Your Work: Keepin' It Safe, and : Teens: The Hazards We face in the Workplace (review)

Want to talk to teenagers about issues they care about? Forget labor history. What they care about are their rights on the job. They want to talk about workers, bosses, pay, working conditions, hours, and, ultimately, unions. Most high school kids are working. Many of them feel that the boss is taking advantage of them (which is often true). Kids have stories of being harassed, abused, and working long hours for too little pay. They are enthusiastic about learning what their rights are. Some of them are ready to take action. This is exciting for labor educators. Plus, their teachers want you to come and talk to their classes. They know that many of the students are getting a raw deal at work.

How do we channel this interest? Lots of us are out there doing workshops for high school students. At the Rhode Island Institute for Labor Studies, we do approximately 40 workshops a year for more than 1,000 students.

Interactive, participatory curriculum is crucial. UCLA-LOSH has developed an excellent curriculum unit for these purposes. The curriculum comes with a short video, Your Work: Keepin' It Safe, that has an upbeat, sunny, PBS quality to it. It shows classroom, workplace and community meeting scenes. The hosts are cheery and the video gives clear information on what teenagers' rights on the job are.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health also has a curriculum, "Safe Work/Safe Workers," and a video, Teens: The Hazards We Face in the Workplace. The video has the look, feel, and music of a video produced by teens for teens. High school students interview other kids who were seriously injured at work: one was temporarily blinded, another seriously burned. The message is clear and dramatic: you, the worker, need to take informed action to protect your health and safety on the job.

But video alone can't do the job. Labor educators or labor-educated teachers/facilitators need to interact with high school students to expose the true story of the dangerous work conditions and lack of proper enforcement of rights on the job for teenage workers.

Your Work: Keepin' It Safe is available with a discussion guide from the UCLA Labor and Occupational Safety and Health Program (UCLA-LOSH) for $10, plus mailing and handling. The entire "Safe Jobs for Youth: A Theme-Based Curriculum for High School Students" includes a 3-ring binder, lessons plans handouts, overhead transparencies, and the video, for $35, plus mailing and handling. Call (310) 794-5964 to request an order form. Web site: http://www.losh.ucla.edu

Teens: The Hazards We Face in the Workplace, produced by Black Earth Communications for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and distributed by the Education Development Center, Inc., is available at (800) 225-4276 x2722, for $35, including curriculum materials.