Imagine being an immigrant with no money to provide for yourself or your family. You have to turn to work in a Shirtwaist Factory in order to make a living. While working inside of the Shirtwaist Factory you notice there are many injuries that occur from the machinery, you are being lowly paid for working extended hours, including holidays, and the bosses lock the exit doors to prevent theft by the workers. Many of the immigrant women became upset and decide to go on strike, for better working conditions. As a result the owners of the company ignore the women's strike causing the women to have to go back to working unfair jobs until the fire occurs. Immigrant workers that worked inside of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company endured …show more content…
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire helped prepare for a series of laws that improved the working conditions for the workers. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire is very similar to the Bangladesh industry crash which also had unfair working conditions that led to laws being established and factories having more inspections. According to guardian.com’s article, Bangladesh factory collapse blamed on swampy ground and heavy machinery, they stated, “The disaster highlighted the hazardous working conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry and the lack of safety of workers who are lowly paid.” Though the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were discharged of their consequences, the Bangladesh owners did receive their consequences for mistreating the workers. In total the Bangladesh crash killed more than 2,500 people, this crash led people to take action causing the shutdown of 28 garment factories for safety reasons. Should we begin inspecting all factories before tragedies can occur? If we don’t begin noticing the working conditions in factories before something happens, there will be more deaths and injuries which could have been prevented if people would become concerned about working conditions for
Up until the early 20th century, American labor laws did not protect employees and work environments were not monitored for unsafe conditions. Factories were allowed to run without proper fire exits, ventilation, pay, breaks and even children were forced into labor. These unsafe conditions came crashing down just before the end of the workday on March 25th, 1911 in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. In just under 30 minutes, 146 lives perished (Benin). Today, we call these factories “sweatshops” and they are primarily found in countries that lack laws enforcing proper working conditions.
The factory having limited exits routes and no sprinkler system is a real danger. If there is to be a fire it would be more likely to spread due to no sprinkler system. The workers would also be crammed to get get out due to few exits and having an overcapacity of workers. Having bad lightly and poor air circulation causes workers to do a worse job. Having too many workers at time can make it hard to work since you have no room.
During 1910, the country was progressing quickly towards a greater form of mass production and increasingly dangerous working conditions. People labored in squalor like in the “below ground bakeries,” where rat droppings covered rolling tables and children were “coughing beside ovens.” Progressives, unionists, and socialists called for different types of reform, and Tammany Hall opposed them; the political machine sent strikebreakers and stalled legislation that would benefit the workers. Then, on March 25, 1911, the Triangle Waist Company factory caught fire at the end of the day shift. About 146 men and women died in the Asch Building.
Each one of the floors of the five story building is expected to produce more than 20,000 articles of clothing a day. They have few standards for safety within these factories (The Cost of Cloth: Ethical Textiles). With these low standards, the chance of a disaster similar to the Rana Plaza happening again is extremely likely. The workers within these factories go in everyday with a constant fear that they are going to become physically hurt. The buildings themselves are dangerous, but that is just a contributor to their already over demanding treacherous
Immigration largely affect the American industrial workers in many ways. One way the American worker was greatly affected was through the economic aspect of his or her life. More immigrants were coming to America everyday to work in the factories, which meant that there was a much larger workforce. This large work force was able to form and populate large labor unions to fight for their
The work was also dangerous with not much supervising by the government. Workers, on the other hand, had little or even no bargaining power to leave the unsafe conditions. Nowadays, When Americans only pay attention when extreme work strike, levels of abuse are the norm hidden in the factories around the globe. Although the condition seems much improved, consumers don’t know the true fact- “Today, American citizens simply cannot know the working conditions of the factories that make the products they buy.
In Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector, Frank declared, “While one of us might tour the work floors to note all the health and safety violations (the gazebo factory, for instance, had no secondary exits, no guarding on machines, no first aid supplies, no eye protection the list kept going)” Frank describes the working conditions of one of the sweatshops he/she has seen. These workers risk their lives everyday work. They could get sick from certain fumes or injure one of their limbs if their not careful. The workers have to work in these dire conditions and still get paid so very little.
One of the main reasons the fire took such a psychological toll on the New Yorkers was because of the workers jumping to there deaths. One witness even remarked the event saying quote 'I know a new sound a terrible sound the sound of a body hitting the pavement". The inferno was also not an uncommon occurrence the triangle shirt was burned before the tragedy to collect insurance money. Knowing this information, many Jewish and women workers went on strike to secure improved working conditions. There strike in fact proved successful with the New York state legislature creating the Factory Investigating Commission.
it’s great that people can find work in these industries and factories. But the greatness doesn’t compare to the danger it will cause to those working in and around those
As a result, from 1860 to 1900 alone, the number of urban areas in the United States expanded fivefold (Source 2). The immigrants who desperately needed employment and the greed of factory owners made the rise of sweat shops astonishing. Around the country low-paid immigrants, including women and children, worked for excessively long
“shut down twenty-two plants and lay off 13,000 North American workers between November 1997 and February 1999” Klein, N., (2002) No Logo. The main purpose of this article is to raise awareness and inform about exploitation of people as cheap workforce in factories by big companies, who found a way of doing it without the risk of being sued and closed down.
Due to dangerous conditions, Rana Plaza, an eight-story building host to five clothing factories, completely collapsed, killing over 1,130 workers and injuring 2,500 others (International Labor Rights Forum 1). According to Brad Adams of Human Rights watch, “This tragedy was sadly predictable” because of the terrible and unsafe conditions continually overlooked by the factory owner (Human Rights Watch 2). This collapse was not the first tragedy to strike the garment industry workers of Bangladesh; in 2012 a fire in the Tazreen factory had occurred, killing at least 110 workers (Gapper 2), and this fire was preceded by several tragedies, including two other nearby factory collapses (Human Rights Watch 1). Each of these incidents led to more solidarity by the workers, greater attempts to organize and unionize and louder calls for change, yet led to no real reform. Ultimately, however, it was this event at Rana Plaza that marked the key turning point in the struggle of its garment factory workers, aiding them in gaining enough power to generate a significant change in law and policy in
The working conditions of the laborers working on fruit plantations, clothing workhouses and other factories have be considered barbaric. Worker on plantations seldom receive safety training and often obtain injury while on the clock, either from insufficient training on how to use machines, the chemicals used, or illness from overwork. One could argue that even though these conditions are awful, it is a job and they recieve money to survive, but one could ask whether or not it is worth it. A person could argue that if workers in a first world country worked 12 hour days in such conditions, severe actions would be taken to change the situation. The foreign workers in Asian and South American countries are out of sight, and therefore out of the minds of the consumers living far away from the origin of the products.
In 2008, BBC made a series of videos to raise awareness about conditions in factories in countries like Bangladesh and highlight the problems faced by workers there. The building collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 caused many deaths and injuries and revealed the plight of workers in that country. No phone calls: In many factories workers’ belongings were checked before entry.
Many workers were suffering from injuries and even death as a result of neglectant employers and poor working conditions. For example, in 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. About 150 workers died, most being young immigrant woman because the factories owners previously locked all the exits and stairwells in efforts to prevent theft. This event was one of deadliest indrustrial tradegies in New York City, yet led to creation of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, a labor union that aimed to fix the poor working conditions for sweatshop and later factory workers. These reformers, along with other labor unions eventually succeeded in getting states to pass legislation concerning labor conditions such as worker’s compensation and limiting the amount of hours woman could work.