On March 25th, 1911, the triangle shirtwaist factory fire took the lives of 146 people, 125 of them being young women. The factory owners didn’t care about their workers and kept an unsafe environment for them. They could have prevented the deaths of all those innocent people. The fire was a key reason for the growth of the labor unions, particularly the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. New York also passed the Sullivan Hoey fire prevention law in response to the fire, where it was a requirement to install sprinkler systems in all factories. On December 13th, 2010, another fire very similar to the triangle shirtwaist fire happened in Bangladesh. Just shy of the 100th anniversary of the first fire, the one in Bangladesh resulted in 29 deaths and over 100 injured workers. Just like the first fire, the building owners didn’t care about their workers and failed to protect them. Workers’ rights are human rights that have to do with labor relations between workers and their employers. It also has to do with their pay, benefits, and of course safe working conditions.
A majority of the victims of the fires were young women, and that is not surprising because most of the employees at the garment factory jobs are, in fact, women. The second video titled “Triangle Returns” states that the workers in Bangladesh were being paid 1/10th of what wages were in the U.S a century ago, “we’re racing to the bottom.” Labor rights, suffrage, and the equal rights amendment are related because of the lack of rights women had and the lack of inequality we face to this day. Women have always had to fight and speak at a louder volume for them to be heard. The right to vote, a safe and fair work environment, and equal legal rights should not be determined by a person’s sex or gender. In the reading about the Equal Rights Amendment written by Tara Law for TIME Magazine, Jessica Neuwirth states, “It was an intentional exclusion of women from the constitution, because they were basically not considered full citizens who should have the right to vote,” Neuwirth says. “Once they got the vote, they wanted to get all the other rights that they should have. “(pg. 3). Women deserve equality in the legal systems of the entirety of the U.S, no more being treated like second-class citizens.
Hi Lizbeth,
In modern times, I am not so well educated on the sweatshops here in America, but I am aware of the ones in poorer parts of the world. These big companies pay foreign workers and children, to do ridiculous amount of work and hours, for nothing more than a cent a day. It’s easy to expose them but hard to fight back due to their high power.
Hello Lizbeth.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was not only shocking, it is not uncommon in third world countries. The severity of the fire was so extreme because of the fact that an emergency exit was intentionally locked, in a high-risk factory where clothes was being made- a highly flammable material. Aside from these women being placed in harmful and grueling working conditions, they were extremely young and were not protected. It is the same in today’s world of high fashion, where kids are being put to work and are not compensated for it. This is why suffrage, labor rights and equal rights are so prevalent for everyone.