Triangle Fire Review

a) My initial reactions were that I felt bad for the workers because of their workplace conditions and how long days they worked, while getting almost nothing as a salary. Also these bosses that owned the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to me seemed like very old school autocratic leaders who did not care at all about their employees and treated them very poorly. They were very greedy, and they fed off on the high number of immigrants, especially women and children who had come to America in a hope of a better future, and they paid them low as well. Also, these women and children should never have been put through work in an excessive amount of hours in a dangerous and unsafe workplace. Also a clear example of their greed, and a decision that would cause many fatalities is when they decided to lock the door which would have been able to serve as an escape route once the fire broke out, just so the employees would not steal material and thread, which is clearly a small price to pay for a safer workplace with escape routes opened.

b) This video directly relates to a lot of our material covered in this class, and especially chapter 12, about promoting safety and health in the work environment, something the leaders of the Shirtwaist factory clearly failed to do. At the time of the tragedy there were few to none regulations regulating the safety of the workplace, although the employers were repeatedly going on strike and demonstrating in the streets at the time before and after the accident. It is also harsh to see how the cops and government officials dealt with these women who stood up for each other. Today, providing workers a safe and healthy environment is the law. In 1970 Congress passed the OSHA, which mission was to assure the safety and health of America´s workers by setting and enforcing standards: providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvements in workplace safety and health. If this was

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