“No Somos Maquinas: We Are Not Machines” will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick, Feb. 2 at 5 p.m., and will also be available online that day.
The New Labor organization — which started out in New Brunswick, and now has centers in Newark and Lakewood as well — is the subject of “No Somos Máquinas: We Are Not Machines,” a documentary that will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick, Feb. 2.
As the documentary — which is directed by by Mark Nistico, and was created in association with The National Employment Law Project — shows, the “New” in “New Labor” is crucial. Because the organization was created in response to new realities of today’s work world.
New Labor members, as shown in “No Somos Máquinas: We Are Not Machines.”
The organization’s executive director, Lou Kimmel, says in the documentary that it “started with an idea back in the mid-’90s … from an entry level position up to supervisory, work was becoming much more mobile, and people were bouncing back and forth from job to job, looking for better pay or better benefits. We were noticing here in New Brunswick that a lot of workers were working for temp agencies, and a lot of those workers happened to be Latino. And these were the kinds of jobs that had no protections whatsoever.
“So the idea of forming New Labor was to create an alternative model. We’re an organization for folks that didn’t have access to a traditional union, at the moment, or didn’t have access to better pay and better benefits.”
In other words … the kind of full-time jobs, with benefits, that used to exist, now don’t. New Labor is a new kind of union, for workers in a certain geographic area who don’t necessarily work at the same job, or for the same company, or even in the same place from week to week, but are being taken advantage of, by the corporations that hire them. It does all the things that a traditional union does, advocating for better pay and conditions, providing training, and supporting legal action when necessary.
This film lasts about two hours and 15 minutes, and offers a thorough look at the struggles New Labor members face. Kimmel and other New Labor leaders talk about the organization’s history, and the way it is trying evolve from an organization that “puts out fires” (i.e., solves urgent problems) to one that is helping to stop those problems from arising in the first place. Most of the film, though, is devoted to interviews with workers, who describe difficult work situations they have had, and the ways in which New Labor has been able to help. Subtitles provide English translations, when someone is speaking in Spanish; and Spanish translations, when someone is speaking in English.
This is not a neutral documentary. If there are any New Labor detractors out there, they are not shown. While there is much criticism of corporations, and the temp agencies they use to supply the workers they need (that is more cost-effective than hiring full-time employees on their own, it is explained), no one is shown defending their practices. (Perhaps they were given a chance to, and declined).
On the other hand, perhaps you could say this is all in line with New Labor’s mission, which is to give power to the powerless. And the fact remains that “No Somos Máquinas” is still worth viewing, for anyone who wants to find out what is going on, today, in the factories and warehouses and corporate offices of New Jersey, and beyond.
“No Somos Máquinas: We Are Not Machines” will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, Feb. 2 at 5 p.m., and will also be available online that day. Visit newjerseyfilmfestivalfall2024.eventive.org/schedule.
For more on the film, visit wearenotmachinesfilm.com.
For more about New Labor, visit newlabor.org.
Here is the film’s trailer:
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