100 yrs ago, 146 workers died. Since then, things have changed. RW'ers want to go back though...

[The Straight Story]

Triangle Shirtwaist fire is a memory, but struggles remain: 80,000 NY farmworkers have no protection

One hundred years ago today, New York City suffered the deadliest industrial disaster in its history. The memory of the 146 people who lost their lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire stands as a reminder that legal protections and workplace safety standards were won through a long struggle for social justice and at great human cost.

Tragically, a century later, many of my colleagues in government seem to have forgotten the lessons of that unspeakable disaster. Over the last decade progress has slowed and, in many states, workers' rights have been seriously weakened.

Last year, 29 West Virginians perished in the nation's worst mine disaster in four decades. The Massey Energy mine had received 1,100 safety violations over the three previous years for improper ventilation and poor escape routes, but this death trap continued to operate.

Despite repeated warnings, citations and accidents, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion cost the lives of 11 people and injured 16 others before burning and sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/03/25/2011-03-25_triangle_shirtwaist_fire_is_a_memory_but_struggles_remain_80000_ny_farmworkers_h.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Pray for the dead and fight like Hell for the living.

[niyad]

2. list of victims

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/triangle/trianglevictims2.html

[HockeyMom]

3. To use a major modern tragedy,

which I posted in answer to an anti union, anti government regulations person, imagine how many MORE people would have perished on 9/11 in the Towers if the Fire Exit stairs were locked?

You can thank OSHA regulations for saving thousands of lives just on this one day alone.

[Urban Prairie]

4. It sucks that we have to fight vs the corporate capitalist criminals, the privately wealthy,

AND especially the ignorant middle-class teabaggers, the last to protect them from themselves, and the people who would just as soon kill, maim, and sicken them in the name of profits. But it is all about creating "teh jobs", to them, even if they are more and more hazardous to their health, safety, and the cost of living.

[Arctic Dave]

5. Things haven't changed, they simply moved the criminality out of sight.

What do you think "globalism" is for. Workers die by the tens of thousands in "accidents" around the world every year.

[Kablooie]

6. Back then the loss of 146 could instigate change. Today it would take thousands.