Labor Relations

Family Employment History Assignment - Guidelines

Purpose:  This assignment is intended to enable you to make a personal connection to our study of labor history.  Each of us adults has an employment history.  In addition, our family's employment history can personalize and enrich class discussion of the employment relationship.

Report structure:  The report should include an introductory paragraph, a summary of your parents' employment history, and a description of known employment information about one branch of your family tree (paternal or maternal grandparents, and great-grandparents).  If there are gaps in known information, describe what you do know (or are able to discover) about that relative. The report should conclude with a reflective paragraph on what you learned and whether any of the information surprised you.  No references are required.

Report format:  The body of the report should be approximately three (3) pages, depending upon the level of detail you are able to include for each generation.  Pages should be double-spaced, with 12 font text, and 1 inch margins all around.  In addition to the body of the paper being three pages, an additional cover page should identify the course, the assignment title, and your name.

Note:  I include an example of this assignment using my own family employment history.  You do NOT need to follow this sample exactly as written - please use your own writing style within the format to tell your family's work story.

My Family Employment History

Aside from some experiences babysitting for neighborhood children, my first job was as a teletype key operator for our local J.C. Penney catalog store.  I began that after-school job when I was 16, and my pay was $ 1.25 an hour.  People used the "big catalogs" of Penney and Sears as a primary shopping source for holidays, so my job was actually very stressful.  Any mistakes in the teletype orders resulted in incorrect shipments to the store, and irate customers.   After high school, my series of summer jobs included waitressing, being part of an industrial cleaning crew, and (the high point) being a student secretary in the local office of our Congressional representative.  My professional career included ten years of classroom teaching, ten years of program level supervision, and twenty years of various administrative positions in Pennsylvania's public schools.  My initial annual salary was $7,200 and forty years later my public sector retirement salary was above $100,000.

My parents' employment histories were dramatically different from each other.  My dad worked as an electrical tester for Westinghouse for 44 years - his duties included testing commercial transformers thatweighed hundreds of tons and delivered 100,000 volts.  Dad was the primary earner, and his job benefits covered our basic healthcare needs.  My mom worked part-time outside the home; her jobs included retail sales, in-home party sales, and waitressing.  My mom's choices were limited to jobs that had flexible hours and were part-time so that she could be at home in the afternoons.  Most of her jobs over those years were sub-minimum wage.  After my brothers and I were out of high school, my mom worked fulltime in the local newspaper office, and then became City Clerk in our small city government.  While continuing his employment at Westinghouse, my dad was elected to City Council (a paid position) so my parents worked together in city government in the final ten years of their work careers.

I follow my dad's family tree, with his father Edwin Morrison being a lifelong employee of the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad.  That railroad line ran from Pittsburgh to Erie, where it connected with the larger line from New York to Chicago...Most of the cargo was iron ore from Andrew Carnegie's Pittsburgh plants.   My grandfather was often away from home for several days at a time as he worked "runs" as abrakeman.  My grandmother Leah was a stay at home mother with their six children.  After my grandparents' divorce my young father and his siblings were permanently separated, with my dad going to live with several aunts and uncles on hisgrandparent's country homestead.  My grandfather Edwin would stay with his children and other family on the farm between railroad trips.  In 1926 (at age 36) my grandfather was seriously injured when one railcar being coupled bumped hard into the second car and his lower leg was crushed (a common type of work accident that was sometimes fatal).  Grandpa had a severe limp for the rest of his life, and he needed two canes to walk.  He was kept on with the railroad as a yard worker, but his wages dropped. 

My great-grandparents' name was Rafferty, and they emigrated from Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.  They were farmers, and settled in the tiny village of Hadley, Pennsylvania.  The farmhouse they built was the homestead where my dad would later live after his parents' divorce.  My great-grandfather Rafferty's living was made from trapping (for food and pelts), trading animal skins for supplies at the local general store, and selling door to door any farm or animal products beyond his family's basic needs.  There were no wages or job benefits - any money earned from the family's work went to re-supply the farm.  My great-grandfather's family of eight (six children, including my grandfather Edwin) lived from the land, and made do with few comforts.  My dad has told us about him having to share shoes with his older brother, and checking traps in the darkness each morning before school.

Reflection

What I learned from confirming the employment details of this part of my family is that I and my brothers were the first generation of my family to have a "career".  From my parents back to my earlier ancestors, each provider took the work that was available, with relatively few options based upon geography and family situations.  My dad's military service included pilot training in Bloomsburg, PA.  He has told me that his dream was to return to attend college after his military service, but even with the G.I. Bill benefits my dad's family obligations made that dream unworkable.  A second strong memory from this exercise is the way that Westinghouse behaved as an employer.  My dad qualified for retirement from Westinghouse in the summer of 1983, and he chose that option just three months before Westinghouse unexpectedly announced a "temporary" six-month closure of the plant.  Six hundred workers were furloughed, many of whom were within a year of qualifying for retirement.  That later a national scandal involving Westinghouse blocking release of the research that a chemical it used (PCB) was shown to be a carcinogen, and to have polluted the ground and surface water of the surrounding community is a topic for another paper.  My roots, my values and my political views are connected to my family's history of labor, and the benefits we have received.