

Mole's Progressive Democrat


Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States


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  • Sunday, April 03, 2011

    March 25th, 1911: A Turning Point in the American Labor Movement

    This is adapted from something I wrote some years ago when I actually worked in the building where the Triangle Shirtwaist fire took place. But it is a part of American history, labor history, and Jewish-American history that Teabaggers want us to forget. And we must not EVER forget because the women who lost their life that day died so that today we have fire regulations and unions. The Teabaggers are desecrating the memories of those women who died 100 years ago.

    On March 25th 1911, 146 people died in the very building I used to work in before our lab moved to the NYU school of medicine. The result of their deaths was the rapid growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the real beginning of the fight against sweatshops. These are the very advances that right wing extremists in the Republican party are trying to eliminate, forgetting those 146 deaths. It also was the beginning of fire regulations in American cities.

    The story of the fire and the missed opportunities to prevent it are chilling. But what is more chilling is the fact that America has forgotten why we need unions. Even some unions have forgotten what unions are all about, but I want everyone who doubts the need for unions to remember the events of March 25, 1911.

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    Several years ago I worked in what is now known as the Brown Building at NYU near Washington Square. But in 1911 it was the Asch building. The top three floors of the Asch building comprised the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. For the record, a shirtwaist is essentially a woman's blouse. I worked a couple of floors below where the factory was. Each March 25th I could look out of my lab's window and see the annual commemoration of those who died in 1911.

    This factory employed some 500 workers, mostly young women immigrants. The working conditions were essentially sweatshop conditions with fourteen-hour workdays and a 60- to 72-hour workweek. This is what work conditions were often like BEFORE unions. This is what the Teabaggers are trying to restore in America--fourteen-hour workdays and a 60- to 72-hour workweek. The factory was also a death trap because there were hardly any fire regulations. Workers of course smoked and lighting was from gas lighting...and, of course, the clothing was flammable. But it was even worse due to management distrust of the workers. One of the two exit stairs was locked to keep workers from taking breaks. The fire escape was substandard. And working conditions were crowded. This is the kind of situation unions fought so hard to fix and which Republicans want to go back to.

    A couple of years before the fire, in 1909, a walkout by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers sparked a large-scale labor protest, called the uprising of 20,000. When the management of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory locked out its striking employees, it led to a series of meetings of the industry's workers, leading to a much larger-scale walkout. Since a majority of the workers were Jewish immigrants, the large-scale action began with a Yiddish oath, that, roughly translated, means "if I break my oath may my hand wither away." Twenty thousand garment workers walked out for fourteen weeks. This was before the right to strike was guaranteed. They were risking their livelihood to fight for better conditions.

    All of the usual thuggery by management that typified the early labor movement was manifest. With police assistance, management hired thugs to beat up the striking women. But the strike continued, Yiddish oaths and all. An agreement was eventually reached, and, after an even larger strike in 1910, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was recognized. It was a MAJOR victory for working class Americans.

    But the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory refused to sign the agreement and conditions there scarcely improved.

    On March 25, 1911, a fire began two floors above where I worked so many years later. Workers on the tenth floor were alerted and escaped. But workers on the 9th floor were not. When the fire reached them, workers found doors locked by management. Some jumped out of windows to their deaths to escape the fire, an image that took on new meaning for me on 9/11 when many did the same at the much higher World Trade Center. Watching that happen, I found it overwhelming to imagine making the choice to jump. Other women jumped down the elevator shaft...mostly to their deaths. Others were overcome by smoke.

    The rush of workers down the inadequate fire escape led to more deaths when the fire escape collapsed. When the fire department arrived, they found that their ladders were too short to reach above the 6th floor.

    In all 146 people died. Of those, 54 died jumping out of windows to escape the fire. You can read an eyewitness account of the fire here. It is somewhat disturbing especially after 9/11 because of the description of the falling bodies. Here is the most touching excerpt:



    Some 100,000 people attended the funeral of these victims. The factory owners were put on trial but acquitted. But the incidence radicalized the union movement, making their struggle a matter of life and death. When you hear people complain about unions, go back and re-read that eyewitness account of the fire and remember why the union movement began in the first place. When you hear Teabaggers put down unions, quote then this passage and see if they still think unions are so bad. I can personally tell you some complaints about certain unions and certain union members...but overall, anyone who knows the history of labor in America KNOWS that unions are the salvation of working class Americans.

    (picture from this site)

    The eyewitness account of the fire ends thus:


    (picture from this site)

    My great-grandfather was a furniture maker who emigrated from Russia around the time of the anti-Jewish pogroms. He worked in a factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In that factory he lost two fingers and an eye in separate accidents. This was before the union movement. It is because of the union movement that such accidents are far, far less common.

    The Asch building was bought by NYU and is now the Brown Building which, in turn, was joined up with two other buildings to be come the Silver Center, one of the main buildings of the university. A plaque remains on the Brown building commemorating the fire.

    (image from this site)

    I will end by mentioning that the successor to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union is the Union UNITE HERE which includes garment and hotel workers.

    We still need these unions. We need them far more than we need the Billionaire Koch Brothers and their Teabagger helpers. That is why the fights in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio are of such critical, LIFE OR DEATH importance.



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