The fire began on Saturday

Today is the centenary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. On 25 March 1911, 146 workers at a typical New York schmatta factory died when a fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Asch Building.

The fire spread quickly, engulfing all three of Triangle’s floors (8-10). The workers, mostly new immigrants ranging in age from 13 to about 25, tried to escape. The doors to the stairwells and fire escapes on the 9th floor (which had neither alarms nor telephone communications with the other floors) had been locked by the factory’s owners; but even getting to the fire escapes was dangerous, as some of them collapsed under the weight.

One hundred twenty-nine women and 17 men were killed from fire, smoke inhalation and blunt-force trauma. Many of them leapt from the windows when they couldn’t get to the stairs or fire escapes.

The 25th was a Saturday, a “short” day for the workers, who put in nine-hour shifts on Monday through Friday and only seven on Saturday.

The catastrophe brought industrial conditions to the consciousness of the American people and boosted the labor movement. The unions of this era campaigned tirelessly to improve conditions, hours and safety measures for all working people. They did this by organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members.

This is a right which, as we have seen, has recently come under attack.

Here’s what I think: there are basically only two reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)

Business management in companies both large and small do not provide more or less sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because over the past 150 years unions have fought with blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the value-add of both products and services;and because they’re terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of locusts ranging across Iowa.

I’m not saying that unions haven’t become part of the problem—many of them are every bit as bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something like, oh, curing cancer.

But it takes the kind of jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South (God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop conditions or child labor.

And it’s not limited to schmattas, either. Twenty years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough, state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire in a chicken processing plant that killed 25 workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno.

I’m not going to talk about the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having to fork out for any, you know, protections.

Then there’s the Upper Big Branch mine disaster of just last year. Massey Mining, the owner, has had flocks of safety violations, but that never interfered with business. That butcher's bill was only 29 dead...

The last time I posted about unions (the French ones) I was excoriated by someone who accused me of being “a true union talking head, who has no regard for anyone trying to scratch out a living today as a self sufficient, outside the box thinker…who obviously leads a life of disdain for all hard working stiffs like me who do not belong to unions, but who do have a business that someday maybe, perhaps will be successful enough to make millions.”

She was having a bad day and I won’t continue quoting her screed, which included something about Zimbabwean dollars and how much she resented having to pay her employees for sick leave. But her response—clearly from a small business perspective—pretty much proves my point.

For the record, I was once in a union, the Teamsters, as it happens. That was one summer when I typed prescription labels in the pharmacy of a membership-type store. (Got the job because I could read Latin.) You couldn’t work there and not be in the union, but all I got out of whatever dues were deducted from my paycheck was pretty much less net but the hourly rate was higher than minimum wage. I didn't get to picket or order any hits on anyone or smoke any cigars.

(I worked for a non-guild newspaper for a while. They gave all their employees whatever guild workers got, just to keep the unions out. And the guilds in the film/television industry get their own post; maybe their own blog.)

The laborer is worthy of his hire, at all levels; that includes fair remuneration, decent conditions and respect for her work.

And it shouldn’t take repeated workplace catastrophes to bring it about.

P.S. CNN is airing an HBO documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at 2300 on Saturday. You might want to watch.