From 2016 until 2019, a highly public conflict raged between the Swedish Dockworkers Union and the employer APM Terminals in the Gothenburg container port. From the workers’ perspective, the dispute, which led to a national strike and lockouts in ports across Sweden, was about working conditions and opportunities for influence in the workplace. In Gerdes’s film, the dockworkers reflect on the conflict two years later, and also on how working in the harbor impacts their relationships with family and friends. In contrast to most of the media reports about the negotiations, Gerdes’s film features the workers’ personal stories. An underlying theme is how the specific conflict illuminates the tension between a local struggle for democracy and justice and the global system and infrastructures that encompass jobs in the harbor through multi-national corporations and flows of goods.
Rent this work for public screeningsStrike Anywhere
Benj Gerdes & Jennifer Hayashida
2009, 00:32:00