Workers Of The World, Unite: 10 Best Movies About The Working Class

From offices to factories to docks to mines, the plight of workers has been explored in film many times over. While it may be difficult to grasp the long-term impacts of globalization and economic changes on the labor force, most people know jobs can be a real drag sometimes. Low wages, long hours, and unsympathetic bosses are just a few of the discouraging realities employed people are forced to contend with, and the films on this list explore different ways workers rebel against these unfair conditions.

Some of the movies below are based on real events, while others give fictionalized accounts of struggles anyone who has ever had a job will understand. Ranging in tone from hilarious to deadly serious, these flicks give a creative voice to the folks who get their hands dirty every day while barely making ends meet.

10 Blue Collar (1978)

One of the most potent working-class features ever, Blue Collar is the debut film from Paul Schrader. Starring Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor, and Yaphet Kotto, it follows three Detroit autoworkers who, despite being unionized and salaried, wrestle to make ends meet for their families.

Schader is most famous for writing the screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s films Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and Blue Collar is imbued with the same gritty realism that shakes viewers to their core. In the film, the three desperate for cash men decide to rob their local union office, only to discover their union bosses have been scamming them by siphoning funds. Eventually, they are pitted against each other by those in charge, who exploit class and racial divides in order to amplify tensions between the men.

9 The Navigators (2001)

British director Ken Loach is responsible for this dramatic look into the privatization of British Rail. Inspired by real-life attempts to privatize train operations in different parts of England during the ’90s, The Navigators focuses on five men whose careers as railway maintenance workers in Yorkshire are transformed for the worse when their organization is bought up by East Midlands Infrastructure.

Some of the men take severance pay and move on to other jobs, while others stay on. Without any consultation or warning, the new management imposes drastic changes, from pay to procedures, that make conditions for those who remain unbearable. By the end of the film, only one of the five men remain with the company, renamed Gilchrist, and his contract is about to expire.

8 Germinal (1993)

A French film adapted from an epic novel by Emile Zola, Germinal tells the story of the 1884 strike at the Voreux coalmines. The film’s protagonist is a man named Maheu, who works endless hours in the mines with his wife and daughter. When a new mine worker named Etienne joins Maheu’s team, the two soon develop a bond, and Etienne encourages his team leader to organize a strike.

While reluctant at first, Maheu finally organizes a massive strike after the mine’s owners begin talking about cutting wages despite maintaining unsafe and deplorable working conditions. Without blinking an eye, the owners respond to the uprising by hiring armed soldiers to defend the mines.

7 9 To 5 (1980)

This comedic masterpiece stars Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda as employees at Consolidated Companies who are constantly harassed, verbally abused, and sexually objectified by their misogynistic boss, Franklin Hart Jr. After spending a night together at a bar fantasizing about all the way they’d like to ruin his life, a series of strange events culminates with the women kidnapping Hart.

While he’s away, the women make the office much more equitable, and the absence empowers the mostly female staff to get their work done instead of cowering in fear of retribution from Hart.

6 On The Waterfront (1954)

Elia Kazan’s Oscar-winning film about an authoritarian union boss with mob connections who rules the New Jersey docks stars a young Marlon Brando as a former boxer who gets a job as an errand boy for the mobster, Johnny Friendly. As Terry Malloy, Brando plays a man stuck between a rock and a hard place: needing a paycheck while becoming more implicated within Friendly’s nefarious network.

After he witnesses a murder, Malloy decides to cooperate with authorities, becoming an informer under the guise of protecting other union workers from violent retribution.

5 Office Space (1999)

While this genre-defining workplace comedy from Mike Judge may be best-known for the scene where office workers take an annoying printer out to a field and smash it with baseball bats, Office Space is a smart and commanding satire about the reality of cubicle life within hierarchical, for-profit companies.

Ron Livingston stars as Peter, an Initech computer programmer who decides one day that he’s going to stop working. Peter shows up when he wants, plays games when he’s around, and employs passive resistance tactics to take a stand against the ethics of the modern workplace. To his amazement, Peter’s behavior lands him a promotion, a testament to just how out of touch managers are with their employees.

4 Matewan (1987)

Another movie based on true events, Matewan investigates the famous 1920 coalminer’s strike in Matewan, West Virginia. In the film, Stone Mountain Coal Company has a stronghold over the town, setting wages that affect the quality of life for everyone. When a labor organizer named Joe Kenehan, played by Chris Cooper, arrives in town in order to empower mine workers to rebel against their circumstances and demand better wages, the exhausted and disenfranchised immigrants and minorities who compromise most of the workers decide to strike.

The company responds with violence and displacement, forcing striking families out of their homes. The strike escalates to an all-out war in Matewan’s main street as the company hires mercenaries to intimidate residents.

3 How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Iconic director John Ford’s working-class saga spans 50 years in the life of a Welsh mining family, starting in the Victorian era and tracing the deterioration of both the family’s town and way of life. The family, the Morgans, suffers abuse, mining deaths, strikes, and endless hazards below while barely making enough money to feed themselves.

Despite their experience and expertise, the Morgans are eventually pushed out because their company would rather employ cheaper, more inexperienced labor in order to maintain their bottom line: accruing as much profit as possible.

2 Tout Va Bien (1972)

A cheeky political film from French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Fonda stars in Tout Va Bien as an American journalist working in France as a correspondent. Along with her husband, Fonda’s character Susan visits a sausage factory that happens to be in the midst of a strike.

The employees of the factory have taken their boss hostage while demanding better wages and conditions from both their employer and union. Susan documents the workers’ waves of anger, political beliefs, and demands for economic justice.

1 The Salt Of The Earth (1954)

An important fictionalized account of the long-forgotten 1951’s Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico, The Salt of the Earth‘s release led to its screenwriter, producer, and director being blacklisted during the Red Scare due to its radical themes.

In the film, mirroring the real events of the strike, the wives of disenfranchised Mexican-American miners picket on behalf of their husbands, causing the mining company to retaliate with legal action. While the filmmakers hired a few professional actors, the vast majority of the cast is composed of miners who participated in the real strike, giving the movie a neo-realist aesthetic.

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