Transcript Department of Fire Services

TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE:
The Need For Labor Laws
By Dawn Kitz-Wekerle
1
What Do You Know?
• What happened on
March 25, 1911?
• How do Labor Laws
protect workers?
2
Before Labor Laws…
SWEAT SHOPS
• Overcrowded
• Hazardous Working
Conditions
• Unfair Wages
• Child Labor
• Poor ventilation
• Dangerous Machinery
3
March 25, 1911
• It was a warm spring Saturday in NYC, March 25,
1911. On the top three floors of the ten-story Asch
Building just off of Washington Square in NYC,
employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory began
putting away their work. The company employed
approximately 500 workers, mostly young female
immigrants who worked fourteen-hour shifts during a
60-hour to 72-hour workweek, sewing clothes for a wage
of a dollar fifty per week.
4
FIRE!
• At about 4:30 p.m., a fire
broke out in the 8th floor
cutting room and spread
rapidly, consuming
thousands of pounds of
fabric. Panicked workers
tried to escape. But
some of the doors were
locked, a tactic the
factory's bosses used to
keep employees at their
sewing machines. Other
exits were blocked and
there were no sprinklers.
5
TRAGEDY….
• Within 15 minutes,
dozens inside the
factory were dead.
Stunned passers-by
watched as others
jumped to their deaths,
their skirts ablaze.
•The death toll
reached 146.
6
Labor Law Reform
• The public outrage over the horrific loss of life led to
the creation of a Factory Investigating Commission
which undertook a thorough examination of safety
and working conditions in New York factories. Their
recommendations led to laws reforming the state
labor code.
7
Labor Laws Regulate:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Safety
Wages
Health Benefits
Retirement Security
Employees’ Rights
Employment of Minors
8
Assignment
• List 5 ways in which Child
Labor Laws protect you.
• You may use the following
websites, or you may find
your own.
• http://www.labor.state.ny.us/
workerprotection/laborstand
ards/workprot/minors.shtm
• http://www.lectlaw.com/files/e
mp18.htm
• http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/tri
anglefire/narrative6.html
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