Another Successful Film Screening and Discussion

 Taste of Hope (2019, directed by Laura Coppens) documents what happens after workers win their fight with multinational giant Unilever to take over the Fralib tea processing and packaging plant in the South of France, near Marseille. In 2010 Unilever announced plans to close down and dismantle the factory, but after 1336 days of resistance, principally by occupying the plant and refusing to leave, the workers at Fralib forced Unilever to turn the factory over to them, and they subsequently resumed production as the Société Coopérative Ouvrière Provençale de Thé et Infusions (SCOP-TI). Taste of Hope observes workers begin to take on the challenges of insuring their product can succeed in an oversaturated, highly competitive market, dominated by giant firms maintaining much greater market power. Major challenges also include doing administrative jobs these workers previously didn't, while learning, from scratch, about marketing, distribution, accounting, and financial management. SCOP-TI also ambitiously strives to make steadily more of their teas entirely from ingredients harvested by local farmers, while manufacturing all organic teas as well as infusions from all natural ingredients. Following our screening of Taste of Hope, on May 8, we discussed examples of other groups of workers who might well be capable of success in owning and managing their own companies, as well as why many people do not recognize these capabilities of theirs. Audience members appreciated SCOP-TI workers and filmmakers honestly depicting the difficulties involved in competing as a cooperative enterprise, founded upon democratic and egalitarian principles, in a capitalist economy, including many disagreements among workers about how best to do so. People appreciated the respect Taste of Hope shows for the dignity of work, for the skill and intelligence of workers, and for the idealism and sacrifice required in order to bring about major changes that sharply depart from 'business as usual'. And we eagerly began to explore the question the filmmakers propose Taste of Hope ultimately poses: 'How do we need to work today so we might live a better world  tomorrow?'

Next in the Social Justice Film Series: From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock

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