American Factory is a short investigative documentary about a Chinese auto-glass company that opens up in a previously abandoned factory in Dayton, Ohio. Fuyao Glass America is the American expansion of a Chinese company that is trying to expand into America. They opened up in the old General Motors plant located in Moraine, Ohio, a neighboring city of Dayton. The area fell into hard times when the plant closed in 2008 when the recession struck. This greatly affected the local economy of both Dayton and Moraine because the plant offered well-paying jobs to the many workers that were employed, and they were unionized. When Fuyao acquired the factory in 2014, people were grateful to have the factory reopened but they would soon learn that Fuyao had different ways of doing business. In order to get the glass-making process going, Fuyao brought over some of their top-employees from China to teach the American workers how to do their new jobs. Overall, the American workers loved the company of their new mentors. Some even considered the Chinese mentors to be family, similarly to how all the workers would get along in the old days when GM was running its operations there. Some American workers invited the Chinese workers over for dinner and other friendly activities. The relations between both workers were very good.
https://www.wcbe.org/post/fuyao-fined-violations-moraine-plant
On the other hand, the management saw the American workers as very lazy and having bad work ethics. This is mostly based on the difference in work cultures between China and America. When the documentary followed a trip for a few American workers back to Fuya0’s headquarters in China, they got to see the work ethic that the Chinese management desired. The workers there were extremely disciplined, they had daily briefings in the style of military regiments where they saluted their bosses. The workers also had much longer shifts such as twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with only one or two days off during the whole calendar year. This came as a culture shock to the American workers. However, the Chinese workers did not seem to be bothered by their work and shared about how grateful they were to even have those few days off. On the other hand, the American workers were trying to Unionize at Fuyao to get benefits that the Chinese workers in the Chinese Mainland could never expect to get due to their labor laws. This shows how the Chinese government has othered its own population. They have indentured the people into a form of slavery that they know they have no way of escaping. However, they just see it as normal because that is normal in China. While it is hard to say that the Chinese population knows about their role, the ruling class knows that it is, and they keep the population from finding out otherwise. It is unfortunate that this industrial master-slave relationship has developed and it will be very hard for it to be changed in the future. Overall, American Factory is a very unique look at a very unique collaboration of cultures. It shares both the positives and negatives of this situation, but the documentary does have an overall negative undertone due to Fuyao’s shady business practices, by American standards. It shows how both American and Chinese workers have much in common but they are not given the same liberties. This documentary gives hope to the viewer showing that peoples are not evil, but rather the ruling classes that dominate them. On the other hand it shows the disparities of human rights that some people have to experience, simply because of where they were born.
https://www.ft.com/content/fc354542-f8df-11e9-98fd-4d6c20050229