In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as hi... Read allIn post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.
- Won 1 Oscar
- 19 wins & 49 nominations total
- Self - Furnace Off-Loader
- (as Bobby)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDirectors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert previously worked on the short documentary The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2009). It is about how the plant was shut down by General Motors, a topic in this movie.
- Quotes
Himself - Fuyao Safety Director: Everybody at every level will say that we really, really want to be safe. But safety doesn't pay the bills.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Oscars (2020)
The Chinese management team that comes in doesn't always care about safety or the environment, but they're brutally efficient and drill their workers like an army or Communist party members, the latter of which is ironic, since the workers are so far from the ideals of communism, e.g. having real power and sharing the wealth of their labor. Meanwhile, one seriously wonders whether Americans can compete in this space, having been "spoiled" by prosperity and earlier times when they made a decent salary. You know, how dare they want a good work/life balance!
Where the documentary falls short is in not showing us the treatment of these workers under the American company beforehand; it really could have used a one hour segment on that. If it had taken the time to do so, we would have seen the same problematic behavior from American corporate executives squeezing every last drop out of their workers for the sake of the bottom line, ultimately leading to outsourcing manufacturing to overseas workers forced to work long hours, often away from their families.
The only effective means of worker power is through unionizing, and both Chinese and American executives resist it mightily, using pages from the exact same playbook, like targeting leaders and paying for propaganda campaigns. In a sense, the American executives going overseas was like finding a pool of scabs to cross the picket line. As one of the state congressmen observes in speaking to the workers, corporate profitability and treating workers respectfully via a living wage are not incompatible things, and it's shameful that they're treated that way out of unfettered greed in extreme capitalism. (Hmm, if only there was an international labor organization, lol)
It seems to me it's a system that spirals upon itself further - when you distribute the wealth so incredibly unfairly in a country, the vast majority of consumers can't afford to pay the premium for a product that was made by unionized hands. They often don't have the economic freedom to do that, or to do things like shop at a mom 'n' pop shop instead of some corporate goliath like Wal-Mart, because they're living paycheck to paycheck and every penny matters. The result is to further drive the system in the direction it's going. Suddenly the middle-class starts dwindling and people are hoping more for a miracle ala the lottery than thinking they can truly make it. The documentary doesn't mention any of this so I'm guilty of rambling on here, but it did make me think.
The ending sequence is sobering as well, showing management practically salivating over robotics taking the place of workers - you know, those pesky things on the payroll that do all of that complaining, sometimes get sick or pregnant, etc. Hey, we can drive costs down by just replacing them with machines! It's too bad no one asks any of the executives the difficult moral questions, like what the right thing to do is, or how they justify their behavior. Overall though, well done, and pretty chilling stuff.
- gbill-74877
- Jul 27, 2020
- How long is American Factory?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
- 1.85 : 1