has been named a Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

DVD (Color) / 1998 / (Grades 5-12, College, Adult) / 56 minutes

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