If you could just start by speaking about the demands of the Teamsters at UPS, during these contract negotiations, as well as UPS's response to those demands?

Sure, yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

You know, the film follows, like you said, the 2023 contract negotiations, and it was really in response to the previous contract that they had five years ago from that in 2018, which was full of losses.

There were huge concessions.

that were made, and it was really a huge step back for the workers.

And so in 2023, they had a new president, that was Sean O'Brien, and a whole new sort of approach to organizing in that he said from the very beginning that they would not be working a single day past their contract expiration without a new contract.

Why was juxtaposing the old footage with present-day perspectives important for you when making this film?

If you could just start by speaking about the demands of the Teamsters at UPS, during these contract negotiations, as well as UPS's response to those demands?

Sure, yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

You know, the film follows, like you said, the 2023 contract negotiations, and it was really in response to the previous contract that they had five years ago from that in 2018, which was full of losses.

There were huge concessions.

that were made, and it was really a huge step back for the workers.

And so in 2023, they had a new president, that was Sean O'Brien, and a whole new sort of approach to organizing in that he said from the very beginning that they would not be working a single day past their contract expiration without a new contract.

Why was juxtaposing the old footage with present-day perspectives important for you when making this film?

So having a certain amount of autonomy kind of makes sense sometimes, but it's I was wondering if that presented any sort of challenges for you, the fact that, you know, it's a big country and Teamsters are all over the place and they could be doing different jobs under different labor law.

Well, I can answer first.

It was important when we had our team meeting in the very beginning and decided, oh, let's all work together.

Let's all make this film together.

Where should we point the camera that we wanted to be sure we had an ensemble cast.

We didn't want to just film with just one person, though shortly you can tell you could do a whole series with Tony and multiple seasons.

But we didn't want the film just to be about Tony.

We could learn a lot from one another, and I'll leave it at that.

And I was really curious since we already tackled it on the podcast years ago, how does that play a part? How does the old strikes back in the day play a part in the story of today?

S- so much, so much [laughs] is, is the short answer.

[laughs] People that were involved in the '97 strike are, were forever changed as, as anyone is when they participate in any of these large strike solidarity actions.

It's hard to describe the way they see themselves before and then after.

And when they are after and they feel their power and they know that type of leverage, there's no looking back.

And so a lot of the film, a lot of what was happening now with the Teamsters was those guys are aging out.

The many subtexts, uh, and themes that were going throughout the film was this idea of, of, uh, intergenerational solidarity and inheritance, and the things that we inherit from people that came before us, and then what type of responsibility do we then have for those that come after us.

And one always have to bring up the, the late Jane McAlevey whenever we're talking about the strike muscle.

But why and how did you decide to do it that way? And then once you did decide to do it that way, was it hard to pull off?

Everything we do is very hard to pull off.

We're [laughs]...

It's all very hard, and this is a very masterful, [laughs] talented team, um, that makes everything look easy.

I, I mean, we, we don't have any lower thirds, right? Those texts on the bottom of the screen that says someone's name and typically what their job or relationship is to the story you're telling.

We didn't do any of that, and that was certainly by design.

We went back and forth a lot, but y- you know, it just turns into...

There's like a million things I could say here that I do think make me wonder or, or fear as, like, someone trying to make great labor films that, like, there is kind of like a narrow historical window in which the, like, labor film, as you're describing it, Dan, could have existed within.

But why and how did you decide to do it that way? And then once you did decide to do it that way, was it hard to pull off?

Everything we do is very hard to pull off.

We're [laughs]...

It's all very hard, and this is a very masterful, [laughs] talented team, um, that makes everything look easy.

I mean, we, we don't have any lower thirds, right? Those texts on the bottom of the screen that says someone's name and typically what their job or relationship is to the story you're telling.

We didn't do any of that, and that was certainly by design.

We went back and forth a lot, but, you know, it just turns into...

And so as a result, it's mostly

Yeah.

There's 340,000 people that are represented on this contract, and so that makes it the largest bargaining unit in the country, and 6% of GDP goes through, through UPS every single day.

So like you said in the intro, if UPS had gone on strike, y- the- we would've felt it.

Everyone would have felt it.

I was living, at the time of production, um, in northern northern California, I like to call it [laughs] Like, uh, four hours north of the Bay Area.

And I have medication that I need to get, uh, shipped to me, and I got an email from my pharmacy saying, "Hey, we think this might be, UPS might be going on strike, so w- we're gonna need to send your medication early or find another provider to get it to you." Um, you know, for me, that's sort of life-threatening.

Mm-hmm

...

Let's talk a little bit about that.

at UPS on this contract, they are both part-time and full-time workers.

And UPS has a structure where most workers start off as part-timers and they have to work for a certain amount of time and then they can become full-time workers.

And the difference in pays is just astronomical.

And 60% of workers under this UPS Teamsters contract, 60% are part-time, but because the pay is so bad, And the hours are so shitty.

They have the split shifts.

They it's like hard to make a living and support a family off of those part-time wages.

So thank you for putting that in because I think it's important for people to understand there's no perfect agreement, but however, there's some good points being made here.