Washington, D.C. – To celebrate Labor Day and Grandparents Day, Jobs With Justice is proud to launch an innovative multimedia story collection project called The Way They Worked, which explores the connections between family histories, careers and the tales of work that are handed down between generations.
The project’s website, which will go live today, can be viewed at www.TheWayTheyWorked.org and will feature photo, video and written submissions from individuals across the country describing the work history of their grandparents and what it taught them. Jobs With Justice is inviting people of all generations to share stories directly through this website or on social media with the hashtag #TheWayTheyWorked through Sunday, September 7, which is Grandparents Day.
Jobs With Justice Executive Director Sarita Gupta explained, “As we celebrate Labor Day and Grandparents Day in the same week, we want to take a look back at the jobs and hard work of our grandparents and find a way to capture that and honor it.
“Work plays a huge part in our lives, from the jobs we do to the skills we develop and the careers we try to build. And just as significantly, the jobs that our grandparents had shape our family history, setting us on a path to who we’ve each become. While the world of work has changed dramatically from one generation to the next, what hasn’t changed is why we work – to earn a decent living, to take care of our loved ones and to retire with dignity.”
Gupta’s own submission is featured on the site here, as well as on her Huffington Post blog.
Notable participants include 350.org Executive Director May Boeve, author and environmental activist Bill McKibben, AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Administrator of the U.S. DOL Wage and Hour Division Dr. David Weil. Other partners in The Way They Worked include the AFL-CIO, Caring Across Generations, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Demos, the National Football League Players Association, the National Partnership for Women and Families, United Steelworkers and the Writers Guild of America, East, with additional organizations expected to join throughout the week.
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