100 Years After Triangle Waist Factory tragedy, Corporations are still putting profit over safety

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.citizenvox.org/2011/03/23/100-years-after-triangle-waist-factory-tragedy-corporations-profit-over-safety-massey-energy-reins/

This Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Waist Company tragedy. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the New York City garment factory. Even after 146 workers died, many of them young women who jumped to their deaths in an attempt to escape the engulfing flames, industry bristled at the thought of implementing commonsense fire safety precautions.

They called sprinklers “cumbersome and costly.” They warned that the new laws would drive “manufacturers out of the city and state of New York.”

When sanitation certificates were proposed for bakeries, the president of the New York Flour Club said, “Such certificates will give a possible opportunity for an unfair person to make demands for graft on the small baker … would have the effect of gradually reducing rather than increasing the number of small bakeries.”

Today, an assault on regulations that protect our health and safety, ensure a living wage and protect us from dangerous products is currently under way in Washington. Daily, Public Citizen pushes back against corporations seeking to roll back safeguards and block news ones, and fights for commonsense measures to protect against future tragedies.

More at the link --

[Lifelong Protester]

1. this sad story, and important anniversary, has so many parallels

today.

If people don't read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and not realize it is STILL going on (or coming to a state near you soon) then they are ignorant to their own plight, that is for sure.

I intend to do a silent walk with some co-workers on Friday at lunch. We will carry cards bearing the names of the 146 victims and the words NEVER AGAIN!

[FiveGoodMen]

2. For example...

"The Hamlet chicken processing plant fire was an industrial fire that took place in Hamlet, North Carolina, USA at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant on September 3, 1991, after a failure in a faulty modification to a hydraulic line. Twenty-five people were killed and 54 injured in the fire, as they were trapped behind locked fire doors. Due to a lack of inspectors, in 11 years of operation, the plant had never received a safety inspection.<1> Investigators thought that a single safety inspection might have revealed the problem and easily prevented the disaster.<2>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_chicken_processing_plant_fire

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Reaping the "rewards" of the decades-long assault on Big Government

The idea that greedy business people might fight tooth and nail to undermine or abolish oversight and regulation in their single-minded pursuit of profit makes perfect sense to me.

But how everyone else could let it happen just blows me away.

[aquart]

3. No. Government is still refusing to regulate corporations appropriately.

CORPORATIONS WILL ALWAYS PLACE PROFIT OVER ANYTHING. Profit is their sole goal. Yes, you can list a number of corporations led by humanitarians who behave well. Replace the humanitarian and that wellness is over. The corporation itself has NO humanitarian interest or any interest in the well-being of any living thing.

Government is the sole protection of a nation. It is past time that government acknowledge and accept its responsibility: for the well-being of its people, its land, its water, and all that grows and lives upon that land and in that water. This means strictly-enforced regulation.

It is also past time that sentient beings recognize their responsibility to support that government in its efforts to SAVE THEIR FUCKING LIVES. This means taxation and voting.

[DearAbby]

6. +1

:thumbsup:

[KansDem]

5. Of COURSE they put profit over people...

They are CORPORATIONS! They only have allegiance to stockholders. No one else.

I’m constantly amazed at the “anti-government” tripe coming from 1980s Reaganites (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”) to the modern-day Tea Baggers who still claim “government is evil.” Do we really believe that corporations have the best interests of the people at heart?

Government is about people—“for, of , and by the people.” Not corporations, no matter how much the Supreme Court wants us to believe that.

Government is the last barrier to complete corporate control of the world. Get rid of government by demonizing it and thusly turning the people who benefit from it against it, and plutocracy prevails.