Everything arrives by someone

Food orders, Amazon boxes, the whole convenience economy runs on delivery workers. The injustice they absorb is one of the few things you can call a global fact.

“an indisputable global fact is the injustices faced by countless workers who deliver everything we have come to rely on”

Hard work, thin pay

Delivery staff work in conditions that are often less than ideal and sometimes outright unsafe. Dignified wages have not followed.

Kopple gets fiery

Oscar winner Barbara Kopple takes the subject on directly in "Union Town," a documentary that does not pretend to be neutral about who is getting squeezed.

Built on real court cases

The film follows a set of recent legal fights unfolding in New York, using the cases as its spine rather than leaning on talking heads.

“Focused on a variety of recent legal cases unfolding in New York”

Angry and hopeful at once

Kopple tracks delivery staff, union leaders and Teamsters pushing for change in a system she frames as increasingly corrupt. The anger is matched by faith in the community doing the pushing.

“both aptly angry and optimistically community-minded”

A trilogy completed

"Union Town" closes the arc Kopple began with the Oscar-winning "Harlan County U.S.A." and continued in "American Dream," moving from coal country to city streets.