FROM THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE TO THE PRESENT DAY
The more things change the more they stay the same
By Gary Schoichet
From high up, 10th and 11th floors, terrified, they jumped out of windows to escape the fire and smoke
that was taking over the factory where they worked. 21 workers, mostly women, many quite young,
their lives were extinguished before they got going.
It was not the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911 in Greenwich Village that claimed the
lives of 146 mostly young immigrant women, but December 14, 2010 in Bangladesh where for the
second time in 2010 a fire broke out in a factory making garments for export to western countries. The
two fires claimed 45 lives. Since the year 2000, more than 300 workers have been killed in factory fires
in Bangladesh. As with the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (146 dead), emergency exits were blocked or locked
to stop workers from stealing garments or taking unscheduled breaks.
The factory, “That’s It Sportswear, Ltd., produces garments for American Eagle, GAP/Old Navy, JC
Penney, Kohl’s, Squeeze, Sears, VF Asia, Target Store, Charming Shoppes, and Wal-Mart in the USA
market.
The president of the Bangladeshi Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that he
believed fire safety regulations were being followed at the factory. Blaming the victims, he said
the deaths were likely due to workers panicking. "I have heard claims about a locked gate but as an
investigation is ongoing, I cannot comment on that now," Abdus Samad Murshedy said. According to
reports, 12 emergency exits were locked.
Fires due to short-circuits and substandard wiring are apparently common in Bangladeshi garment
factories, annually killing scores of the country's 2.5 million poorly paid workers who toil 12-14 hours a
day in sweatshop working conditions.
"Everyone working on the factory's top floor died because the exit gates were locked, they were all
women, they were all trapped, and they all suffocated," said Abdul Momin, a Garib factory employee
who said his aunt died in the fire. "This was not an accident, these workers were killed by the factory's
blatant disregard for worker safety," said Amirul Islam Amin, head of the National Garment Workers
Federation. [Industryweek.com]
That one could report two stories, 100 years apart, so similar that only the place and numbers need
changing, says a lot about the state of worker safety and health worldwide.
Joel Shulfro, executive director of NYCOSH (New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health)
said, “What’s happening now is the export of our industrial hazards to third world countries. In the
United States we have a declining rate of fatalities, but worldwide there is an increasing rate of fatalities
as sweatshops, built for exploitation, do their business. In this country the introduction of new chemicals
in the workplace, the downsizing of the workforce, and the wave of untrained immigrant workers has
added to the same problems we had 100 years ago.”
Were this latest fire an isolated incident people might shrug, say it was half a world away, and write it
off. But when there are explosions in coal mines (29 killed in West Virginia Upper Big Branch Mine that
had hundreds of violations), explosions on oil rigs (11 killed in BP’s Deepwater Horizon), explosions in
chemical plants (two brothers killed in West Virginia), explosions in power plants (Connecticut’s Kleen
Energy Systems with five deaths) it is not coincidence. These are a few of 2010’s explosions in the United
States that killed workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, 4,340 workers were killed on the job in the
U.S. In New York, stories of construction deaths leap out of the pages of the daily press; stories that
seem to repeat even as time moves on. Undocumented immigrant workers, whose complaints about
unsafe conditions would only get them fired, are in a pit or hole or on top of a wall, when the not well-
shored-up wall collapses, burying them and their hopes under cinder blocks, bricks, or tons of sand.
Oftentimes, if the deaths are multiple, it is brothers or friends from the same town in Mexico or Central
America or South America. David Michaels, assistant secretary of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health
Administration), said, “Latino workers face the most dangerous working conditions and the fewest
protections.”
“The commemoration of the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire centers around the emergence,
after the fire, of a regulatory system to protect workers and a safety net for the same purpose. Those
two protections are under attack today. The private sector loses far more union workers than it gains
and private sector employers see this as an opportunity to roll back the safety net put in place after the
Triangle Fire,” said Shulfro.
100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, while much has changed, so much hasn’t.
