HBO Documentary Tells Workers’ Story in Stella D’oro Strike
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The documentary “No Contract, No Cookies,” which began airing this month on HBO2, puts a very human face on what is becoming an all-too familiar and tragic story. Byrnwood, a private equity firm bought the family-owned Stella D’oro bakery, which had been a part of the Bronx community since the Depression. Many of its 136 employees, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 50, had worked there for decades.
The new owners forced workers to strike by demanding pay cuts of as much as $5 an hour and stripped-down benefits. For 11 months, the employees, who hailed from 22 different countries, marched together in unity and solidarity.
Finally, an administrative law judge ruled in the workers’ favor and ordered all the employees reinstated. But the joyous victory was short-lived and bittersweet. Just one day after the workers came back to the job, the new owners announced they were closing the factory and moving the work to Ohio. Now, two years later, the factory stands shuttered like so many other manufacturing plants in this country.
The documentary puts faces with the numbers. “No Contract No Cookies” is all about the workers and what their experience has meant for them. In about a half hour, the film makers Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill show us what happens to communities and lives when greed trumps everything else.
Check your local listings for times the documentary will air.
‘The Last Truck’: HBO Looks at Plant Closing Through Workers’ Eyes
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Just two days before Christmas 2008, workers at the General Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, watched their livelihood and the lifeblood of their town dry up as their plant shut its doors for good. A new HBO documentary, “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” which first airs on Labor Day, offers poignant personal testimony about the impact of the decline of American auto manufacturing on this tight-knit Ohio community.
While the layoffs of the 2,500 workers and 200 management staff was bad enough, thousands more of their friends, neighbors and family would lose their jobs as businesses that serviced the plant—suppliers, restaurants, retail stores—were forced to close for lack of business.
In the documentary, “Popeye,” a toolmaker, simply states what the decline of manufacturing means to him and to the American Dream:
My grandson will have a worse life than I had.
HBO’s press release about the documentary points out the real extent of the damage from the closing:
…the GM workers lost much more than jobs, including the pride they share in their work and the camaraderie built through the years. To the natives of Moraine and the greater Dayton area, General Motors wasn’t just a car company—it was the lifeblood of the community.
