triangle shirtwaist factory fire

Garment workers around 1900. (Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, photographer unknown)

100 years ago -

Turn back the clock on New York City’s garment district to around the year 1900.

“The average work week was 84 hours, 12 hours every day of the week,” said Ellen Rothman with the Jewish Women’s Archive in Brookline, Mass. “During the busy season, the grinding hum of sewing machines never entirely ceased day or night.”

Conditions had begun to improve by 1911, but just slightly. On March 25th of that year, fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in lower Manhattan. It was one of the worst workplace disasters in American history: 146 people died, mostly teenage girls and women, immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe and Italians.

Shifting Work, Shifting Danger

Garment jobs have been shifting to lower-cost operations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Asia for decades, as have dangerous working conditions.

“Effectively what we have done is exported our sweatshops and exported our factory fires,” said Robert Ross at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. And it’s as if the 1911 conditions had been lifted up by an evil hand and dropped into Bangladesh.”

Why?

The question is: Why does this keep happening? Labor laws exist, both international and country-specific rules. But Heewon Brindle-Khym, with the Fair Labor Association in New York City, said laws are often ignored in places like Bangladesh and China.

“It’s cheaper for many factory owners to not abide by the law because it costs them money,” said Brindle-Khym. “In terms of the enforcement of the law, there’s just aren’t enough inspectors to go to each and every factory in China to ensure that labor rights are being enforced.”

Most American clothing companies are completely removed from the manufacturing process. They often don’t know what goes on in their overseas factories, or they choose not to investigate.

Still, part of the blame for unsafe working conditions in garment factories also lies with American consumers, argued Robert Ross.

“The average American has eight pairs of jeans,” said Ross. He said trends show that show Americans continue to spend less and less money on clothes, while buying more and more stuff. “People should buy better and fewer clothes. That would be good for garment workers.”

But that’s not something consumers generally want to hear.

Still, 100 years after the Triangle Fire, labor organizers, activists and social researchers want to remind people that there’s a worker behind the cheap clothes we buy. And in many parts of the world, The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire isn’t just an anniversary marking a bygone era.



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