The IBEW Media Department conceived and produced the video about workplace intimidation.
“Workplace Democracy: Corporate Style,” an IBEW-produced video that dramatizes the pressures and obstacles that individual workers endure in organizing campaigns has been nominated as one of the five finalists in LabourStart’s second annual Labor Video of the Year competition.
Says Media Department Director Jim Spellane, who wrote the screenplay:
We wanted to show how little power an individual worker has when their employer and the forces of wealth are arrayed against them. Many companies in the United States have gone extremely far in their efforts to squash workers’ efforts to organize, and we wanted to shine a light on that.
The video quickly went viral after it was posted to YouTube last year, being featured prominently on blogs like the Huffington Post, the AFL-CIO blog and Daily Kos.
Says Media Department International Representative Mark Brueggenjohann, who co-produced the video:
The theme hit home. It struck the right chord. I think that something that rings true will be successful, and our message rings true.
For the shoot, the IBEW’s in-house crew, led by Spellane and Brueggenjohann, cast union actors and filmed and edited the video at the IBEW’s International Office.
