Strike

In the California apple country, 900 migratory workers rise 'in dubious battle' against the landowners. The group takes on a life of its own—stronger than its individual members, and more frightening. Led by the doomed Jim Nolan, the strike is founded on his tragic idealism—'courage, never submit, or yield'.

Like most of the people in her town, Karen Silkwood works at the local nuclear plant producing highly radioactive plutonium. Exposed one day to a lethal dose of radiation, Karen faces the blank walls of corporate indifference and denial. As her illness increases, her protest grows louder and she becomes an obvious danger to the powers that be.

A strike at a French sausage factory contributes to the estrangement of a married filmmaker and his reporter wife.

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America.

Quick-witted young Maya comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the profane supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers' union has assigned organiser Sam Shapiro to bring its 'justice for janitors' campaign to the building. Sam finds Maya a willing listener, she's also attracted to him. Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and management may be set to collide.

In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory in Turin, Italy.