All the worker benefit laws were the result of pressure on the owners by reformers and unions.  No owner would have extended the protections to be nice or to be liked. They had years to do so and they didn’t.  Anyone who thinks that we no longer need either unions or the protective laws is kidding themselves or has severe mental delusions.

The story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is heartbreaking. It galvanized reformers and unions and a result was a raft of protective laws in NYS, that then became national. We honor ourselves and our worker predecessors when we continue to demand government protection of workers and their families.  The conjunction of the Wisconsin protests with the anniversary should focus our minds on reflection about what unions mean to all of us. If you work in a safe skyscraper—say on the 25th or 64th floor—you can thank the workers who died on the 8th floor of the Asch building when the fire ladders could only reach the 6th floor.  Their deaths and the inadequacies of fire fighting equipment led others to find ways to protect workers that high up.

Must-read witness testimony of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire by William Shepherd over at Alas:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2011/03/11/a-world-without-unions/

And here’s a good contemporary example of where we’re at with worker’s rights:
http://americanrestroom.org/books/wvp_2.htm

Even before it appeared at the end of 1997, Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time had mobilized public opinion to pressure the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to abandon its preposterous position that its industrial sanitation standard, which requires employers to provide toilets, did not obligate them to let workers use those toilets. On April 6, 1998, OSHA finally issued a Memorandum declaring that the “standard requires employers to make toilet facilities available so that employees can use them when they need to do so.” Thus with a few keystrokes, OSHA had created a right for tens of mil-lions of workers to stop work when they need to void. Or had it? . . .

Five years on, Void Where Prohibited Revisited: The Trickle-Down Effect of OSHA’s At-Will Bathroom-Break Regulation answers these questions by analyzing all the citations that OSHA has issued to employers for violating their obligation to let workers go to the bathroom and by interviewing OSHA officials, labor union officers, workers, and employers. Since many who are free to go to the bathroom doubt stories about workers who have been forced to void on themselves or been disciplined for using the toilet without permission, OSHA reports documenting these practices are quoted in detail. Special attention is devoted to the dispute at the Jim Beam bourbon plant in Kentucky, which, thanks to the employer’s appeal of a (non-monetary) citation for denying workers access to the bathroom, sparked an illuminating hearing, whose high point was testimony by the employer’s urologist that even if workers wound up defecating on themselves, “it’s a social problem, not a medical problem.”

The sad thing about Triangle is just how invisible it is. I learned about it in high school history (which I admit I was a fan of and did pretty well in) and it was something that just stuck with me—that businesses will, if left to their own devices, create environments where women have to weigh jumping to their death or dying in a fire.

The Triangle building is now owned by NYU: it’s the Brown building, which is one of three buildings that make up the Main block (they’re all connected now so that you can move between them). I didn’t take any classes at Brown because at the time (and this is probably still the case), it was mostly for chemistry and other physical-science related classes. But I did take a lot of classes in Waverly, which was pretty well-connected to Brown. But I remember seeing the placard outside of Brown building on day and being absolutely floored that I would be taking classes right next to the site of such a history-making tragedy. But when I would chat with my fellow classmates before class and bring up that I can’t believe we’re right next to the old Triangle Shirtwaist factory, I would get thousand-yard-stares. One girl I mentioned it to was more worried that there might be ghosts roaming the halls than in the actual historical significance of the building (best part was, class had barely started when the fire alarm went off, which I freaked the shit out of ghost-girl).

I think this is a clear dividing-line between progressives and conservatives: Progressives know the history of things like Triangle, and recognize that it could very easily have been them, or a family member, who jumped to their death, and conservatives don’t, or simply don’t care because they’re too busy fantasizing about being the factory owner instead of one of the workers.

The worse the job market is the easier for these types of abuses to take place also.  Thats one thing I wish people would think about, the people at the top just give lip service to the idea of improving the job market, they really don’t want that to happen, they want people to be desperate and have nowhere else to go with any complaint.

It is not an conservative or liberal thing. It is more depending of human sensibility

The working class conservative argument against union is one of resentment (as opposed to the upper class conservative one, which is one of egoist self-interest). They complain that people who actually fought to get better conditions and wages actually got something, while they’re too meek and obedient and figure if they kiss enough ass they’ll get the same, then wonder why the bosses never get around to giving them what they feel are their due (seriously employers must love those people, who will brown nose forever as long as you wave a carrot around, even if you never give it to them).

Then they turn around and accuse people on welfare to have a sense of entitlement. Like everything that comes out of a conservative mouth, you can bet it’s our old friend Projection.

Human sensibility is a myth that anyone with even a basic understanding of history understands.

When I was a teenager I read a lot about this fire and its aftermath and consequences (including positive ones). Years later, I lived near NYU, and would get chills every time I walked along the sidewalk outside the former Asch Building.

Prediction: conservatives will roll their eyes and point out that this horrible tragedy happened 100 years ago, and everything has changed.

Probably, assuming the conservative pundits mention it at all. They’ll talk about how modern factories are models of safety, completely ignoring the fact that Triangle Shirtwaist was at the time considered a model factory itself, a big leap forward from tenement shops. They’ll also completely ignore the fact that whatever safety measures were in place were subverted by Triangle’s owners and managers to control the workers—the chained and locked exit doors being the most infamous example in this tragedy.

Rarely will you hear a conservative straight up say that workers shouldn’t be permitted to have time off, benefits, or basic workplace safety.  What they will say is that unions once did good, but now are useless.

I’ve seen this line argued.
The Microsoft Permatemp case from 2002 usually shuts it down.
Because the people who use this argument (on me at least) are privileged white guys.  Unions, to them, are just proletariat tools that oppress their Galtian genius.

I’ve read dozens of wonky books about manmade disasters (to name two others, The General Slocum and the Iriquois Theater), and all I have to add to Gracchus is

“This emergency exit is painted on!”

This study found that a fair chunk of low wage workers aren’t paid what they deserve (you can also see a summary here). Here are a couple stats:

Fully 26 percent of workers in our sample were paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous work week.

Over a quarter of our respondents worked more than 40 hours during the previous week. Of those, 76 percent were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers.

Hilzoy gives some excerpts from Steven Greenhouse’s book ‘The Big Squeeze’ which gives more specific examples. How many hearings have been held about this in Congress? And yet people think we don’t need unions anymore?

Pure denial of others’ humanity, exactly.  Ask a rightwinger to explain why, if we’re all profit-maximizing, an investor can put his dollars in any country he thinks will give him the best returns but a worker can’t migrate to the country that pays the most for his labor.  The rightwinger will look at you as if you’ve just eaten a pound of meth.  Like duh!  The investor is human, if not John Galt, and the worker is chattel.

“Special attention is devoted to the dispute at the Jim Beam bourbon plant in Kentucky, which, thanks to the employer’s appeal of a (non-monetary) citation for denying workers access to the bathroom, sparked an illuminating hearing, whose high point was testimony by the employer’s urologist that even if workers wound up defecating on themselves, “it’s a social problem, not a medical problem.””

This is a great illustration of something else that seems to be going on. 

Everything Amanda points out about the return of Gilded Age-style unenlightened attitudes toward workers, unions, and regulations — which are their only means of getting redress for grievances, getting fair wages and reasonable working hours, humane treatment, and protection from harm and death — is 100% true.

To this I would add a growing hatred and disrespect among the upper classes for actual, honest, and often (but not always) physical labor.  It’s almost a Victorian-era upper-class British attitude that the only people who are important don’t have to actually work, but merely live off investments of money inherited from the previous generation, who inherited their wealth from the generation before them.  These people were “gentlemen” (emphasizing that they were virtually always men).  They certainly did not work (physically), they had servants for that sort of thing.  Labor was dirty and unseemly, and intolerable for “gentlemen”.

It is highly improbable that Jim Beam could even measure the bottom-line difference between treating their workers like human beings vs. treating them like animals in a pen.  Objecting to (and fighting tooth-and-nail against) treating workers humanely indicates a bald-faced, punitive, arbitrary, mean-spirited attitude that seeks to torment people who work for a living — apparently for no other reason than the sick pleasure of tormenting them.

In the US, we live in a world of great technological and progressive advancement.  But we seem to have a lot of people in positions of authority or influence who would much rather be the merciless ruler of some barbaric kingdom from the Middle Ages, treating the peasants like dirt, living like kings, and all the while complaining that the serfs have it way too good.  Dickens must read like pleasant fairy tales to people like that.

Everything old is new again…

If the upper class could take away your weekends, your health care, your right to go home at a certain hour, your right to fair compensation, your assurance that you won’t die at work to save them a couple of bucks, your right to save for retirement?  They’d do it in a heartbeat.  Now, as then, most of the people who pull the strings see working Americans as chattel and nothing more.

I think this is also why “trickle down” economics and tax breaks for the wealthy won’t help the economy.  The upper class absolutely will not use that extra money to hire more workers or to pay their current employees more, and it’s either naive or dishonest to claim that they will.  The business owners aren’t well-intentioned gentlemen who are wringing their hands and wishing that they could pay their employees more or hire more people if only they got that tax break so they could afford it.  They’ll hire as few people as they can get away with to meet demand, and pay them as little as they can get away with.  The only way to make them hire more people is to increase their demand, which is done by giving tax breaks to the middle and lower classes.

MightyPonyGirl:  I began my studies at NYU as a chemistry major and all my labs were in Brown Building.  Did you know that the elevators were condemned and NYU never has restored them?  While the floors lined up better between the Waverly Building and Brown, the floors between Main Building and Brown did not and to enter Brown from Main meant you had to go up stairs, through a door and on some floors either more stairs or down some stairs.  I preferred to use the connections through the Waverly Building which were also wider than Main/Brown.

Ask a rightwinger to explain why, if we’re all profit-maximizing, an investor can put his dollars in any country he thinks will give him the best returns but a worker can’t migrate to the country that pays the most for his labor.  The rightwinger will look at you as if you’ve just eaten a pound of meth.

I’m not sure if this is optimism or pessimism speaking, but I suspect you’d get an answer along the lines that if the worker isn’t getting paid enough he can just go elsewhere.  Which of course totally ignores how the employers have workers over a barrel in many cases.  They can pay as little as they do because they know the workers don’t have other options—if they could afford to just up and move, their employer is probably paying them enough that it’s not that attractive of an option.

So rather than denial of humanity, I’m going to go with denial of the history that shows that most employers will not provide things like living wages or safe work environments out of the goodness of their hearts.

@18, I was talking about national boundaries.  Capital can go elsewhere—anywhere in the world—but labor is stuck in its own nation.

They can pay as little as they do because they know the workers don’t have other options—if they could afford to just up and move, their employer is probably paying them enough that it’s not that attractive of an option.

Capital can go elsewhere—anywhere in the world—but labor is stuck in its own nation.

In the end they’re basically the same issue, part-and-parcel with the shackles imposed by American-style health insurance. “Free trade” and “free markets” that deliberately hobble the free movement of labour while letting the capital and goods flow are far from free.

What I read here:

Fire codes, fire drills and safety regulations all exist not only to prevent the immoral owners from abusing their workers, but also to help the moral owners afford to make the right decisions.

I think backs up my statement that they don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts.  They do things because THEY HAVE TO, because of law, because of pressure from the government and unions and the people. The applies to wage and hour laws, child labor laws, sick time, vacation time, all the other protections.  You get those when you can join together and bargain or take action collectively. One person against a corporation or government office won’t get anything. It works if you have numbers of people together.

Purplegirl—I had no idea about the elevators! I know NYU has always had some issues with maintaining their elevators. But having taken a couple of exploratory walks into Brown, I did know that it was pretty easy to walk between Waverly and Brown but the connection to Main was sloppier. But seriously—ADA anyone? As I recall, there were usually stairs between some segments of Waverly and Brown, even if just a step or two. I can’t imagine being in a wheelchair and trying to take a chemistry course at NYU.

The more important matter at hand, of course, is whether or not you saw ghosts while you were taking chemistry classes.

I know.  That doesn’t change what I’d expect as an answer.  Conservatives like simple answers, and they tend to overestimate the amount of power people have as individuals.  So if you ask them, ‘Why can’t workers migrate to another country for better pay?’ I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was, ‘They can.’

Mighty Ponygirl:  The more important matter at hand, of course, is whether or not you saw ghosts while you were taking chemistry classes.

No, I never saw any ghosts in a chem lab, but then my labs were mostly in the afternoon.  I was never in the building at night.

Holy shit, that Jim Beam case discussed in the description for the book “Void Where Prohibited.”  In modern America, a company actually tries to argue that it’s not their problem if their workers, who are barred from leaving the floor to use the restroom, actually end up shitting their pants.  We are NOT that far removed from the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is outright LYING.

“Special attention is devoted to the dispute at the Jim Beam bourbon plant in Kentucky, which, thanks to the employer’s appeal of a (non-monetary) citation for denying workers access to the bathroom, sparked an illuminating hearing, whose high point was testimony by the employer’s urologist that even if workers wound up defecating on themselves, “it’s a social problem, not a medical problem.””

I realize JB tastes like crap, but I’d rather not have fecal matter in my bourbon.
Sounds like JB wants to escalate their fines to include ATF and FDA as well as OSHA

PurpleGirl, Mighty Ponygirl: My classes were all biology, and they were all held in Brown. The fire alarm went off more than you’d expect and when I’d get downstairs, there’d be the fire department—not just a truck or two, but every apparatus in lower Manhattan, chiefs’ SUVs, a parade of FDNY ambulances and that doughnut truck the Salvation Army sends to big fires. Apparently they expected the worst from the Organic Chemistry lab.

I passed that plaque every day, and thought myself inured, but the plaque doesn’t say much, and it’s the details that get to you. Last week, I was reading something about it on-line and realized that most of those who died were teenage girls. I started to tear up.

Anyway, there’s a memorial service at Greene and Washington Pl. tomorrow, 11-ish, if anyone local is interested.

The worse the job market is the easier for these types of abuses to take place also.

[cough]reserve army of the unemployed[cough]

33 Chilean miners survived underground for 69 days. Why? Better working conditions? Tighter government regulations? One could argue that the difference between their being alive and 29 American being dead is some form of standards put in place by pressure from a union or from the government of Chile. At any rate, this is a question that never seemed to be asked while the world celebrated the Chilean miners survival, and all but ignored the callous disregard of the mine owners following the deaths of 29 Americans.

Holy shit, that Jim Beam case discussed in the description for the book “Void Where Prohibited.” In modern America, a company actually tries to argue that it’s not their problem if their workers, who are barred from leaving the floor to use the restroom, actually end up shitting their pants.  We are NOT that far removed from the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is outright LYING.

Let’s wait for the Weasel to show up and explain to everyone that workers dropping dead would be bad for profits, and therefore there’s no need to regulate corporations in the name of employee health…

Unree @19: That is not entirely true.

A related issue to the mobility of capital and the relative lack of mobility of labor is that capital can be disconnected from the capitalist.  Labor cannot nearly as readily be disconnected from the laborer.

If C. Montgomery Burns (of Simpsons fame) wants to move his capital to a third world country so he can exploit cheap labor and a pliable government, he can do that without having to move himself.  He’s still kicking back in his mansion in Springfield, with clean air, safe(ish) food supplies, running water, police protection, electricity, airports, easy access to entertainment, the best healthcare his money can buy, stable(ish) banks to protect his money, and so forth.  And he makes more money by doing this.  If Homer J. Simpson wishes to, as labor, follow the capital and continue working, he has to uproot his family (or break it apart), probably learn a new language, deal with expensive international travel and residency, live with unsafe water and food, maybe a corrupt and hostile police or military, lose access to education for his children, give up his entertainment options, deal with spotty public utilities, suffer through a third-world medical system, etc.  And for all these sacrifices, Homer makes less money.

I like Left_Wing_Fox’s point. Owners who are willing to cut corners are always going to have some advantage over owners who aren’t. But lack of comprehensive codes, inspection and enforcement way increases the differential, because you lose all the economies of scale in knowing how to do things right.

Also interesting: JohnL’s #12. If an employee steals from a company, that’s embezzlement. If a company steals from its employees by shorting their wages or benefits, that’s just a dispute between two equal parties.

I learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in high school.  We even watched a movie based on the event.  I already had two parents in unions at the time (my mother retired from the State of WI when she could smell the Walker stink in the air.  She’d worked there for 38 years).  The story definitely helped shape my liberal sensibilities.  At any rate, I went back to the Wiki page on this incident to refresh my memory on the facts, and what a shock.  In the aftermath of the tragedy, the owners of the factory faced very little consequences, and actually made money on the whole deal when their insurance cash came through:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

“The company’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who survived the fire by fleeing to the building’s roof when the fire began, were indicted on charges of first and second degree manslaughter in mid-April; the pair’s trial began on December 4, 1911. Max Steuer, counsel for the defendants, managed to destroy the credibility of one of the survivors, Kate Alterman, by asking her to repeat her testimony a number of times — which she did without altering key phrases. Steuer argued to the jury that Alterman and possibly other witnesses had memorized their statements, and might even have been told what to say by the prosecutors. The defense also stressed that the prosecution had failed to prove that the owners knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question. The jury acquitted the two men, but they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913 in which plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty. In 1913, Blanck was once again arrested for locking the door in his factory during working hours. He was fined $20.”

Wait, some workers have the right to go home on time?  Really?  I wish my employer knew that.  If it takes 12 hours to finish the work, we’re there 12 hours, but we’d better be back on time the next morning or you get written up for tardiness.  And if the shipment is 3 hours late, they’ll call you and tell you to come in 3 hours late, stay till it’s done, and be back on time the next morning or, yep, you’ll get written up for tardiness.  Complain?  Better not do it too loud, or you might join those who got laid off duriing the recession, or the desperate applicants who say “Please, I’ll do whatever needs doing.  I just need a job.”  It’s 1890 all over again.

What I read here:

Fire codes, fire drills and safety regulations all exist not only to prevent the immoral owners from abusing their workers, but also to help the moral owners afford to make the right decisions.

I think backs up my statement that they don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts.  They do things because THEY HAVE TO, because of law, because of pressure from the government and unions and the people. The applies to wage and hour laws, child labor laws, sick time, vacation time, all the other protections.  You get those when you can join together and bargain or take action collectively. One person against a corporation or government office won’t get anything. It works if you have numbers of people together.
Comment #21: PurpleGirl on 03/24 at 12:23 PM

The additional factor that makes this even more important is that corporations take the position that they must make the most money they can or face lawsuits by shareholders.  That means that allowing the JB workers to use the toilet has to be proven in some way to be beneficial, or mandated by law, otherwise it’s just letting them not work on company time.

Left_Wing_Fox:  You said:

“Finally, it also requires every individual owner manager and worker to be directly responsible for having the knowledge of a fire marshall and an engineer for “common sense” to actually work. Even conscientious owners without the proper education of fire safety are likely to make bad decisions in the panic of an emergency. “

Actually, it doesn’t.  The majority of cities and states in the US at least have people who come in and tell you how to do all those things.  You know, like Fire Marshalls and OSHA people.  Legal fire safety standards are there in order to minimize the damage stampeding, panicky people can do to themselves.  This is why fire doors need to be unlocked (alarmed is fine, if you’re that worried about theft), aisles need to be a certain width and clear, etc…  The owners/managers don’t have to come up with this stuff on their own, they just have to follow the laws.

So this is only tangentially related, but there’s an interview with Susie Bright in Salon today in which she brings up an interesting point - she feels that the feminist movement is so powerless today in the face of attacks on women’s reproductive rights is because it has lost its way in the 1980s, being complacent in thinking that reproductive rights were safe and ignoring the rise of the “moral majority” while concentrating instead on fighting the “sex wars.”

I don’t agree with her 100% that the sex wars were just pointless little squabbles, but I think what she’s saying here is that the movement lost control of the large, overarching narratives and allowed the “moral majority” to set the tone and content of discourse around women’s issues. I think that also applies to the progressive movement at large and, also, the labor movement. There’s no question that unions still do important work and are critical to maintaining workers’ rights, but I think they have largely allowed the right to control the narrative and to convince the populace that what they are doing is pointless bureaucracy that only exists to enforce seniority and to protect workers from being fired.  Unions used to have a strong (and socialist) message that worker’s rights are human rights; I’m not sure if that message is really gone or if we’re just not hearing it for the noise of the right-wing machine. But I think that lack of loud message might be the reason that some progressives claim that the unions have fulfilled their role and are now pointless.

I think it’s telling that Al Smith built his political reputation on his work in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, while politicians like Chris Christie are now building a national following by attacking labor rights. I’m hopeful, though, because I think what’s happening in Wisconsin is a huge opportunity to get a strong pro-worker and pro-union message out there.

“That means that allowing the JB workers to use the toilet has to be proven in some way to be beneficial, or mandated by law, otherwise it’s just letting them not work on company time.”

...Just because you have to breathe, Mr. Smith, that doesn’t mean we are obligated to provide breathable air to you for free.  That’s just ridiculous.  We’d go out of business if we just started giving things like air away to anyone who asked.  Plus, we have an obligation to our stockholders to do everything we can to maximize their Return On Investment.  And we have competitors.  Just think of the disadvantage we’d be at if we failed to charge for air like they do?

The Atmospheric Renewal Fee is just compensating the Mega Ripoff Corporation for the costs we incur providing oxygenated air for people who need to breathe.  If you don’t like it, it’s your choice:  Either learn not to breathe, or find work elsewhere. 

I think that’s more than fair…

By the way, we’re instituting a Temperature Control Fee next week, to compensate the Mega Ripoff Corporation for the immense costs we incur to heat and cool our buildings to maintain the temperature for those workers whose constitutions are too delicate to tolerate the full range of temperatures found during the year, from -10 to 125 degrees Fahrenheit.  It should only be $200-$300 per month…a mere pittance…

One thing that is almost never brought up is how American-style health care affects job mobility. If you or a family member has a pre-existing health condition you can’t quit or lose your job or you’ll never get health insurance again. You can’t just leave to go somewhere better - your insurance companies won’t let you.

Professionals get bit in the butt too. There are no overtime provisions for “professional” workers. You’re not paid by the hour - you’re paid a salary. So your company keeps laying people off and not replacing them and you’re expected to pick up the extra work - and hours - without an increase in compensation. The workers go along with it, because their salary wages are somewhat better than the blue collar folks and they are encouraged to consider themselves “higher class” than their laboring counterparts. Sure, in the 90s, folks working in the computer industry got tons of perks in exchange for working long hours - but the perks have disappeared while the long hours have stayed. But you mention unionizing to them and they respond as though you actually said “Jesus is the spawn of Satan”.

MikeEss #39… That temperature control fee would be comparable to the money Triangle and other garment manufacturers charged their workers for the thread and electricity they used in sewing the shirtwaists.

MikeEss: There’s an out-of-print early sf book called The Air Trust that does your idea on a global scale.

And PurpleGirl: that makes perfect sense if they’re independent contractors who set their own hours and working conditions, and just purchase supplies from the company in an arm’s length transaction. I’m sure that’s what the bosses would have argued.

Actually let’s add that to the things labor unions have won for us: no more company towns, no more company stores. Wonder how long that will last.

::crickets::  Where’re the trolls today?

One thing:  I lately had to put up with a lot of (legitimate) bellyaching from colleagues who were complaining about clients, especially Euro-clients, using various dodges to avoid payment.  Fair enough.

What concerned me was their solutions specifically denigrated forming a union or suchlike, in a way that wasn’t belabored (ha!) but definitely implied that somehow unions were a Bad Thing, even as they were getting screwed over. 

I have no idea where their anti-union attitudes came from, but I predict that they will fade if they don’t figure out some other way of avoiding getting screwed over.

33 Chilean miners survived underground for 69 days. Why? Better working conditions? Tighter government regulations? One could argue that the difference between their being alive and 29 American being dead is some form of standards put in place by pressure from a union or from the government of Chile. At any rate, this is a question that never seemed to be asked while the world celebrated the Chilean miners survival, and all but ignored the callous disregard of the mine owners following the deaths of 29 Americans.

Making that suggestion would open you up to the claim that you didn’t know what you were talking about.

First, two utterly different types of mines: the San José mine at Copiapó was a copper-gold operation, so they didn’t have to worry about their product exploding, unlike Upper Big Branch.

Second, different types of accidents: Upper Big Branch was a methane explosion, San José a tunnel collapse.

Third, the explosion at Upper Big Branch caught miners directly with the explosion and fire. At San José the closest collapse was several hundred meters from where the men were at the time.

Fourth, the explosion and fire at Upper Big Branch created toxic conditions that immediately spread through the entire mine, preventing any survivors not caught in the explosion and fire from making it to refuge stations. At San José, because the collapse was so far away the men were in no immediate danger and had time to work on their survival.

Lastly, the incident at Upper Big Branch would have, within a few minutes, made the mine a toxic hellhole where survival would have been impossible outside the refuge stations. At San José, aside from the fact they were trapped and had their outside power cut off, conditions where they were would have been pretty much indistinguishable for quite a some time from their normal, safe, working conditions. The primary danger they faced was psychological after the accident, not physical.

Trying to compare the two incidents directly and making a conclusion would be like comparing the survival of some travelers who took their lifeboats from their sinking ship to a deserted island to those who were on an airplane that flew at top speed headlong into the side of a cliff on same said island.

As further evidence of the right’s fear/hatred of organized labor. Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to deny food stamps to the families of any and all striking workers: http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/03/24/the_gop_declares_hunger_war

If anyone would really like their heartstrings pulled, I can recommend Leon Stein’s The Triangle Fire.  I think it was published in 1962, and it was one of the most incredible accounts I’ve ever read.  The dedication especially had me tearing up *afterwards*.

Also, a journalist named Von Drehle did a book on it that’s more recent and more… contextual.  I really liked that one, too.

(Both were major sources for a history paper a few years back, and I really hated my other sources, so I may be biased.)

wondering@40: I was talking union for software devs back in 2000, before outsourcing became common. People were laughing in my face, and I got a reprimand (I was working at some big Redmond company starting with M) but that was fine since I was just an intern. Things will need to get worse before they get better, I fear.

the only thing that’s changed is government regulation of workplace safety, which the republicans are constantly attempting to deregulate, and defund the regulatory authorities.

years ago, i had occasion to audit a local manufacturer of metal doors and ductwork. though it was classified as “light industry”, the work was still dangerous; you could easily slice off a finger or hand, if the required safety equipment wasn’t in place/being used, or you just weren’t paying attention. the company was a “closely held” small corporation. one assembly line was shut down, because a required piece of protective plexiglass was broken, and hadn’t yet been replaced.

i remember thinking to myself, that if it weren’t for OSHA, the odds were good that line would have been in full operation, broken safety feature or not. the owners weren’t bad people, but in times of economic stress, the temptation to keep that line running, even without the safety glass intact, would be extremely high. it wasn’t that they didn’t care about their employees, so much as it was that they had bills to pay and families of their own to feed; that shut down line represented a fair chunk of potential revenue. fortunately for all concerned, they spent the money to replace the safety glass, and kept the line shut down until those repairs were completed.

this was part of the legacy of the “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory” fire. those women’s deaths were not in vain.

There was no Triangle Shirtwaist fire.  Take a look at this:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/18/nyregion/the-big-city-a-1911-fire-as-good-tv-bad-history.html?scp=2&sq=burns&st=nyt

John Tierney proves by rigorous economic analysis that employers had to provide safe working conditions in order to get workers, so such an event as the so-called fire couldn’t have happened.

This mistaken belief in a workplace fire reminds me of a similar misconception surrounding the Titanic disaster.  Did you know that some of the survivors in the lifeboats thought they saw the ship break in two just before it went down?  Scientific analysis, however, proved that such a thing was impossible.  It’s interesting, isn’t it, the funny things people think they see.  Thank goodness we have scientists and analysts to set us right.

Yet more unbelievably despicable union-busting (via Sharon Astyk): Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes.

Actually let’s add that to the things labor unions have won for us: no more company towns, no more company stores. Wonder how long that will last.

WalMart are working on it.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

Actually let’s add that to the things labor unions have won for us: no more company towns, no more company stores. Wonder how long that will last.

My brother’s retail company just switched from giving them paychecks to giving them corporate debit cards, refilled with every pay period. Which I believe they pay a fee for transferring to a regular checking/savings acct.

So, how long that will last is, “it’s going already.”

@Well,what? : Everything old is new again.

And people wonder why I’m a firebrand.

@ Well, What comment #53: Tell your brother to check his state laws on how wages must be paid. If google-fu is not enough, he should call the local state folks in charge of monitoring wage laws and ask about fees. If I were in his position, I’d be looking hard at ways to access the money without a fee, and if there isn’t a way to access money without a fee then I’d TALK TO THE AUTHORITIES.  There are laws to prevent employers from playing games with paychecks.

Personally, I had a job where I didn’t have a choice about what bank account my employer would use for direct deposit and it would cost the equivalent of $5 to do an electronic transfer to my own bank account (this was outside of the United States, so different labor laws applied). I just took all my money out in cash and walked it over to the bank of my choice (at lunch, in a busy and safe business district).  Find the option that doesn’t have a fee and use it.  If there isn’t an option, complain to the right folks.  Every dollar of your paycheck is YOURS, so fight for it.  At least that is my approach.

I think the 2002 Mecca Girls school Fire would be more similar than the Virginia Coal Mine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Mecca_girls’_school_fire

You guys all forgot the Hamlet NC chicken packinghouse fire of 1991? Twenty-five people were killed and 54 injured—just like at the Triangle Waist plant, Imperial Foods locked the fire exit doors shut to prevent loss of a few cents’ worth of product.

Of course, NC is a “business-friendly” state, where no one is “forced” to join a union.