ABOUT THE PAINTING Robert Koehler’s The Strike: The Improbable Story of an Iconic 1886 Painting of Labor Protest. Every work of art has a story behind it. In 1886 the German American artist Robert Koehler painted a dramatic wide-angle depiction of an imagined confrontation between factory workers and their employer. He called this oil painting The Strike. It has had a long and tumultuous international history as a symbol of class struggle and the cause of workers’ rights. First exhibited just days before the tragic Chicago Haymarket riot, The Strike became an inspiration for the labor movement. In the midst of the campaign for an eight-hour workday, it gained international attention at expositions in Paris, Munich, and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Though the painting fell into obscurity for decades in the early twentieth century, The Strike lived on in wood-engraved reproductions in labor publications. Source: James M. Dennis, Studies in American Thought Online

Occupational Safety and Health History

What to do next

View the presentation

This week’s presentation uses the Prezi program. The weekly presentations are my “virtual voice” and the equivalent of a lecture if we were meeting face-to-face in a classroom. All presentations will use either the Prezi program, Powerpoint, or will be a posted video. The frames of the Prezi may contain audio or video narration, so have your sound turned on. A Prezi or Powerpoint may also contain embedded videos that you should click on to view.

If you have trouble with presentations or videos, try using a different browser, for instance, if you are using Internet Explorer try switching to Chrome. If this doesn’t help, call or email help@canvas.rutgers.edu for technical assistance. If you still need help, please email me.

When Prezi is used, you will also be able to access a PDF version. You cannot view embedded videos or hear narration in the PDF version, but I make it available for those students who like to print out slides.

Week 2 presentation (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

There is about 1 hour and 15 minutes of video viewing in the presentation.

Never used Prezi? Watch the short (3:21) video on how to view a Prezi presentation.

Link (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

PDF of the Week 2 presentation (you can’t view the embedded videos, but you can print it out). Please note: this document will be available later in the week.

Read

Brodeur, P. 1968. Reporter at Large – The Magic Mineral. The New Yorker.
Note: You do not need to read this article until Week 3, however, it is fairly lengthy so you may want to get a head start on it.

Walsh-Healey and FLSA document

View the videos

To view a video in a Prezi, hover over the video screen with your mouse or pointer and click. It may take some seconds to open. If you can’t play the videos try using a different browser or cut and paste the title of the video in your browser to view the video on YouTube.

You should consider the videos the same as an assigned article. Some of the exam questions are from video content.

There are a lot of videos this week, but not a lot of reading. If you are a documentary film fan – you are in the right class! I think that there are some issues so dramatic and compelling that words alone don’t adequately convey their magnitude and impact, so each week there are a few short videos to watch. In weeks 3, 9 and 12 full-length documentaries will be assigned.

Complete the assignment

Write and submit your family’s occupational safety and health history after you have read and viewed all of the assigned material. I suggest taking a look at the assignment before viewing the presentation – then you can make notes about what historical OSH events you want to tie into your family history paper. You will have two weeks to write and submit this assignment; use care not to miss the due date (Tuesday, 9/25, 11:59 PM) because the late penalty is steep.

Be sure to thoroughly read the assignment instructions; following the instructions is key to getting a good grade on this major assignment.

Week 2 assignment – OSH Family History

More about the Week 2 assignment

In most semsters students read each other’s family history papers in their assigned groups and discuss them online. This semester, I am not having students share their family work histories because some may contain potentially sensitive information about immigration status. At this point in time in the U.S., many students may be feeling uncertain and worried about their status at Rutgers because of the executive order on immigration bans and uncertainty about DACA status. Faculty, too, are concerned and somewhat uncertain about how sensitive information about immigration status might be used, so in an abundance of caution I will be the only one reading your family OSH history papers.

We are family

One of the things I value most about Rutgers is the rich diversity of our school. Diversity and inclusiveness is a point of pride at Rutgers and contributes to making it an outstanding university. Semester after semester, students relate to me that they share this sentiment. This article about Rutgers was recently in The Guardian: The Newest Americans: Portraits from ‘the most diverse’ US university (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

As you may know Rutgers’ president, Robert Barchi, has declared support for Rutgers’ students, staff and faculty from every background and place of birth. In a declaration read to students and faculty on January 31, 2017, he pledged to protect the privacy of student records and to provide a safe place for everyone in our community. Here are President Barchi’s comments – In Solidarity with Our Students on Immigration. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. More recently, President Barchi issued a response to the Trump administration’s announcement on DACA (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. AAUP-AFT Rutgers (the union that represents Rutgers professors and instructors) has issued a resolution on DACA (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. And lastly, the motto of Rutgers Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER) is “we study work, we value justice”. Putting this motto into action, the faculty and staff of LSER are in full support of our immigrant students. Click here for support services and assistance information. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

I hope that this reassures students who may be feeling at risk. If you have concerns about your status at Rutgers related to the immigration/refugee ban or DACA status, please feel free to contact me. In your email, rather than detailing your concerns just request that I call you for a conversation and provide your phone number and a good time to reach you.