There’s a story – important and real-life – behind 9 to 5, both the iconic workplace-revenge movie and the catchy Dolly Parton song.
It’s told compellingly in the new documentary 9to5: The Story of a Movement, the latest online installment of the Indie Lens Pop-Up cinema initiative. The film follows a group of clerical workers in Boston in the 1970s who, like their fictional big-screen colleagues, were fed up with low pay, demeaning tasks, little to no appreciation, and frequent harassment. They founded a support group of sorts, called 9to5, that grew into a national movement to empower women at work.
The 86-minute doc is screened and Karen Nussbaum, one of the two 9to5 founders, joins a live-chat discussion afterward. Also part of the panel is Valarie Long, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who has been instrumental in the union’s effort to address pay inequality, family and medical leave, and workplace violence against women.
The program also features remarks by the documentary’s director and producer, Julia Reichert, and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler.
The online event is co-presented by 9to5 and the AFL-CIO, Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement, Bud Werner Memorial Library, Charitable Film Network, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Coworker.org, Durango Public Library, Fight for $15, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Global Peace Film Festival, Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking, Jobs With Justice, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Labor and Working-Class History Association, Maryland Public Television, Meaningful Movies Project, Midwest Academy, National Employment Law Project, Panhandle PBS, PBS Hawai‘i, Pickford Film Center, Service Employees International Union, Tillotson Center, United Association for Labor Education, Upstate Films, WCTE Public Broadcasting, Working America, WSIU Public Broadcasting, Yale Film Archive, and Zinn Education Project. Support comes from ITVS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS.
