'One in five', 1972
The title of this film on the work of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), which is narrated by the late Bill Owen of Last of the Summer Wine fame, refers to the proportion of British trade unionists in the TGWU at the time. It makes the case for a large multi-sector trade union to match the increasing consolidation in the ownership of industry and to influence government policy in favour of working people.
It looks at the union’s history and its contemporary work on behalf of dockers, fishermen, workers in new technological industries, white collar workers, professional drivers and others . As well as these general surveys the film also features the sorting-out of “a failure to agree on the sausage floor”.
From the archive of the International Transportworkers’ Federation [611/1].