Bread and Roses (2001) 1 hr. 50 min.
This film provides a good contrast to Norma Rae in addressing the subject of unions. Norma Rae’s struggle is to unionize mostly white, Southern textile workers; in this film Maya (Pilar Padilla) hopes the union can improve the lot of mainly Latino office cleaners in Los Angelos. But many of the issues – individual powerlessness to change the system, resistance to change versus longing for a better life – are the same. You might want to show clips from one film and the whole of the other to give students a sense of the similarities and the contrast.
Maya immigrates illegally to the US, where her sister, Rosa (Elpidia Carrillo), finds her a job, first in a sleazy bar, then at an office-cleaning company. Although the pay is only $5.75 an hour and there are no insurance or other benefits, jobs are so hard to get for these mainly illegal immigrants that the boss, Perez (George Lopez), tells Maya, “Do you have any idea how lucky you are? People are begging me for these jobs.” The arrival of union organizer Sam (Adrien Brody) disrupts this uneasy balance. Some workers are violently anti-union, and even those who are pro-union are afraid to speak out.
Discussion Questions for Bread and Roses