What the Triangle Fire Teaches Us about Regulation

I just watched the CNN documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911. When our industries and corporations chaff under the burden of government regulation and while Congress fights to roll regulation back, we might do well to remember this ugly episode.

It was in the aftermath of this horrific fire that many of the fire safety regulations we take for granted were instituted. It was as a result of this tragedy that many of our on-the-job safety regulations were enacted into law.

Death did not come easy to the fire's victims. It was not pretty. Not unlike the 9/11 victims in the twin towers, they faced the cruel choice of burning alive or jumping to their deaths. Many of the victims were burnt beyond recognition and were identified by the charred remains of their clothing, the way their hair was braided or the possessions they clutched as they died. Most of the dead were women, many of them barely adults, some of them still children. They were poor, hardworking members of immigrant families and worked 12-14 hour days for less than a living wage. Their deaths shattered the lives of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, husbands and friends. Many died because one of the exit doors had been locked, forcing workers to use one exit as they came off shift so management could make sure they were not stealing material from the factory.

They died because there were no fire escapes. They died because the fire truck ladders could not reach to the ninth floor. They died because they had never practised fire drills. They died because they were crowded into the factory as thick as could be to maximize production.

The factory owners collected insurance for the damage. The families of the dead workers went on as best they could without their loved ones. The factory owners were acquitted of manslaughter (for that locked exit door) by a jury of their peers. The last, unidentifiable bodies of the victims were buried without fanfare by the city, despite protests by the unions.

As we witness the sickness striking down workers who tried to control the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico; as we watch the utility employees in Japan desperately attempting to avert a nuclear catastrophe and suffering from radiation poisoning; as we listen to accounts of one coal mining disaster after another in mines owned by corporations that have been cited for safety violations over and over again, only to receive a mere slap on the wrist for those violations, let us not forget that without regulation, corporations adopt a risk/reward scenario that DOES NOT include human cost but only monetary return.

Abandoning regulation of our food, drugs, occupational safety, environmental safety, water safety is a RECIPE for DISASTER.

Unions

Demonization of unions puzzles me. Except for public employees unions, most American labor organizations have lost their teeth.

Institutions that secured workers on-the-job safety standards, the 40-hour work week, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, minimum wage standards are barely relevant in the age of Wal-Mart.

What good is a 40-hour work week when workers need two or three jobs to meet minimum living standards? What purpose does a minimum wage that fails to provide for the most basic needs of existence serve? What role does a National Labor Relations Board play when employers are allowed to terminate employees who attempt to organize?

How effective is unemployment insurance when workers cannot find replacement jobs for months or years? What bargaining chips do unions have when 15 million Americans are unemployed and millions more have been forced to accept underemployment?

Even public sector unions are feeling the bite. Privatization of traditionally public sector jobs is gaining momentum. Years of bloated, unsustainable budgets have made deep state and local government cuts inevitable.

Did the unions play a role in their decline? Yes. Frivolous strikes. Demands that were unsustainable for their industries. Leaders who forgot who they represented. Corruption. But no other institutions so ably represented the American working stiff (the "small" people).

Who else cared about nurses being forced to work long, arduous double shifts? On-the-job haz-mat protection? Whistle-blower protection? Child labor? Teachers confronting violence in the classroom and huge class sizes? Air traffic controllers working under agonizingly stressful, understaffed conditions (does anyone even remember THEIR superhuman efforts on 9/11)?

From the day the Great Communicator fired the striking air traffic controllers, the handwriting was written on the wall: "the 'small' people have no place in the shining city on the hill."