The Assignment
Your assignment is to interview members of your family about their work history. Interview your parents and if at all possible your grandparents. If your grandparents are not alive or reachable, ask your parents, uncles, and aunts about your grandparents and great grandparents. Do not interview only one person. Do not interview your siblings or cousins, as the purpose of the paper is to research your family’s work history (and, if applicable, union history) going back many decades.
Here are a few sample questions to get you started, but I’m sure in your conversations you’ll think of many more questions:
- What jobs did they work? Did they work for small businesses or corporations?
- How were they treated by their employers? Were there conflicts? What were they paid and how well did they survive on their wages? How did they pay for health care?
- Did they endure money problems or live comfortably at different stages of their lives? What social class would you put your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents in?
- If your family members were employers, how did they treat their employees?
- When did your family members first immigrate to America, and why? What country or countries are your ancestors from?
- Was anyone in your family a member of a union? How did they feel about the union? Were they active in the union? Were they ever on strike?
- What was the impact on your family members’ work lives of big historical events such as wars, labor upheavals or strikes, recessions or depressions?
Writing the Paper
- The paper should be at least 3 double-spaced pages and no more than 6 pages. Papers longer than the minimum three pages are encouraged, and papers just at three pages may lose points.
- The paper should be set at one inch margins, typed in Times Roman 12 point font. Too brief papers will be sharply graded down. Incorrectly formatted papers will be graded down.
- The paper must be written in Microsoft Word or you will receive zero points.
- Write the paper in full sentences, with correct sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.
- The paper should summarize what your relatives said. Do not try to tell me everything the person said. Do not write the question and then the interview response.
- As you are developing your paper, you may find it helpful to relate your family members’ experiences to course readings, lectures, and forum discussions. As you’re interviewing family members and then writing your paper, reflect about what you’ve read in the Zweig, Yates, Mauer, and Babson readings.
- Upload your paper as an attachment to Assignments by the deadline. Do not copy and paste it to Assignments.
