"American factory": le premier documentaire du couple Obama est une charge contre Trump

Plutôt discret du côté de l'implication politique depuis son départ de la Maison Blanche, le couple Obama sera au coeur de l'actualité demain puisque Netflix diffuse le premier documentaire de la maison de production du couple. "American factory" devient le premier document produit par la maison Higher ground et il démontre que le secteur manufacturier est toujours sur le déclin. On s'intéresse à la complexité du problème et aux nouveaux défis auxquels est confrontée l'économie américaine.

 "The movie begins in December 2008, at the early days of the Great Recession, as the GM plant is shuttered and 10,000 local jobs are lost. The movie then jumps seven years, to 2015, when Fuyao reopens its new sprawling facility in the old factory to great fanfare, hiring a workforce of thousands of American workers and a pool of transferees from China to help them.

But the revival of the factory is far from glorious. One worker says she made $29 per hour “and some change” at GM; at Fuyao, it was $12.84. An early attempt for the workers to organize is met with a warning. When Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) appears at the factory’s opening ceremony and calls for United Auto Workers representation, the Fuyao executives are blindsided. The chairman of Fuyao, Cao Dewang, makes clear that were that to happen, the plant would be shuttered again.

A chunk of the movie focuses on the U.S.-China culture clash that sets in as Chinese workers arrive to work in the plant and as Fuyao tries to impose new standards on the American workforce. In one instance, an American worker complains that the lunchroom’s three microwaves, the only means of a hot meal during breaks, have been on the fritz for weeks. In another part of the factory, a Chinese worker seems unfazed by the reality that he has little time for lunch at all, as he feasts on a diet of just two Twinkies."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/20/obama-trump-2020-227627