Young women continue to die locked in sweatshops, labor group warns

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Young women continue to die locked in sweatshops, labor group warns



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/23/young-women-continue-to-die-in-locked-sweatshops-labor-group-warns/

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 -- 5:50 pm

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire resulted in the death of 146 female workers, who were locked inside the factory by their managers, on March 25, 1911. The women worked 6 days a week, often 14 hours shifts, and earned the meager wage of 14 cents an hour. (The equivalent of $3.18 an hour in 2011, adjusted for inflation.)

After the death of workers in a Bangladesh sweatshop, the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights said now was the time to hold corporations accountable to respect labor laws and pass the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act.

The Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators in 2007, but never made it out of House and Senate committees. The bill would have prohibited the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor.

In December 2010, a incident similar to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire occurred when a fire broke out at the Hameem factory in Savar, Bangladesh, which was sewing garments for Gap. Twenty-nine workers died and over 100 were injured. The workers at the clothing factory told the institute that security guards locked the exits during the fire to prevent garments from being stolen.

[Newest Reality]

1. Humans seen as livestock.

Beasts of burden, tagged and stalled.

Those who's lives are bound by subsistence for the sake of someone's profit watch their own lives slip away in an effort to escape a more dismal and dire poverty.

All those products that we use here and that are, in fact, created via human labor mills that are precision machines for exploitation help to fuel the fire that burns lives, one way or another. We can be ignorant and passive about that fact, yet, isn't there some form of culpability and a form of, what some would call, group Karma involved? When we do know about the factors and condtions and continue to support these purveyors of unsafe, low-paying, profit dungeons, how do we stand above or separate ourselves from the travesty?

[liberal N proud]

2. 100 years ago Friday - Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Friday, March 25 marks the 100 year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, New York’s landmark industrial disaster that killed 146 of the factory's 500 employees, most of them young immigrant women and girls of Italian and European Jewish descent. The tragedy sparked a nationwide debate about workers rights, representation and safety.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building, which still stands at 23-29 Washington Place beside Washington Square Park in Manhattan. The shirtwaist factory is now called the Brown Building, and is part of the New York University campus.

When the factory was open, it was a crowded space where workers churned out hundreds of shirtwaists, which were fashionable dresses of the time that featured an upper portion styled like a man's shirt, with buttons and a turnover collar. In the early 1900s, many considered the Triangle Shirtwaist Company one of the more modern New York workplaces, despite being overcrowded and lacking an evacuation plan in the event of a fire.

As the factory's tailors and seamstresses prepared to leave for the day on March 25, 1911, they suddenly found the building had caught fire. The women were trapped in the burning sweatshop and many died trying to force locked doors open. Others threw themselves from the windows.

As the factory burned, firefighters and onlookers alike were astonished to find the hoses could only reach as high as the sixth floor. Efforts to fashion impromptu rescue strategies, including human chains for the workers to climb and nets to catch those who began jumping, were largely unsuccessful.
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/mar/21/100-years-later-remembering-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/


With the republicans efforts, we will have a similar tragedy in the future.

[Wilms]

3. No worries. I'm sure Hillary will get right on it.

:sarcasm:

[efhmc]

4. Seriously, does she have power in this area?

[Wilms]

5. I took her recent visit to India partly to promote trade.

That, and her reputation, earned or not, to promote fairness for women internationally, prompted my comment...snarky as it was.

[efhmc]

7. There mght be something that could be done to GAP, but

I doubt the sos has any power here, except the power of the pulpit, which has strong potential.

[bertman]

6. Our two-minute collective memory fails to record information like this.

[Shallah Kali]

8. Triangel Shirtwaist Fire documentary clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf9GVbzf7Q4

The eyewitness quoted in the above video account is printed here:
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/testimonials/ootss_WilliamShepherd.html

Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.

snip

As I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror. A young man helped a girl to the window sill. Then he held her out, deliberately away from the building and let her drop. He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl the same way and let her drop. Then he held out a third girl who did not resist. I noticed that. They were as unresisting as if he were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity. Undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames, and his was only a terrible chivalry.

Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him. Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But quick as a flash he was on the window sill himself. His coat fluttered upward-the air filled his trouser legs. I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head.

Thud-dead, thud-dead-together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best.