Directed by Barbara Kopple
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Documentaries can often show us in the worst of times, the best of times. They can also remind us of history—whether we’ve come far or are, simply, repeating it.
Harlan County, USA, the 1976 film about the strike of coal miners working in Harlan County, Kentucky is shockingly familiar—the indifference Duke Power shows to its workers and their well-being, the lies they tell to support their case feels a lot like corporate America today.
In 1973, coal miners working at the Brookside Mine endured horrendous conditions. They were paid far below a living wage, the “homes” the company provided were little more than dirt hovels without running water, and a day at work also included the possibility of death—cave-ins and explosions took the lives of hundreds of miners across the country a year. All this, plus the job would probably eventually kill them: the daily inhalation of coal dust often results in coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, better known as black lung.
So the workers went on strike. Along for the bumpy and emotional ride, which would last almost a year and would see the election of a new national union president and the murder of a would-be one, was documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple, who, wisely, forgoes narration letting the workers and their wives tell the story by letting cameras into their homes, meetings, and thoughts. It’s the story provided by the women that’s often the most striking—while the men seem too beat down from years of abuse at the hands of their corporate overlords, the women take control and organize the group. They fight not only for their men and children, but also for a better way of life not just for themselves but for their neighbors and the generations to come.
Eventually, the threat of violence permeates the air: scabs, angry foremen, and other ranks of hired thugs show up at the picket line with baseball bats and guns. You can feel the tension between both sides and the longing from some of the most bitter and angry of the company men (especially one pathetic husk named Basil Collins) to just give them a reason. As the police don’t seem to care much to intervene in what was brewing, I can only guess the cameras pushed off the violence for as long as it did.
Lawrence Jones was shot in the face with a shotgun. His death left a 16-year-old bride and a newborn daughter. His legacy also included a real bargaining session by the union and Duke Power resulting in a contract for the workers. A contract that would last all of three months when the national chapter would “negotiate” away a lot of what Harlan County had fought for especially the thing that was and should be most precious to workers—the right to strike.
Throughout the film it's clear the only advocates the workers have are each other. The union is political and most concerned about cutting deals for the health of the organization. Duke Power—the corporate giant who is at the center of the piece—sees its work force as nothing more than trained monkeys who exist only to make them rich. To be sure, it’s the leaders of these groups who do the most damage—publicly going against their own word, spreading lies about the workers and conditions on job sites (including one dozy about no evidence of black lung being tied to coal dust). The bottom line is while the union drowned in corruption and Duke Power made a profit of 100 percent in 1973, workers received an embarrassing four percent raise—shadowed by a seven percent cost of living increase.
And that leads me to reflect on today: I don’t dispute we’re in a recession—but how can corporate America not bear some responsibility for it? Large companies all over America—Microsoft, anyone playing in the oil game to name a few—post profits and yet still engaged in massive lay-offs. Little attempt was made to reassign these workers. Just a pink slip and a swift kick in the ass as payment for their hard work. As a country, as a system, we have chosen profits over people. The argument of capitalism doesn’t work for me—I think there’s room for both, nay, there has to be room for both because without the worker and their sacrifices, there is no profit. Corporate giants are too blinded by Wall Street (another co-conspirator in our current economic woes to be sure) and analyst expectations (and that’s a distinction to make—it isn’t as if these companies didn’t turn a profit: they just turn less profit than they would have liked) to see the forest through the trees.
And that takes us back to Duke Power. I think the threat of giving a hard-working family man or woman a deadly respiratory disease should be enough for our country to really discuss alternative fuel sources to coal. That aside, consider this: Duke has been cited by the EPA for failure to comply with the Clean Air Act. Duke, who released 80 million pounds of toxins into the air in 2005, said the regulations had been arbitrarily changed over the course of 25 years and there was no way they could or should have to comply. Basically, they used the same defense my nephew makes when he gets a toy taken away: it’s not fair. Apparently if you’re a major corporation this approach works better than it does if you’re a child.
Maybe we need to start treating companies like Duke like the overgrown, spoiled brats they are. Perhaps then they’ll begin to appreciate the people who got them where they are—from the workers who slave away to make better lives for their families to the consumer who has to pay more and more for less and less (except fast food /sigh).
Or maybe we can continue to give government handouts to the companies who least deserve it. Where’s the line for TARP funds for the struggling small business owner who can barely make payroll but is loathe to even let go one of his or her employees? When will our government provide low-cost operating loans to privately owned community companies who will likely have to drop health insurance because the double-digit annual premium raises are becoming far out of economic reach—making them less able to compete for the best workers?
At then end of the day something has to shift. We have to get back to what made this country great economically—hard work and innovation. Maybe it would help if we all had a camera crew.
