Rating: NR | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: October 18th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Level Ground Productions
Director(s): Stephen Maing & Brett Story

We are volunteers and we aren’t afraid.

It’s an insightful look at grassroots union organizing by a new generation looking to prove they won’t be strong-armed by their employers or the union establishment. The guerrilla footage is the sort of damning content that used to guarantee change back before billionaires could spend millions to not have to pay thousands while flying to space on a whim.

However, it also feels somewhat incomplete in its centering of Chris Smalls’ undeniable successes while glossing over his shortcomings by leaving them as aftermath reactions sans context. And considering the post-vote work has yet to be started let alone finished, the whole moral victory of it all followed closely by defeats and fracturing (as quick epilogue vignettes again lacking context) makes it feel more futile than hopeful.

But I’m a cynic. Maybe the time for moral victories being enough hasn’t yet passed.

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A scene from UNION featuring Chris Smalls; courtesy of Level Ground Productions.