Top 10 Union Movies
Waiting for 'Superman,' 2010
In Davis Guggenheim's documentary, which was heralded on a TIME cover last September, five bright-eyed children must apply to private charter schools because their lust for learning is stymied in the public-education system. The film counterposed two indelible images: of the kids' anxious faces as they waited hopefully for their numbers to be called in the charter schools' lottery, and of New York City public-school teachers languishing in a "rubber room" as they waited, for months or years, to be brought up on charges of incompetence. It's no wonder that "Superman" was the recipient of teachers' dirty looks, since it says that the two unions covering most public-school instructors are bloated with bureaucracy and indifferent to children's intellectual welfare.
Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2008, but his new film wasn't even nominated, probably because the left-wing, pro-labor voters in that category perceived "Superman" as a takedown of unions. Indeed, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to strip teachers and other government workers of their bargaining rights simply gives a Tea Party twist to Guggenheim's argument that private-sector teachers are more caring and inspiring, not to mention cheaper. A recent Wisconsin Policy Research Institute poll, though, indicates that Walker misread the voters' zeal for union busting. Nearly 60% favor the teachers' union, with 36% against, while only 43% approve of Walker, with 53% opposed.
Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker and professional agitator, may be right when he says that Walker and the far right have awakened the sleeping giant of organized labor. They may also arouse the once potent genre of union movies. Right now, someone in Hollywood must be pitching a story about crusading teachers and striking state legislators. On studio lots, you might even hear a chorus of the old "Union Maid" song: "Oh you can't scare me, I'm stickin' to the union/ I'm stickin' to the union 'til the day I die."