All Together Now: The Collective Hero Stars in Who Moves America

An Interview with Yael Bridge

As socialism makes a comeback in public consciousness, Who Moves America zooms in on union organizing and working class struggle. The 87-minute documentary focuses on the 2023 showdown between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and United Parcel Service, as workers gear up for a possible strike. The documentary is directed by Yael Bridge, who was Emmy-nominated for producing 2017’s Saving Capitalism, about former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. In 2020, Bridge produced and directed The Big Scary ‘S’ Word, about socialism. Who Moves America takes a close-up look at salt-of-the-earth members of the Teamsters, that feisty, fabled union founded in 1903. This was the last film to receive Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding – which could explain why Trump put the CPB on the chopping block. CounterPunch interviewed Yael Bridge via Zoom in Portland, Oregon.

What is Who Moves America about?

Yael Bridge: There’s a difference between theme and plot. The film is really about solidarity and the democratic processes at its core.

Who Moves America follows UPS Teamsters during the 2023 contract negotiation. We follow a few different people in different parts of the country, as well as the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien in D.C., during the negotiation process and lead up to when their contract would expire in what was potentially one of the largest strikes in U.S. history. The UPS Teamsters’ contract is [for] the largest [private sector] bargaining unit in the country… They’re one of the largest unions in America… the fifth largest… The people that work there have a huge amount of leverage and power over our economic system. So, it was obviously something we were very interested in exploring.

It is about how people work together and about things we can only do when we do them together. That is what a union is. It’s just democracy in practice, and the practice of building solidarity, which is not something that just happens.

What is the significance of UPS in the U.S. economy?

UPS is the largest distribution company in the country. They’re far larger than FedEx or DHL or USPS… It’s something like a third. I didn’t realize how much bigger they were than everyone else when we started the film. 6% of GDP goes through UPS every single day. They’re so powerful.

Who owns United Parcel Service?

It’s a publicly owned traded company. Shareholders own UPS… It’s a corporation.

How many people work for UPS?

The bargaining unit for this contract was around 340,000 workers.

Some people who work for UPS don’t belong to the Teamsters?

There are plenty of people that work for UPS that are not unionized and are not part of this contract.

What industries do Teamsters work in?

They are largely truck drivers, and in logistics. There’s Teamsters Hollywood; they’re the stunt coordinators and the animal handlers. It’s not industry specific; there’s lots of different people.

In terms of the background of the Teamsters, for a period of time they had a notorious history. Jimmy Hoffa was believed to be a very corrupt leader.

Yeah. The Teamsters have a noted history, certainly, with Jimmy Hoffa. UPS was always Teamsters. When UPS was founded, they were always unionized, which is unique.

How about the leadership now? Are they scandal-plagued?

No, not at all. Sean O’Brien came in and the president right before him was Jimmy Hoffa Jr. And Sean O’Brien campaigned very vigorously on winning. The last contract they’d had in 2018 was full of concessions and it really was considered a big step backwards. When Sean O’Brien campaigned, he campaigns saying, “We’re going to be a fighting union again. We’re not going to work past our contract expiration.” It was really very adamant about him going on strike and standing firm. I think that that campaign rhetoric really inspired not just his election winning, but really putting the wind behind his sails, with all the workers feeling galvanized and enthusiastic about what was possible. And then he was able to harness that to get a good contract in 2023.

When O’Brien ran, was he part of a reform ticket?

Without getting into too granular the Teamsters’ inner workings, he ran in coalition with TDU, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which is the reform caucus within the Teamsters.

Your documentary essentially takes place in 2023, but there are lots of flashbacks to 1997.

1997 was the last time the Teamsters had gone on strike. It was a really big strike and they won a lot of victories in that contract. So, it is this north star that we found that a lot of workers are really talking about. “Can we go back to our roots? Can we go back to this really big strike?” which helped the people that worked there feel their power and agency. So, we were keen to bring that element back in. It was one of the main throughlines because organizing is cyclical, and you can win something and then it goes away after all of these concessionary contracts. And you have to go out and fight for it again. As people are aging, they’re not there anymore. You lose that history and institutional knowledge of what that was like. And so, a lot of people were feeling, “I was here in ’97, and this is my contract. I’m retiring and these young people here don’t know what it’s like to go on strike. Don’t know that type of solidarity.”

So much of being a Teamster is this concept of what comes after you’re gone. They call them the unborn, the Teamsters-to-be. You don’t work at the Teamsters yet but you will in five years. We are fighting so that you, future Teamster, can have a good job and benefits and all these worker protections and stuff. That’s something that gets reinforced when you do go on strike and you see the benefits you’re fighting for play out over the decades. We really want to hit hard that theme of intergenerational solidarity.

What were the Teamsters’ top contract concerns and grievances in 2023?

There were several main things they were really focusing on. A big one was a two-tier pay structure they have for a category of worker called the “224,” which was created in the 2018 contract negotiations. It’s sort of jargony, but basically it just meant you got to keep your rate, but if you started working after the 2018 contract, you were coming in as this different category of worker that was created called 224, where you would get paid less. So, even though your job would be virtually identical, to everyone that came before you, you were paid substantially less. You had less protections. So, they really, really wanted to get rid of that and bring everyone up that was a 224 to where they would have been had there not been that category of worker.

Another big one was air conditioning being put in the trucks. People are literally dying in their trucks because they’re getting too hot. As we all know, climate change is real and catastrophic and people are working in areas where the temperatures are just increasing and increasing. Without air conditioning in these trucks, it can get upwards of 140 degrees. So, it’s too hot, and you’re outside all day, delivering packages, doing this really hard physical labor, and there’s no air conditioning.

With this two-tier system was there a discrepancy not only in wages but in terms of the benefits that parttime and fulltime workers would get?

That’s even different from the 224 category. The parttime and fulltime divide at UPS… generally, if you’re a fulltime worker, you work in a truck and do deliveries. And if you’re a parttime worker, then you work in the warehouse doing sorting and packaging or pre-loading. Those are different categories of workers with different benefits and wages. They’re both on the same contract, even though the job description and benefits and wages are different. Another thing they were trying to do with this contract was to bring those wages closer together… so they would be in more collaboration and solidarity.

Describe the Teamsters’ rank and file?

Working at UPS as a Teamster is one of the few jobs that you can get without a college degree and make six figures and get a pension. So, it is a really important job in a lot of communities that otherwise aren’t able to make that much money.

…What’s exciting about the Teamsters is that it is a really diverse membership. It cuts across not just racial, age or gender but the political divide, as well. Traditionally, Teamsters are more conservative, certainly than maybe UAW, and are also an incredibly powerful fighting union. We were really interested in exploring the nonpartisan nature of the work they were doing without getting into the Republican/Democrat divide.

Where did you shoot Who Moves America?

We filmed largely in San Marcos, California, and in New York City and Louisville, Kentucky.

A lot of the workers there are Black and Hispanic.

Yeah…

What did the Teamsters’ union do to prepare for a potential strike during the contract negotiation period?

One thing they did to prepare for the strike was to go out on practice pickets in front of the warehouses and facilities. That meant the workers would go set up a picket line, and really get ready, and have their signs ready, and generate press and really show the power they have to UPS. To be able to show them: “Look, we can close this entrance.”

Those were not just educational for them, it also helped generate a lot of really supportive buzz in the press. And it ended up being something that helped turn the tables in those negotiations… This was definitely not a contract negotiation that was last minute at all. They had been preparing for it for years. You begin your contract fight as soon as you sign your current contract, you start getting ready for the next contract. There’s certainly a cyclical nature to this work. So, they’ve been preparing for a long time and we’d been filming for a long time, as well.

Let’s discuss some of the key individuals in your film, starting with the most prominent person, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sean O’Brien.

Sean O’Brien is from Boston. He does come from a Teamsters family. Personally, I heard him speak at Labor Notes before I’d even thought about filming with him. I just thought he was a really dynamic speaker, he really motivated the whole room.

Tell us about some of the other organizers and union members in your film?

We filmed with Antonio Rosario in New York and Antoine Andrews. They were around in ’97 and have been involved in the union for a long time and also do some work around organizing Amazon. Just were able to show us what it is like to have a union job for so long, and how you’re able to provide for your family and raise children and have a decent house with that kind of job.

We were filming in San Marcos with a bunch of guys who called themselves “Strike Force” who were gearing up, preparing themselves for a long time for this contract negotiation. They would meet very early in the morning before their shift would start at a local deli and go over what was going on that week in their job, and going out around the country. There were several people in there we filmed with, and the one that’s most depicted in the film is Justin [Alo]. He’s a father of two and was a 224 category worker. He’s just sort of getting into the organizing efforts and seeing what it’s all about and is this a good use of his time and energy and how to implement change.

In Kentucky, in Louisville, we were filming with two sisters, Angel [Badu] and Nailah [Weller], who both worked for UPS. One of them was in college and one of them had already graduated, and they were working parttime [at UPS] and they had other parttime jobs, as well, at a McDonald’s and a Walgreens, I think.

Regarding the contract negotiations, what was the outcome?

They got huge gains from this contract. Not only did they get raises for part-timers and for full-timers and they got air conditioning being put in their trucks. They had fans put in to retrofit some of their trucks. They also got MLK Day as a national holiday. They got an ability to transport your job from different locations.

What percent of the UPS workers voted yes?

I believe 80-something.

Why were some UPS workers holdouts who didn’t sign the new contract or vote “yes”?

I’ve been hanging around a bunch of unions and union organizers for some time now and filmed with several contract negotiations. There’s an interesting and necessary thing that happens where you’re ramping up to what could be a strike, or maybe is a strike. You’re a worker and you’re feeling your power and it’s exciting, and you think you’re going to get all of these things. Then ultimately, you get to a point, whether this is in a contract negotiation or a strike, and you get a TA, your Tentative Agreement, this is what the negotiating team and company have landed on. Then you have to decide as a worker: Is this for you? Is this everything you want? Do you think you can get more?

That is such a scary and personal situation. Because maybe for you, it is good enough, but maybe for your neighbor it’s not. Maybe he needs something a lot more. And, you can go on strike, and will you get everything – or will it go horribly wrong? That’s just different people’s threshold for risk and reward. For some people, this was an amazing contract and more than they could ever hope for. For some people, it wasn’t good enough and they think they could have gotten more.

Then there’s another category that says there’s value in going on strike, even if you get what you would have gotten had you not gone on strike. There’s value in going on strike in and of itself, because of all the work that you do, and the connections and solidarity that is built, and putting fear into the bosses… That power can’t be comparable to a comparable win in terms of wages, there’s not a monetary value necessarily for that.

Something that comes across in Who Moves America is that the UPS workers seem to have a sense of solidarity that transcends their union and they realize that a victory for them is a triumph for the entire working class. Tell us about that class consciousness?

Certainly, the subtext for the whole movement we were documenting is Amazon, and Amazon is just this giant, unorganized workforce. So much of what was motivating Teamsters and the workers through this past contract negotiation was trying to show force and flex their muscle for organizing Amazon workers. There was so much solidarity around the people that work at Amazon. Also, as a historical footnote, this was happening during a “Hot Labor Summer,” so there were strikes happening all over the place. The Writers Guild and SAG were on strike, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s workers were starting to organize around then, there was a lot of labor fever. It felt like had the Teamsters gone on strike this would have really pushed things a lot forward in that direction.

Even though the UPS workers didn’t actually end up walking off the job, the moral of your story seems best summed up by Frederick Douglass in 1857: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Yeah. People are really tired right now. It’s a really exhausting time to be human… Reflective in that quote, is okay, I just submit, I can’t keep fighting this. But that is losing, the concession. What these Teamsters showed is how much they weren’t willing to do that anymore. One of the things that struck me most about the Teamsters was that there was an offer that was just going to raise the wages of the drivers. It was a disproportionate raise for the full-timers and a very, very low wage for the part-timers. And the part-timers have a huge amount of turnover, because the job is not very good and is very, very hard… it’s grueling, very unpleasant. There isn’t necessarily incentive to fight for the part-timers because they will literally be gone very likely. Yet, they voted not to take that deal, to say no, we want to fight, even for the part-timers. There’s a huge lesson for all of us: Even if you get a bit for yourself, it really needs to be spread out among all of us. And if you don’t do that, then it is just this slow walk towards death… you just keep losing.

Yael, the last full-length documentary you directed was 2020’s The Big Scary ‘S’ Word, about socialism. Is there a socialist faction inside the Teamsters’ union?

I think there’s a socialist faction everywhere… in every space. Whether there’s socialist organizers within the Teamsters is not depicted in the film.

Your film is being released while we seem to be having something of a socialist moment. Democratic Socialists of America and other leftists are winning and competing – well, maybe since they’re socialists, that’s the wrong word, so let’s say “contending” – strongly in elections. Socialism is being discussed – if not exactly intelligently debated – in what passes for America’s public discourse. Your film is rooted not in intellectuals or academics but in actual class struggle, your protagonists are blue collar workers, real working class heroes. It’s not theory – it’s practice.

They are working class heroes. [Laughs.] Thanks Ed, I feel seen… It is their lives. I think they are heroic. It is also ordinary. What I am interested in is not heroes, in the traditional sort of Marvel superhero and they fly or whatever! You also see in documentary a lot – I think it’s a huge problem – here’s a film about public schools, but it’s really about a single teacher and how hard her job is and how she gives so much. You leave the film and you’re moved – “She’s such a beautiful soul, she’s so generous.” That’s not unique to her – that’s most teachers. And the film doesn’t talk about why it’s so hard for her. As a viewer, it’s incredibly disempowering. You don’t know where to put your emotions, your energy.

Who Moves America has lots of heroes; it’s an ensemble cast. We didn’t want to focus on just one person. It’s about how we’re able to work together and collectively. Any one of those people in the film could go to their supervisor and say, “I’m really hot. Could I get an air conditioner put in my truck?” And we laugh because we know that would never happen… But if you get everyone together and you all say, “We need air conditioners put in our trucks or we’re not going to work anymore,” suddenly you’re all going to get air conditioners.

We can all be heroes. That’s not a magical thing someone is born with; that’s something we need to find more examples of, which aren’t hard to find. They’re everyday. We just don’t see them a lot in our movie screens and books. So, how do we shift the stories we tell ourselves so we can see ourselves in them and be the heroes we need to be?

Who Moves America is executive produced by Steven Bognar, who exec produced and co-directed 2020’s Best Documentary Oscar winner American Factory, co-made with Julia Reichert. The day before Reichert quoted Marx in her Academy Award acceptance speech, at the Spirit Awards I asked Reichert – who’d previously been Oscar-nominated for the 1976 and 1983 documentaries Union Maids and Seeing Red, which was about Communist Party USA members – if she thought “socialism is the answer to income inequality?”

Reichert replied: “Do I think socialism is the answer for our country? We should all. . . share the wealth. We should tax rich people more than they are. Healthcare should be for all. It’s more like what I would call ‘democratic socialism feminism.’”

Yael, how would you answer that question? Would a form of socialism solve the problems of Teamsters and other proletarians?

We have an extremely unequal distribution of resources. That is indisputable and unconscionable. I don’t understand – I’m always looking for ways to address that and level the playing field. Unions are one of the many levers we have for flattening this just insanely unequal access to resources that people have. The dangers of these unequal resources aren’t just that they’re unfair or it means I might die sooner because I don’t have health insurance… It’s impossible to have democracy and such unequal access to resources…

How do you define socialism?

I am on the board of the DSA Fund. There are many ways we can get to a more equitable and democratic world. One of those is at the ballot box, and we see that with more Democratic Socialists campaigning and winning and then doing an incredible job in office, and that gives me lots of hope. And another of the levers we have is labor unions, and that’s what I was focusing on in this film.

We’ve covered a lot of ground. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Another of our executive producers is [author/filmmaker] Astra Taylor. The team is so strong. Everyone on the team has a background in making labor films. It’s a collaborative effort.

What are some of your favorite labor films?

…I love everything Boots Riley does…. I Love Boosters feels like a really good companion piece to our film, it ends where our film picks up. I really love Union that Stephen Maing and Brett Story directed about organizing the Amazon Labor Union with Chris Smalls. One of their producers, Mars Verrone, produced our film as well.

Who Moves America is being screened 5:00 p.m., Sept. 5 at the Socialism Conference in Chicago and theatrically opens Sept. 9 (the exact 50^th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s death), including some Q&As at screenings with Yael Bridge. See: https://www.whomovesamerica.com/screenings.

Ed Rampell was named after legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow because of his TV exposes of Senator Joe McCarthy. Rampell majored in Cinema at Manhattan’s Hunter College and is an L.A.-based film historian/critic who co-organized the 2017 70^th anniversary Blacklist remembrance at the Writers Guild theater in Beverly Hills and was a moderator at 2019’s “Blacklist Exiles in Mexico” filmfest and conference at the San Francisco Art Institute. Rampell co-presented “The Hollywood Ten at 75” film series at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and is the author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States and co-author of The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.