International Labour Day 2026| 6 Essential Films On Workers’ Rights

Labour struggles have become even more sharp-edged in this era of late-stage capitalism, with the pandemic driving economic uncertainty. The fight for workers’ rights is endless, involving unpredictable complexities on a daily basis. Mainstream cinema tends to elide and brush away messy, vital questions about workers on the lower echelons. They are rendered invisible and inconsequential. But there are a few bold interruptions—films that honour unity, camaraderie and solidarity among workers against routine oppressors.

These searing films reflect what it takes to build labour unions, demanding equal and fair treatment of workers and pushing for amendment of toxic, abusive workplace conditions and practices.

Héctor Olivera’s Silver Bear-winning classic zooms in on the brutal military repression of a slew of strikes during the early twenties by rural workers in the southernmost province of Argentina. But the knotty epic treads a lot of ground—imperialism, tense relations between immigrant and native workers, territorial skirmishes. The film spans the mobilisation of the workers on the sheep ranches of Argentina against layoffs, wage cuts, systemic abuse and the eventual military crushing. Between arrests and summary executions, more than 1500 workers lost their lives. This movie was quickly banned in 1976, following the last military coup in Argentina. In those fraught years, screening or owning banned material could get one kidnapped, disappeared or killed as a subversive.

In his 1981 classic, Polish master Andrzej Wajda trailed a union leader fighting for reform and the birth of the Solidarity movement. Winkel, a Communist-friendly radio journalist, is tasked with sourcing compromising information about a Solidarity opposition leader. But as he witnesses the protesting workers’ fight against political propaganda and defiance of an oppressive regime, Winkel begins questioning his own beliefs and his status within the regime. Garnering the Palme d’Or at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival as well as an Oscar nomination, it’s a classic of unrivalled cultural and political import. Released few months before Poland ordered strict union crackdowns, Wajda made a stunning protest film, weaving fact and fiction. There were consequences. The film turned Wajda persona non grata with the regime. His production company was cast out of business.

Drawing from real-life events, Matthew Warchus’ irresistibly lovely, winningly warm film unfolds against the backdrop of the 1984-85 miners’ strike against the Thatcher government in the UK. Thatcher famously branded the NUM (National Union of Miners) leadership as “the enemy within.” Pride compassionately maps the growing solidarity between the London gay and lesbian activists and the Welsh miners. Hesitation caves to acceptance, unexpected friendships flower and prejudices gradually dissipate. The climax, with the miners coming by the busload to march in the 1985 Gay Pride Parade in London alongside the L.G.S.M., is bound to leave you in a swell of happy tears.

Rubaiyat Hossain’s rousing film follows women garment factory workers fighting for their right. Beset with unpleasant work conditions, the 23-year-old Shimu decides to start a union with her co-workers in a Dhaka clothing factory. There are hostilities and clear threats from management as well as the antagonism from her own husband. But the women band together and persevere. Hossain skilfully brings together workers and women’s rights in a keenly observed drama that acknowledges the misogyny and exploitation in equal measure.

The enduring icon of proletarian resistance, Ken Loach, stepping into his eighties, delivered a searing takedown of gig economy. Since the mid-1960s, when he started out, he’s been inextricable from workers’ struggle. In Sorry We Missed You, Britain’s leading socialist filmmaker cast a broadside against living in a precarious economy, with zero-hours contracts. The profoundly empathetic drama about a delivery worker pushed to the brink and his family devoid of economic security or safety nets is as shattering as enraging. As Ricky puts it in the film, more people are churning from “one shit job to another shit job”, interspersed with spells of unemployment. Any long-term stability is nowhere to be found. Workers’ vulnerability is a constant, livid reality.

Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s fifth collaboration tracks the clash of cultures that occurred when a Chinese car-glass manufacturing facility opened in a previously closed General Motors plant in Ohio in 2014. The film takes a sprawling, complex look, roving across generations and into the deep past, while circling the American and Chinese workers grappling to get on the same foot. It’s a fascinating, intelligent study of class struggle, explaining how globalisation casts a shadow on workers and communities. The constant, hectoring tallies of productivity, questionable safety standards, wage cuts­—the dignity of workers is always at stake. As the management tightens its opposition to unionisation, the horrors of late-stage capitalism register in its full blow. American Factory took home the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.