With his “Who Moves America,” Yael Bridge has made a well-rounded documentary about the 2023 contract negotiations between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. On paper, it sounds like a tedious exploration of labor contracts, but the documentary is really about something much bigger: what happens when hundreds of thousands of ordinary workers realize just how much power they have when they act together.
The stakes are enormous, especially when you consider that UPS employs roughly 340,000 union workers (and the company moves millions of packages around the world every day). A strike could have brought that entire system to a standstill and potentially become one of the largest in U.S. history. Bridge captures that tension without losing sight of the people underneath the numbers.
The film gives an unprecedented amount of intimate access. It follows a California delivery driver preparing to cast his first strike vote, a New York Teamster who remembers walking the picket line during the 1997 UPS strike, and a part time Kentucky warehouse worker trying to balance night shifts, college, multiple jobs, and the question of whether she can actually afford to walk away from work. Their stories make the negotiations feel personal. Issues like extreme heat, wages, scheduling, family responsibilities, and job security stop being abstract talking points and become questions that affect people’s lives every day.
Bridge also does a great job connecting the 2023 fight to the past. Archival footage from the 1997 UPS strike gives the current negotiations a sense of history and shows that the struggles of one generation can shape the expectations of the next. Those moments are especially effective because they’re a reminder that labor victories rarely happen in isolation. Workers inherit both the gains and the unfinished battles of those who came before them.
What has stayed with me most, though, is the film’s portrayal of collective action. These 340,000 workers came from different backgrounds and had different reasons for wanting a better contract, yet they managed to build a common purpose. They organized meetings, coordinated messaging, held practice pickets, and prepared for the possibility of a nationwide strike. The film makes a convincing case that this kind of solidarity (and not individual heroism) is where real leverage comes from.
And that’s what makes the documentary so inspiring, compelling, and relatable. It shows that the threat of a unified workforce can be enormously powerful, even before anyone walks off the job. By putting real faces and stories to that idea, “Who Moves America” turns a major labor negotiation into a deeply human story about dignity, solidarity, and what working people can accomplish when they move together.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 