FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival

Metro Ladies Blues – 2018 (30 min.) By Video Press (Japan)

Subway lines run through Tokyo’s underground like spider nests. There are many non-permanent workers working in kiosks at these stations. Their pay won’t go up however the years they have worked compare to permanent workers. Four years ago, for the first time in their lives, they, many of them are over 60, decided to form a union. The company fought against them by pushing the 65 year old retirement policy to kick them out without any retirement money. These women decided to go on strike, and this is their story.
http://vpress.la.coocan.jp

Phansi, Down with Labour Brokers – 2018 (64 min.) By Tariq Richards (S. Africa)

More than twenty years since the end of apartheid, disparate groups of workers for whom very little has changed – failed by the state, betrayed by a corrupt and outdated traded union movement, subjugated by modern labor brokers.
Over the past 20 years capitalism has transformed so that bosses are selling labor to other bosses but worker protections in the form of industrial unions has not transformed in accordance. – In South Africa the lack of transformation among the working class is captured through the eyes of Jacob, whose life is transformed from unfairly dismissed worker to budding young film-maker through his interactions with the Casual Workers Advice Office.