American Factory

Hi-tech China meets blue-collar America when co-directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert return to the recession-hit Ohio factory that provided the subject of their 2009 short film The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. It's 2015, seven years after the closure, and Chinese billionaire Chairman Cao is about to launch a state-of-the-art glass-making facility in the old General Motors factory, providing employment and hope for the former workforce and his Chinese employees. So far, so progressive, but it's not long before a clash of cultures occurs between efficiency-driven management and safety-conscious American workers, with the former expecting 12-hour shifts, no weekends off, no chit-chat and definitely no union representation - an Ohio senator's mention of unions at the factory's opening ceremony is like a slap in the face to Cao and his entourage. Indeed, the company uses a "union avoidance consultant" to dissuade the increasingly disgruntled workers from signing up. It's a tad long, but Bognar and Reichert's fascinating, Oscar-winning documentary is still a prophetic snapshot of things to come in a world increasingly subject to automation and globalisation.