American Factory Summary

American Factory is a documentary that tells the story of the old American General

Motors (GM) factory in Dayton, Ohio that has been revamped into the Chinese company Fuyao

Glass America (FGA). At the beginning of the film, we learned that 10,000 jobs were lost when

the GM factory closed (Reichert and Bogner 00:05) and that the opening of the Fuyao factory

was a glimmer of light for the folks in Dayton, Ohio who lost their jobs when GM closed.

We meet many characters throughout the film, including Chairman CAO, the Founder

and CEO of Fuyao Glass, John Gauther, the (now former) President of FGA, Dave Burrows, the

(now former) Vice President of FGA, Jeff Liu, the President of FGA, and many workers, both

Chinese and American, like Bobby, Shawna, Jill, Rob, Dave, Wong, and Leon. The documentary

focuses on not only the tensions between upper and lower management at FGA, but also the

cultural tensions between the Chinese workers and the American workers. These tensions arose

around issues such as worker efficiency, profit outcomes, and the main one, unionizing.

While many of the American workers at FGA were adamant about forming a union in

order to ensure their rights as workers, the Chinese workers did not even really understand what

the concept of a union was due to the huge cultural differences between Americans and China.

These cultural differences come to the forefront in the film when the American members of FGA

upper management arrive in China and see how Fuyao operates there compared to in America. At

Fuyao in China, the workers were like machinery, the factories were run extremely militantly,

and the big party that the Americans attended included elaborate performances by Fuyao workers

that highlighted how amazing the company is and expressing its upstanding values (Reichert and

Bognar 54:39). The Chinese workers who are interviewed at Fuyao in China explain that they

work when they are asked to by their leader (Reichert and Bognar 48:02), and at the end of the

film we hear the Chairman say that “the point of living is to work” (Reichert and Bognar 01:36).

It is because of these cultural differences that discrepancies arose around safety issues

because, while Americans define the American working condition as a place that should be safe

and provide benefits for the workers, the Chinese management members and workers focused on

efficiency and felt that safety hindered profits. The film highlights how the Chinese view of

American workers resulted in the firing of those fighting to unionize, people who were deemed

“inefficient”, even if that meant pulling up something on the computer too slowly (Reichert and

Bognar 01:40), and those who could be replaced by machinery.

In the end, American workers lamented the closing of the GM factory once more because,

though FGA offered them a glimmer of hope when it first opened, they realized the values of

Fuyao upper management was much different than that of General Motors. While they earned

$29 an hour at GM (Reichert and Bognar 00:18), they now earned $12 an hour and then $14 per

hour by the end of the film (Reichert and Bognar 01:46). Due to FGA’s $1 million investment in

Labor Relations Institute training, ultimately no union was formed because workers were scared

to lose their income. American Factory not only highlights the cultural clash between China and

America in terms of work, but also how foreign investments in American factories can

undermine the American ideal of work and leave communities like Dayton, Ohio just as destitute

as they were when General Motors closed.

American Factory Summary

U.S. Politics Through Documentary Film (2230)

Seton Hall University

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