25/52 - American Factory

 

American Factory (2019) - This was another one recommended by my husband some time ago that I finally got around to seeing. In a nutshell a Chinese billionaire opens a windshield factory in a former General Motors plant in Ohio. The community, which had been hit hard by the closing of the GM plant, is extremely optimistic at the idea of new jobs and opportunities that will be brought to the area, but not surprisingly the difference between Chinese and American work culture is shocking to all involved. From the executives right on down to the floor workers. The camera bounces back and forth between top level execs and the Chairman as they discuss moving items that have already been put into place, like the fire alarm system. The Chairman doesn't like it's positioning in the room. The execs explain it is legal code for it to be there. Chairman shrugs, basically indicating it can be moved to a spot of his liking anyway. The American execs are at a loss as to how to proceed. Add in the further wrinkle of handling this conversation through an interpreter and it's a fascinating scene to see play out over and over.

At one point several members from the American factory are sent to see how things are run in at their Chinese counterpart and the differences are quite startlingly as factory workers are interviewed about their lives and relay how many hours they work in a day and how often they see their young children. In one young lady's case it was once a year. Even still they can't wrap their heads around the American's shorter work hours, weekends off and just wanting time to be with their families. The general feeling is workers should be ready to fulfill any demands the factory has. Personally, having just wrapped up health and safety certification myself, the lack of safety systems in place in China and that were attempted to be circumvented in the American plant was truly shocking. And we haven't even touched on the classes to teach the Chinese workers who had been sent to work at the American plant how to work and interact with the slow Americans with their fat fingers, was bananas. It was truly an eye opening experience all around. 

I watched this on Netflix.