“It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. A dropped match on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sparked a fire that killed over a hundred innocent people trapped inside. The private industry of the American factory would never be the same.”
This movie is hard to watch… It is even harder to believe that the bosses in the factories would hire prostitutes, prize fighters, goons and thugs, not to mention crooked cops and sleazy judges to attack, jail, beat up and put down the innocent striking immigrant women who in some cases were as young as 14 years of age.
All that these young women were asking for was a fair wage and decent, safe working conditions. When the bosses said no, the women upped the stakes and demanded UNIONS, so that their reasonable demands would be met and voted on, and that they would have protections and not be fired at will.
The bosses at this factory were stubborn and greedy, as most people are in the 1% category. The 1% feel entitled to the money that was and still is earned by these poor workers slaving 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week. These sweatshops used to be common in the USA, now they are common overseas, which is where millions of US jobs got exported. Why?
The 1% figured out that they could turn time back, and go back to the sweatshops by taking them overseas. By moving their factories from one country to the next, making them compete for the worst working conditions, the cheapest/worst buildings, the cheapest labor, with no rights, no benefits, no safety standards and child labor on top of it, the labor and worker’s rights movement got turned back to before 1900.
US workers and consumers let the 1% get away with it. US workers and consumers still give permission to these huge global corporations, and are part of the 1900 sweatshop factory slave trade.
People in the US and other ‘civilized’ countries buy slave produced goods willingly, because somehow these goods are ‘cheap’ and the corporate owned mass media has convinced people that unions are bad, evil and to be thrown in the trash pile.
The corporate owned mass media has also convinced most people that government laws are bad, evil and that workers rights laws, environmental protection laws and voting protection laws are evil and must be abolished or choked to death.
The price workers are paying all around the world for allowing this to happen is seen in the global unemployment figures. The consequences are expressed in the frustration and the depression of young workers who cannot find work and have a 50 to 95% unemployment rate in just about every country, including the USA. Money that could be going to solving problems like this is instead going to bail out the banksters, and for unending wars, and to line the pockets of the military industrial complex.
The price is that workers around the world are suffering what US workers suffered back in 1909, for no reason. These trade laws that the 1% imposed on US workers for no reason, included no provisions for health, safety, unions, environmental responsibility or anything else. Corporations and the 1% leaders who reign over them are allowed to rape, pillage, murder, steal and pollute to their heart’s content, with no consequences, in any country they choose. Want proof?
This link is one story, about ONE factory, in one country, but there are hundreds, no thousands, of stories just like this one, in countries all over the globe, just like this one. People in China are committing suicide by jumping off the roof of the factory, due to the brutal working conditions and poor pay.
Kids are being sold into slavery to pick chocolate ingredients, often for no pay at all.
Mexican field workers are regularly raped in the fields and not paid for the work that they do, and then threatened with being deported if they do report it.
The world is a global village. Workers can now communicate with one another around the world and connect via social media networks, just like the women workers talked with each other in the streets of New York after the Triangle Factory fire happened.
Those women back then got sick and tired of being treated WORSE than animals. Why is it that the workers of the world are putting up with a very small number of people calling the shots, abusing, raping, selling kids into slavery and even killing them with no consequences at all?
As Kevin says above, we have come full circle, back to slaves and children working in sweat shops, for little or no pay, horrible working conditions, no rights, no benefits, and no laws protecting them. The 1% just backdoored labor (meaning you and I) by exporting all jobs to countries that did not stand up for worker rights, such as Communist China. They used to be our worst Cold War enemy, but now, thanks to the 1% exporting millions of jobs to them, they and other slave supportive countries are our best friend.
Really? Is this what the USA is all about now? We now support slavery, abusing workers, letting factories collapse on workers, no worker rights, exporting all of our jobs, importing foreign workers and paying them less than minimum wage..
AGR Free Press 