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niyad

(113,498 posts) Wed Mar 25, 2015, 09:52 PM Mar 2015

Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (25 mar 1911) in 2015

Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 2015

This week marks 104 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, a tragedy that changed our country forever. On that horrible day, dangerous workplace conditions started a fire at a garment factory in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Within 20 minutes, 146 people were dead -almost all of them young immigrant women. America reacted with outrage. The backlash to this incident became a turning point in the history of the US and global labor movements. In the ensuing decades, key labor and workplace safety laws that we now think of as obvious were first put into place. The American people resolved that those young women did not die in vain.

But 104 years later it has become clear that too many folks in this country have forgotten the painful lessons of that day. And as we gear up for next year's presidential election, voters should know that some of the candidates running would rather folks forgot about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire altogether.

These are officials such as Governors Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Rick Perry in Texas. They wear their anti-worker bona fides like a badge of honor and are working to make it harder for Americans to organize and demand safer workplaces. When Governor Walker sought to take away the right of public employees to unionize in 2011, massive protests against him captured global media attention. During that fight he promised that while those steps were necessary, he would never make Wisconsin a so-called "right to work" state, meaning he would not pass laws that make it tougher to organize unions. But four years later he flip-flopped and in 2015 he signed such a law into effect. Walker promised that these changes were necessary to improve the unemployment problem in the state. But in neighboring and union-friendly Minnesota, which otherwise has similar demographics to Wisconsin, the unemployment rate is 1.6 percent lower.

The case of Texas is even more outrageous. The Lone Star state has long had a reputation for hostility to unions and workers' rights. It also has the highest number of workplace deaths out of any state in the union. In 2013, the most recent year with complete data, 493 Texans died on the job. A worker in Texas was more than twice as likely to die on the job that year as a worker in New York, a state that has much stronger unions and worker protections.

. . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-mestrich/remembering-the-triangle-_1_b_6931402.html

15 replies

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Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (25 mar 1911) in 2015 (Original Post) niyad Mar 2015 OP

K&R! Thank you for posting. smirkymonkey Mar 2015 #1

frances perkins, first woman cabinet sec (dept of labor) was a witness niyad Mar 2015 #3

you are most welcome. the insanity of the anti-workers campaigns is niyad Mar 2015 #5

Thanks, so important that we remember this tragic event & our history. Frances Perkins, FDR's appalachiablue Mar 2015 #2

you are welcome. yes, it is very important that we remember. it is deeply niyad Mar 2015 #4

K&R SMC22307 Mar 2015 #6

Robert Pinsky (former U.S. Poet Laureate: "Shirt": Tanuki Mar 2015 #7

thank you. had not seen it before. niyad Mar 2015 #8

I never will forget Lifelong Protester Mar 2015 #9

K&R! Omaha Steve Mar 2015 #10

And the owners, though zentrum Mar 2015 #11

and don't forget all the money they made from insurance. one of the earliest examples of niyad Mar 2015 #14

kr ND-Dem Mar 2015 #12

The building still stands at Washington Square KinMd Mar 2015 #13

. . . niyad Mar 2015 #15

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)

1. K&R! Thank you for posting.

Reply to niyad (Original post)

Wed Mar 25, 2015, 10:01 PM

Mar 2015

I'm too tired to comment right now but this was the beginning of a significant turn in US labor practices. I find the events surrounding it both horrifying and fascinating in how the treatment of workers seemed to turn around and now seems to be going backward again.