Triangle Fire Commemoration Draws Parallels With Today
Wednesday, March 23, 2011(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
By Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff
Writer
WASHINGTON (PAI)—A half-day-long Capitol Hill commemoration of the 100th
anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in Manhattan – a fire that
killed 146 young immigrant workers, almost all of them women – drew
uncomfortable parallels with conditions facing workers
today.
Speakers, including Sally Greenberg of the National Consumers League, Mine
Workers President Cecil Roberts and workers who suffered exploitation or have
seen family members die, used the March 21 meeting to urge mass action to
restore workers’ rights to collectively bargain and to toughen and enforce job
safety and health laws.
The
session honored the centennial of the fire, on the afternoon of March 25, 1911
at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co., a clothing maker – one of hundreds in lower
Manhattan – that employed young mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant
women. Almost half were under 20. It even had children in a
“kindergarten” snipping thread, speakers
said.
Triangle was located on the top three floors of the Asch Building on Greene
Street. It was actually one of the “better” sweatshops in the city –
thanks to a citywide strike by 20,000 female garment workers 18 months before – but it wasn’t
unionized.
When the
blaze began, there was one exit. Triangle’s two owners deliberately padlocked
it to prevent theft. There was flammable debris – cuttings and scraps
– everywhere and the workers were allowed to smoke. The fire escapes
were flimsy and ended far above street level. Stairwells quickly filled
with smoke and flames. The elevator stalled, though one woman slid down
its cable. Fire department hoses couldn’t reach those top floors. The
18-minute blaze left workers with two alternatives: Burn to death -- or
jump. Many burned. The rest jumped.
Speakers said such horrifying
working conditions still exist, in the U.S. and worldwide. They cited such
disasters as a 1991 poultry plant fire in Hamlet, N.C. – the doors were
locked, again – the Texas City, Texas BP oil refinery blast in 2005 (15 dead,
180 injured), last year’s Gulf of Mexico disaster (11 died) and the Upper Big
Branch coal mine explosion in West Virginia (29). Bangladesh was the
international example.
The exploiters are the same, they
said: Firms that put profits ahead of people. The predominant victims of
such disasters are, still, those who the most defenseless: The young, women, minorities and, importantly, non-unionized.
They’re
unprotected.
And they said workers and their allies must seize a present teachable moment –
the Right Wing campaign to obliterate workers’ rights – to both re-energize
the labor movement and to enlist allies and the general
public.
“Pay attention to the parallels between 1911 and today. Our call to
action is really a manifesto,” Greenberg
said.
Speakers explained how activists used the Triangle Fire and its aftermath,
including acquittal of the company owners of manslaughter charges, both to grow
unions – in particular the pioneering International Ladies Garment Workers –
and to campaign successfully for reforms to health and safety laws, fire code
improvement and enforcement and institution of workers comp.
Frances
Perkins, a witness to the fire and then a social worker employed by the
Consumers League, used its lessons to help draft and push through New Deal
pro-labor legislation when she became Labor Secretary under FDR, biographer
Kirstin Downey said. “We’re continuing to deal with the same kinds of
issues,” Downey added.
“We leave things to the market and this” – Triangle and subsequent workplace
disasters – “is as good as it gets,” said University of Maryland history
professor Robyn Muncy. “The market can’t be allowed to determine all
the conditions under which people work,” added Georgetown University labor
history professor Joe McCartin. “There needs to be a public
interest.”
They will campaign for the same platform now: Updating, strengthening and
enforcing job and mine safety laws; preserving and enhancing minimum wage and
anti-child-labor laws, bringing farm workers under child labor laws, saving
worker protection programs from Right Wing budget raids; and upholding the right
of collective bargaining.
The
rights to organize and collectively bargain must be at the top of the list of
ways to right present wrongs, just as they were in the New Deal, said Roberts,
the keynote speaker. He was seconded by a last-minute addition: Stephanie
Bloomingdale, Wisconsin AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer – who commented on “our
arsonist,” Right Wing GOP Gov. Scott Walker, who set fire to workers’ rights
there.
“No worker should have to listen to the boss say: ‘I want you to do A, B and
C, and it’s dangerous,’” Roberts said. “Every worker should be empowered to look that boss in the eye and say:
‘Kiss my
ass.’”
“If you want higher wages, join a union. If you want better health care,
join a union. If you want health and safety on the job, join a
union. If you want a greater America, join a union,” he
declared.
And mass mobilization of unions and their allies – as in Wisconsin and Ohio
and Indiana and elsewhere – “will move that agenda a lot faster,” Roberts
added.