Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary

[Miss Golightly]

I remember very clearly watching that 1979 movie... I was 10 at the time. It has stuck with me all these years. Such a terrible tragedy.

I remember reading about it in a huge book I had about crime and then a while later saw the movie - I was only a child myself when I saw it and it horrified me - such an awful tragedy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And still we pretend things have changed.

 

[sheeplady]

And still we pretend things have changed.

I absolutely love this part: "PVH CEO Emanuel Chirico later told ABC News that Nova's assertion was "false" and "totally offline." He said the brands did not lose interest in a solution, but instead had reached a point in the negotiation where it became difficult to persuade so many different parties to find common ground on a solution." [emphasis added]

It's called threaten to pull your business unless the factory is built/ maintained to certain standards. The factory owners aren't the most powerful player in that relationship.

 

[Undertow]

I absolutely love this part: "PVH CEO Emanuel Chirico later told ABC News that Nova's assertion was "false" and "totally offline." He said the brands did not lose interest in a solution, but instead had reached a point in the negotiation where it became difficult to persuade so many different parties to find common ground on a solution." [emphasis added]

It's called threaten to pull your business unless the factory is built/ maintained to certain standards. The factory owners aren't the most powerful player in that relationship.

Haha, good point. Kinda sounds like they...oh, I don't know...lost interest in a solution. [huh] Really shameful, I'd say.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There has never been a truer demonstration of "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

 

[sheeplady]

Haha, good point. Kinda sounds like they...oh, I don't know...lost interest in a solution. [huh] Really shameful, I'd say.

This might make me a total cynic, but I'm willing to bet that they were never really interested in a solution.

 

[resortes805]

This might make me a total cynic, but I'm willing to bet that they were never really interested in a solution.

yup.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing too is people today can't claim ignorance. In 1913, most people didn't know about sweatshops. There were the occasional muckraking journalists publishing exposes in magazines read by the upper middle class, but most of the people who actually bought sweatshop goods had no idea where the products came from or how they were manufactured or by whom. The importance of the Triangle fire is that it really brought the issue into national focus and galvanized the union movement.

But what about today? We supposedly live in the "information age," and people jibber and jabber about how they are more informed than ever, have more access to information than any generation ever -- and the truth about globalized sweatshops is there for the price of a mouse click. Some people will see articles like this, cluck their tongues, and say "isn't that awful?" and keep right on buying sweatshopped merchandise because, like, can you beat those prices? And some people will see those articles, cluck their tongues, and say, hmph, The Invisible Hand Of The Market will take care of that, so it's nothing for me personally to worry about. And Tommy Hilfiger and all the rest of them *know* that most people won't pay attention to it at all because they just don't care about what happens to nameless brown people on the other side of the world, not so long as they can squeeze their lumpen backsides into a cheap pair of skinny jeans they got on 60 percent markdown.

So we keep right on keeping on, and those people who died a century ago basically died in vain. We haven't budged an inch, not really.

 

[Undertow]

Lizzie, I think you have a good point about the "invisible hand", which specifically highlights the dissonance between theoretical capitalism and de facto capitalism. People on this board, myself included, and most people in the country, would find it hard to witness the conditions human beings are currently enduring to manufacture our cheap clothes. One would think that these conditions would cause consumers to buy elsewhere thereby driving "bad" manufacturers out of the market.

Unfortunately, although we are good people at heart, we rely on whatever slick image is sold to us and hope the price is right before pulling out our credit cards. It's a dissonance that we rationalize away. Even saying that we buy American-made only is not necessarily going to fix the problem.

On a similar note, there is a law in Iowa that recently passed making it a felony to video-record the goings-on at a factory farm, even if that footage could be used as evidence in a criminal court to prove the farm is abusing and mishandling its livestock. Although there is some opposition to the law, few citizens know about it, and I suspect few care. Again, there's the dissonance: good people allowing bad things to happen because they are more concerned with the bottom line. Corporations are merely replicating this attitude to cater to its consumer. [huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have met the enemy, and he is Us.

 

[scooter]

You know. reading this brings to mind all the people I have heard bad-mouthing unions over the past year or so. I don't argue that unions have their short-comings, but I shudder to think what kind of conditions we might ALL be working in, if not for the various unions' efforts. I have experienced first-hand how union and non-union people are treated at the hands of their employers, and I vote for the safety of a union. Remember, the only reasons unions ever existed, is because employers could not be trusted to treat, and pay, their employees fairly. As they say, "Unions: the people who brought you the weekend!"

 

[sheeplady]

Some of it goes beyond apathy though. There's a certain portion of people who actually wish ill to these factory workers (the "they took our jobs" people). Some people actively don't care because "those factory people" are part of a different race/culture/ethnicity/country. I've seen people justify all sorts of horrible things that happen in these shops, from "they all do it" to "at least they get a roof over their head." I've even heard comparisons of "how much better" these factory workers have it than the general populace in that country because at least they "have jobs." And after all, "don't we need cheap labor from someplace to keep costs down?"

While I am no expert on civil war history, these types of statements sound eerily like the twisted justification for slavery in the US pre-civil war.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Globalization: The Twenty-First Century as the New Nineteenth Century.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And once again, "we've come so far."

About 1,400 people worked at the factory, about 70 percent of them women. Survivors said exit doors were locked, and a fire official said the death toll would have been much lower if the eight-story building had had an emergency exit.

The fire broke out on the ground floor, where a factory worker named Nasima said stacks of yarn and clothes blocked part of the stairway. Nasima, who uses only one name, and other workers said that when they tried to flee, managers told them to go back to their work stations.

 

[sheeplady]

The apparent confusion underscored what some industry experts say is a major obstacle to improving safety in Third World factories: Many major retailers in the U.S. and Europe rely on such a long and complex chain of manufacturers, vendors and middlemen to keep their shelves stocked that it is difficult to keep track of where certain products are made.....

Wal-Mart said that it received a safety audit that showed the factory was “high-risk” and had decided well before the blaze to stop doing business with Tazreen. But it said a supplier had continued to use Tazreen without authorization.

When pressed for an explanation of how a supplier could use a factory without the retailer’s approval and whether it happened often, Kevin Gardner, a Wal-Mart spokesman, did not directly address the issue in emails to The Associated Press.

Sears said it learned after the blaze that its merchandise was being produced there without its approval through a vendor, which has since been fired. Walt Disney Co., which licenses its characters to clothing makers, said its records indicate that none of its licensees have been permitted to make Disney-brand products at the factory for at least a year.

Ummmm.... it's called you demand to know where the product is made or you refuse to deal with the company. I hate to say it, but if you are Walmart (the world's largest retailer) you can make your suppliers cough up the information if you really wish to do so. Failing that, you can check up on them in other ways if you don't believe they are honest because you have the resources to do so. If Walmart meant business about these kinds of unfair labor practices they would make it clear to subcontractors that violating the terms of their agreement resulted in lawsuits, lack of business, and bad press.

But sadly Walmart doesn't care because consumers don't care. Plenty of people will wring their hands over this but it won't change a darn thing about their shopping habits.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What upsets me the most, I think, is that this story was absolutely buried. People still talk about the Triangle fire a century after the fact -- but here's a fire that happened less than two weeks ago and killed about the same number of people in very similar circumstances, and it gets barely a squawk while the media jumps up and down about football players and pregnant princesses. "Oh, it's just brown people on the other side of the world, it's not our problem, those people are lucky to have jobs at all. Hey did you hear about Kate?"

Sometimes I'm disgusted by humanity.

 

[sheeplady]

What upsets me the most, I think, is that this story was absolutely buried. People still talk about the Triangle fire a century after the fact -- but here's a fire that happened less than two weeks ago and killed about the same number of people in very similar circumstances, and it gets barely a squawk while the media jumps up and down about football players and pregnant princesses. "Oh, it's just brown people on the other side of the world, it's not our problem, those people are lucky to have jobs at all. Hey did you hear about Kate?"

Sometimes I'm disgusted by humanity.

Well, that's either because:
1. Most people assume it happens all the time and therefore don't care about it.
2. Most people assume it doesn't happen and therefore don't care about it.

The days are long passed when journalism was the guardian of democracy and that really stinks.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Bump.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Since the last time we discussed this, Bangladesh has experienced the worst factory disaster in its history -- the final reckoning concluded that over eleven hundred workers were crushed to death in the collapse. The American firms which dealt with the factory have pledged "more accountability," but they also pledged that after the fire in 2012.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Since the last time we discussed this, Bangladesh has experienced the worst factory disaster in its history -- the final reckoning concluded that over eleven hundred workers were crushed to death in the collapse. The American firms which dealt with the factory have pledged "more accountability," but they also pledged that after the fire in 2012.

This is the price we pay (actually, the price we expect others to pay) for inexpensive imported clothing. We'd rather spend our money to support goods made in the US, but American manufacturers are becoming fewer and their products more costly. And it's these people in third world nations who pay the difference in prices with their lives.