Today (September 8) is Labour Day. Marked in the U.S. and Canada since 1894, it is perhaps the most ignored statutory holiday on the Hollywood calendar. Notoriously anti-union, the American movie industry has traditionally regarded organized labour as the enemy of its creative enterprise — defined by the major studios as the right to exploit creators and employ creative bookkeeping to enhance corporate profits. With a few notable exceptions, mainstream features are unsympathetic to the labour movement, its history and its achievements. “Like a union-buster’s dream come true, the America on the movie screen has been almost union free,” Ken Margolies wrote in a 1981 Screen Actor Magazine article. “When portrayed, organized labor’s image on film ranges from inaccurate to sordid.” In 1954, the year that union membership peaked in the U.S., income inequality (defined as the share of income going to the top 10 percent) was at it lowest point on record. Hollywood’s response was On the Waterfront, a nasty little item that argued that unions were a threat to the American dream. Today, the moguls celebrate their part in reversing both trends. Reeling Back prefers to recognize an honourable exception to the Hollywood rule, independent writer-director John Sayles, who told the true story of a union-led struggle for social justice in West Virginia’s coal country in his 1987 feature Matewan.