Out of Office With 7 Movies That Put the Labor in Labor Day
Seven Labor Day movies on Tubi clock in for bad bosses, big promotions, wage fights, and some truly chaotic shifts.
Labor Day weekend has arrived, which means the out-of-office message is on, the laptop is closed, and whatever somebody needs from you can, with love and respect, wait until Tuesday. But before Labor Day weekend became synonymous with one last long weekend of summer, the holiday was built around something considerably bigger: celebrating American workers and the labor movement.
Which makes this a pretty good weekend to watch people work while you absolutely do not. These seven movies and documentaries on Tubi move through factory floors, office cubicles, retail management, wage fights, and jobs that range from mildly soul-sucking to this was DEFINITELY not in the job description. Some get serious about workers' rights and what our jobs mean to us. Others understand that sometimes the only reasonable response to workplace dysfunction is comedy. Tubi's Comedy collection can handle that second category when your Labor Day viewing needs considerably fewer emails and more laughs.
Clock out. Press play. Your Labor Day movie marathon is officially on the clock. We'll circle back Tuesday.
Still Working 9 to 5
Dolly Parton told us working 9 to 5 was “all takin' and no givin'” back in 1980. Decades later, apparently we have some follow-up questions. Still Working 9 to 5 revisits the workplace equality issues behind the original 9 to 5, bringing Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin back into the conversation alongside voices including Rita Moreno and Allison Janney. Instead of simply celebrating a beloved office comedy, the documentary looks at how much has, and hasn't, changed for women at work, from pay equity and workplace treatment to the fight for better conditions.
The hair, offices, and technology may have changed considerably since 1980, but some workplace conversations seemingly remain stuck in an extremely long meeting. Consider this the agenda item nobody gets to push to next quarter.
The Pajama Game
Union negotiations, wage disputes and...a workplace romance? Busy shift. Doris Day’s Babe enters the factory floor in The Pajama Game, where employees at the Sleeptite Pajama Factory are fighting for a seven-and-a-half-cent raise. Things get considerably more complicated when union leader Babe Williams falls for Sid Sorokin, the factory superintendent whose job puts him directly on the other side of that fight.
Yes, it's a colorful 1950s musical with romance and dancing. It's also a movie where labor unions and collective bargaining are basically part of the plot. Somebody looked at a wage dispute and decided what the negotiations really needed were Doris Day and choreography. Frankly, more meetings could use the initiative.
Working Man
Peter Gerety stars in Working Man as a longtime factory worker who continues showing up after the plant shuts down, quietly returning to the routine that has structured so much of his life. What begins as one man's refusal to let go gradually draws other former employees back too, turning his solitary act into something much bigger.
Work isn't always simply the thing you do between clock-in and clock-out; it can become community, identity, and the way you understand your place in the world. Working Man asks what happens when the job disappears but all of that doesn't. Turns out “just find another job” can be a considerably bigger sentence than it sounds.
The Office Temps
Ah, the temp job. Clock in, collect the paycheck, accidentally rethink your entire career trajectory. The Office Temps follows an aimless minimum-wage temp worker whose workplace routine gets shaken up by an ambitious coworker and the increasingly uncomfortable realization that he may need to figure out what he actually wants from his life. Grant Rosenmeyer leads the workplace comedy alongside Eden Sher and Reid Ewing, giving us a workplace where the biggest project isn't sitting in someone's inbox. It's figuring out what you're doing here.
This one's for anyone whose career path has ever looked less like a ladder and more like seventeen browser tabs open at once. Not every job is “The Job”. Sometimes it's the place you happen to be standing when you realize the five-year plan could probably use an edit.
The Promotion
There is one position available. Everybody please remain normal about this. They don’t, of course. The Promotion puts Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly on opposite sides of the world's most aggressively awkward workplace competition as two assistant managers battle for the same grocery-store promotion. Suddenly every good deed, management decision, and coworker interaction feels like it might end up somewhere on the performance review.
The movie understands a uniquely exhausting workplace experience: wanting the promotion so badly that the job starts turning you into somebody you don't particularly enjoy working with either. Scott and Reilly make the rivalry increasingly petty, uncomfortable, and funny, proving corporate warfare doesn't require a skyscraper. Sometimes all you need is fluorescent lighting and one open management position.
Office Madness
Some workplaces have minor communication issues. Office Madness appears to have skipped directly to the advanced course. The office comedy follows a boss attempting to keep an unruly workplace functioning while his personal life creates another layer of chaos, turning the office into the kind of environment where simply making it through the workday begins to feel like an achievement worthy of LinkedIn endorsement. Forget optimizing productivity. Can everybody please make it to 5 p.m. without creating another problem?
Save this one for the end of a long week when workplace realism sounds exhausting and you'd rather watch somebody else's office become considerably more dysfunctional than yours. Perspective is important.
Day Labor
Surely we've reached the worst possible workday by now. Day Labor would like to submit a late entry. The thriller follows a Latino American veteran and day laborer who accepts what appears to be another job, only to discover he's been brought to a Texas ranch where people are being hunted for sport. Workplace red flags have officially left the building. What starts from the vulnerability of taking whatever work is available explodes into an action-survival nightmare where getting through the shift becomes painfully literal.
We've spent six movies watching people fight for better pay, purpose, promotions, and basic workplace sanity. This guy would simply like to survive until the end of the day. Worst shift ever. Competition closed.