Feminist concerns were far-reaching, touching various sectors of society including the Labor market. One major part of the feminist movement was labor organizing and the fight for better working conditions under the equal rights amendment which didn’t allow discrimination on the basis of one’s sex (male or female). Labor organizing was one of the major points of the feminist movement and obtaining equal rights.

These aspects of the movement are discussed in depth in the video The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and in the article “Virginia Just Became the 30th State to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment: Heres What To Know About The ERA”. The Video on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire discusses one of the biggest preventable tragedies of the industrial revolution.

  This fire took place in new york near Washington square park in the triangle shirtwaist factory. Described by the video as a sweatshop the factory was consistently packed and dense with over 500 employees and extreme shifts ranging anywhere between 11-12 hours a day every day. The factory had extremely unsafe conditions and the overall workspace was not regulated properly. The majority of these workers were women, the majority immigrants but still working women, sewing shirtwaists day in and day out for mass production. Unfortunately on March 25th, 1911, the end of the workweek, tragedy struck the factory. A fire started and there was no way to put the fire out because the water hose was rusted shut and rotted away. With no sprinkler system in place, the fire spread quickly.

The building was equipped with one fire escape which collapsed as it could not take the weight of so many people and of the four elevators only one operated in the entire building, breaking down after 4 trips. Many jumped to their deaths while some attempted to take the stairs but to their demise the factory kept exit doors locked shut from the opposite side. While fighter fighters tried to put out the fire their hoses were just a floor too short. While some opted to jump out of the building ending their own lives many died in the fire or were crushed in the chaos to escape, killing a total of 146 people in 18 minutes. One of the deadliest workplace incidents to ever take place.

Sparking public outrage, this incident led to major funeral protests about workplace conditions with more than 350,000 individuals taking the streets to advocate on behalf of those who lost their lives. The factory owners although indicted for manslaughter were found not guilty Despite this unfortunate ending this fire did bring about change in the labor force and the growth of labor unions that advocated to protect workers. This fire led to many of the code requirements workplaces have today that require businesses to be up to a particular standard before an operation to ensure the safety of workers in the future.

In terms of women’s rights, this incident was another factor that pushed women to continue to fight for equal rights and protection in the workplace under the law. However, even making this change has been a long time coming and a long way to go The Equal Rights Amendment has first proposed nearly a century ago and has still not been added to the U.S. Constitution but is upheld by states – it is not enforced federally. In 2019 Virginia became the 38th state to pass the amendment meaning there are several states that are still behind the times. This amendment is crucial not only to women but to society as a whole. If we seek to put an end to disasters and incidents at the hands of oppression then such amendments are necessary to be enforced. Without such legislation companies and individuals will continue to carry on their behavior in ways they see fit because there is no level of accountability on remembrance of the lives that were lost nearly 100 years ago it is time for true federal change across the board. Equal rights should not be optional.

The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was initially created with the intent to get women the right to vote. Written by Alice Paul the founder of the National Woman’s Party, the amendment has evolved into an amendment that ensures women are provided with all the rights they should have. The ratification of the ERA faced many deadlines and setbacks. Particularly in 1972 when the rise of anti feminism led to women like Phyllis Schlafy successfully attempting to instill fear in the American society about what the ERA would lead us to, like gender neutral bathrooms and women being drafted. Some women feared that the passing of ERA would negatively impact the legal work hours allowed and after tragedies such as the triangle shirtwaist factory had taken place where 146 of the deaths were mostly young women. Shamina described it in her response as “Women were not permitted to leave the factory or even take breaks, and because the doors were frequently locked to prevent this, many women were unable to evacuate once the fire broke out. The video focuses on the estimation of 500 workers, most were teen, young women.” Perhaps this was why Phyllis Schlafy’s anti feminist narratives had permeated the American people’s idea of what the ERA stood for and how it would impact American women. The Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment would positively benefit court cases that involve the abuse of women and the disregard of womens rights. It would provide more support for cases in which women have the right to sue, so in instances like workplace sexual harassment for example. The amendment would provide a foundation for these cases to stand on and aid arguments that claim there was discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ as the article ‘Virginia just became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.’ states. It would eliminate any potential laws that have the possibility of infringing upon women’s rights. In today’s current society it would help fight against and possibly eliminate the reproductive laws that prevent AFAB people from having control over their bodies, like with the Texas Abortion Ban. The ERA would also help with sex-based harassment. In my workplace, I’ve been harassed a few times and made uncomfortable by a few male coworkers. At the time because I was new, I thought the behavior was coming from a place of kindness being that I didn’t know much about the job. But after I started to understand the power dynamic, and why they thought it was okay to do things like this, I realized that it was in fact sexual harassment. If the ERA were passed, I’d feel more comfortable speaking up about sexual harassment and I wouldn’t feel as though I’d have to worry about being believed. It would make me feel like I have a chance at fighting back and that my concerns would be taken more seriously. However I know that my concerns would not be taken more seriously because of empathy but because of the fear of legal action.

The video, “Triangle Returns”, although it was about the tragic incident known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, made me feel grateful for those that were motivated to fight for labor laws and demanded safer working conditions. Charles Kernaghan states that “by 1938 there weren’t any sweatshops” and states some of the new labor law that had passed yet this made me think of my immigrant mother who arrived in the United States in the year 2003 and her stories about working in factories that produced and washed heavy bedding material and cloths and was located in Brooklyn. Although these were not necessarily sweatshops, the ways in which she describes her working conditions made it seem like they were. Due to her status as an immigrant, she was paid much lower, worked longer hours, was not allowed to take breaks at times, the air quality was low, and she was exposed to dangerous working conditions due to some of the machinery that she would have to handle there. To our knowledge, many companies have allowed such work conditions because it is cheap labor and immigrants easily fear law because they arrive with no knowledge of it. I no longer remember or see these factories due to the gentrification and growth of businesses that has taken over, over time in Brooklyn but I wish I had been just a bit older to understand that despite her immigration status, she did not deserve to be treated as anything less than human and exposed to such working conditions. I am thankful that she has sought ways out of those conditions and is now earning a better wage at a much healthier and beneficial workplace. In the same video, we see how just in 2010, there was another incident that risked the lives of individuals earning a lot less and although it occurred outside of the United States, it occurred and is still occurring in modern times, but we would think that it is not something that is still taking place. Simply because sweatshops are no longer located in the United States, it does not mean that they are not still functioning and risking the lives and health of others in need. The excerpt, “Virginia Just Became the 38th State to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Here’s What to Know About the History of the ERA”, by Tara Law also makes me think of women in the United State who are classified as citizens but treated as second class citizens nonetheless and still find themselves fighting to be acknowledged as any other individual, such as their male counterparts.

Erick Luevanos’ post about Amazon employees protesting the company makes me think of the quote, “My boss earns a dollar, I earn a dime” which does not seem to be the case with many companies worth millions or billions of dollars, because if that were true, these companies and CEO’s would be able to afford paying their employees much more over minimum wage and provide many more benefits. I think many retail companies have grown selfish and we as mass consumers have grown desensitized to their inhumane acts because if they can afford to sell a product for many times its production, they can afford to be held accountable to pay employees fair wages, wages beyond cents.

Response to Genawang

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a factory that consisted of many female workers that were young and old immigrants. There were 500 workers who worked in that factory.  In this factory, the workers would work very long hours, between 11-12 hours every single day. However, in the year of 1911 tragedy struck when a fire started in a bin  of cotton. There were 146 people that died either from burning, smoke, inhalation, and jumping to their death. This tragedy happened as a result of carelessness. Many times when people work, their environment is not properly taken care of for the workers. Many managers or bosses ignore the worker’s safety. Imagine working in a factory with hundreds of workers and a fire breaks out and you are trapped because there is barely a way out. Imagine working somewhere where the fire extinguisher was locked or broken and there was one elevator that worked that day that only held 12 people. As a young woman who also works I can relate to what the man was saying in the video. At my job not only do we do a lot of work that requires more pay. However many times the environment is not very safe. It is often cold, slippery and the foods sometimes have rat marks, expired food, and a dirty environment. This can affect the workers because there are many elderly women who work at my job, if anything happens ( For example if someone falls, or gets sick from expired foods or foods with bugs on them). Not only will the workers be affected by this but the whole company can be sued and possibly go out of business because of this negligent act. Another example is when we are dealing with a company that is worth billions of dollars yet the workers are underpaid and treated unfairly. Workers rights go hand and hand with human rights because we have the right to be better and be treated fairly. 

I agree with the Genawang post because many women back then were making less money than men. This is something that goes on in many places. Men would work the same job and get paid more than the woman. This is unfair because just like men women also have responsibilities. We deserve higher wages, better working environment and conditions. Finally we deserve the right to have break time in between shifts. 

I had watched The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire it was about how women/ teenagers had to work long hours, low wages, and also unsafe conditions. The Employees work like 12hour every day. On March 25th, 1911 at the end of the workday the fire started in a bin of cotton straps. And how they couldn’t seem to put the fire out because how the hose was rusted shut. And the thing is when the fire spread quickly it is harder for them to escape. People only started to panic because they wanted a way out and were afraid that they were going to die. It is also sad that finding a way out of the factory for them is hard either they get crushed to death finding their way or they choose to jump down the window hearing this breaks my heart. Just so they don’t die from the fire inside the factory. Some workers were burned to death or died from breathing in too much of the smoke from the fire. Only been a few 18 minutes 144 people had died. And two more died after in the hospital there were 146 in total. I can’t believe that Max Blanc and Isaac Harris were the ones killing but they weren’t found guilty at all in their trial. What I really hate is when there are the ones that kill so many workers in a factory that can get away with it they should’ve been punished because this was not fair for the workers. They work so hard and rarely even get paid enough. And end up in danger and death. Also when they did decide to change up a bit with Sullivan-Honey fire prevention law that requires sprinklers makes me very mad because why they didn’t decide to do these in the first place but only when so many of the workers had died from the fire. But at least there was a change so other workers that work there can be much safer. Making 28 cents an hour isn’t a lot to me because now we earn more than just that money in the factory. And the worker doesn’t even get any profit from the factory. When they say the jeans they make from the factory selling it for 26 dollars but only have gotten 28 cents. And when the worker wanted 35 cents an hour while working they been beaten up. Even though it still does not count as a lot to me. I think a child shouldn’t work there because they are only kids and too young. Mostly they should be in school having education instead of this which I am glad that they banned child labor. In my opinion, I feel like if they were paid a little more it could have been much better since the worker there worked hard and barely rest. I agree with Erick Luevanos SnapShot I feel that the workers work extra hard at amazon and how they rarely get paid. They have to use the bathroom super quick. While their lives were also risked since we are also in a pandemic and a lot of people buy from amazon.

In the video of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, it is clear that the cause of so many deaths is environmental factors because a box of cotton wool caught fire but the hose of the fire bucket was rotten, which made it impossible to extinguish the fire in time, and because there were only one of the four elevators in the building. It can be used, and only 12 people can sit at a time, and because the escape stairs are too narrow to go down, the most annoying thing is that the door of the stairs is locked by the manager. These circumstances resulted in 146 people being crushed to death because they were burned, fell from a building, inhaled heavy smoke, and two holders of this garment factory were charged with manslaughter but were acquitted later in the same year. freed. I think this is very unfair to the family of those 146 people because their negligence might even save money.

In this snapshot, we see a woman working in a factory making shirts and she is also wearing a mask. In the shirts that she’s making, we see the red text says “Smash the Patriarchy”. The artist Odile Brée illustrates the concept of how female workers work long hours for less wages due to the difficult issues. The text itself actually sends a message to the viewer that the economy is harsh towards women workers which allows the patriarchies to take advantage of them and make them work long hours. According to the first video from the History channel, “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” explains the past situations of immigrant women who were forced to work long, consuming hours in the sweatshop without any safety conditions. On the date of March 25, 1911, the workers were about to finish up their jobs and a fire exploded inside the factory. The workers were terrified, so they attempted to escape but most of them were trapped in the building. Some of these workers threw themselves off the building to avoid being incinerated and they died from the impact from the fall. Their bodies were on the ground from the aftermath of the fall so their families can identify them and be mourned by them. How I felt about the snapshot is that there is not much to say about it other than the fact that women work for hours in the factory with unfair conditions. I feel guilty for the female workers from the video who were being treated unfairly by the patriarchy. The solution against patriarchy is to protest and regain our rights for the female workers. In the second video “Triangle Returns” discusses about 100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory incident, workers in the country of Bangladesh have had already repeated history when a fire broke out in the building during the day. There are some things that happened that make a parallel connection to the incident that happened 100 years earlier. Workers jumped off from the burning building themselves. The video mentions sweatshops that worked in and being paid 35 cents an hour. The workers were dissatisfied about its conditions and the laws needed to protect them from the harsh environment. From the article called “Virginia Just Became… ERA” by author Tara Law, the story talks about the harsh realities of the Amendment due to continuous fights in courts and the U.S. legislature since the legislators were the ones responsible for passing the amendment more than 30 years ago.  Another thing mentioned in the article is that there is a solution that helps protest  against violence towards women, lower wages and maternity leave. Women who are either pregnant, sick or having emergency issues do not have to work that long hours because they deserve to have their rights being protected. The connection to the snapshot is that people worked at factories and needed equal rights and protected by the law through the department of labor. What I felt about this revelation of the patriarchy system is that they should have defended the female workers from the harsh rules of unregulated conditions that the system laid for them and the female workers could get the justice they deserve.

The Triangle shirtwaist factory fire was a sweatshop company that caught a wide variety of attention because of their most tragic and deadliest disasters ever in history. The work area was filled with about five hundred employees who suffered long hours, low wages, and unsafe conditions. These employees, who were mostly women and teenagers, on March 11, 1911, had finished their 11-12 hour shift when a fire had started. By the first attempt to try and put out the fire by one of the employees, the manager, there was a malfunction with the hose, one of the most important things in any workplace, plus sprinklers were not installed in the workplace. Even the exits played a part in the workers’ inability to escape the building, causing many to jump to their death out the window. The next exit, the stairs, had a locked door that could only be open from the outside. The last existing exit was the fire escape, and it was in such bad condition that it had collapsed.

A total of 146 people died from that disaster. Yet, it could have been prevented if proper safety standards and better conditions could have saved the workers’ lives and stopped the fire’s growth. According to the video from youtube, “HISTORY,” that this industrial disaster was man-made. Man-made disasters can be defined as humans being the cause of disasters. There can be a sense of negligence and a certain intent behind disasters.

Going back to the idea of intent, it’s important to know people’s intentions when you’re looking for a job or pursuing anything because sometimes they don’t align with your needs and intentions as a human being. Sometimes business owners could care about profit and product, and that can create them not to care for their employees properly. This concept I am speaking on connects to Erick’s Luevanos snapshot with people holding signs, and one of them says, “If we are essential, treat us as such.” From my own perspective, that sign means that if I’m working overtime and I bust my butt creating more quantity for a company for hours, I would want some bonus or even some type of benefit since I’m being held up into producing and making more money for the company. I am super important to the company. You would think that a company that’s overworking their employees would increase employees’ place of work, whether it is increasing pay, increasing break time, or even doing reconstruction to have more employees and have a safer environment and not crowded. Yet, it seems hazardous to me that so many employees worked on that floor, and there was not one single exit available or stable enough to get everyone out. If there are that many employees, there should be more safety procedures.

I think it is also important to emphasize teaching employees proper protocols on what to do and how to handle their mental state in emergencies. Of course, the Triangle shirtwaist factory had people panicking because of the lack of resources on their floor because the business owner’s part is not creating a safe environment. Training employees to follow emergency guidelines can reduce the cost of employees hurting themselves and not thinking logically.

The Equal Rights Amendment, which would outlaw any type of sex discrimination, was first proposed ninety-eight years ago. Recently, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment in 2020, five decades after Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972.

Before the Equal Rights Amendment, women did not have equal pay, were underpaid, overworked, did not have the right to take leave from a workplace to care for a newborn or adopted child, were not permitted or had very little time to take breaks, worked in unsafe or unsanitary conditions, and more.

An example of how poorly women were treated was The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Women were not permitted to leave the factory or even take breaks, and because the doors were frequently locked to prevent this, many women were unable to evacuate once the fire broke out.

On that day (March 25th, 1911) over One hundred and forty-six manufacturing employees died as a result of the fire. It was on the top three levels of the Asch Building, which was ten stories tall. Some ladies died as a result of falls or because they were unable to flee. 

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When reading “Virginia Just Became the 38th State to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Here’s What to Know About the History of the ERA” By Tara Law, I took notice of section 1, stating “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” This is important because This part of the amendment effectively indicates that gender equality should not be denied by any state based on gender. To further explain, this means that legally, a person’s rights may not be restricted in any manner, nor may he or she be granted any benefits, based on his or her gender.

Lastly, a Snapshot that stuck out to me was by Jaisely Dominguez’s. Their snapshot represents the women that tried to escape but could not. As previously stated, That day, over 100 employees had died and the majority of them were young women. Doors that were kept shut to prevent staff from creating escape routes. The manufacturing floor’s main exit was built so that only one person could pass through at a time; existing workers had their purses searched by a night watchman.

The tragedy was so severe that it drew global attention to the dangers of factory sweatshops, prompting the adoption of several rules and regulations to better safeguard employees’ safety.