A Pattern of Death
Their deaths weren't random or unpredictable, no matter what the politicians want you to believe.
Texas Governor Rick Perry denied that lax oversight caused the West explosion, while the Bangladeshi Finance Minister who outraged the world by saying the accident "wasn't really serious" added that "These are individual cases of ... accidents. It happens everywhere."
That's a lie. It's the lie they tell to hide the underlying pattern behind these deaths -- a pattern of under-represented workers and unrestrained greed.
And they endanger us all. As the AFL-CIO notes, the West plant hadn't been inspected by OSHA for 28 years. The plant did not report the fact that it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate to the Department of Homeland Security as required by law, even though that's more than 200 times the amount Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. We're expected to suspend our civil liberties in the name of national security, but businesses aren't even being asked to follow safety regulations.
And, absurdly, the deficit debate in Washington is still centered around how much to cut from vital regulatory agencies, rather than on how much to should increase to their budgets.
A Story That Changed the World
There was a time when such a tragedy changed the world.
Like that workplace in Savar, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory primarily employed women. And like their Bangladeshi counterparts, those women worked seven days a week for at least 13 hours each day. In 1911, 146 garment workers burned to death in that factory during a half-hour of horror. Their deaths led to a public outcry, gave new momentum to the union movement, and triggered a wave of new worker safety laws.
Their deaths weren't unexpected. Union organizers had been fighting for better working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory for years. The 1909 Shirtwaist Strike, also called "the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand," led to marginal improvements in hours and pay. But even after a 1910 factory fire killed 25 people in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey, it took the Triangle tragedy to galvanize a movement.
A documentary called Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl tells the story of the 1909 strike. But heaven alone couldn't protect the working girls at the Triangle factory, any more than it can protect workers in Savar or Texas.
Sometimes heaven needs human help.
People Protect the Working Person
Organizers stepped up their efforts after the 1911 tragedy. Support and membership increased dramatically. With the help of local newspapers, the National Women's Trade Union League of America sent out questionnaires and documented working conditions in a number of factories. Twenty-five public figures were recruited into a Citizens Committee for Public Safety. They organized "mass meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, which was attended by thousands of citizens, including a variety of public figures, reformists, clergymen, union people, and politicians."
They got results. A "Bureau of Fire Prevention" was created and the Municipal Fire Code was amended to prevent future disasters. The state organized a Factory Investigating Commission whose findings led to the passage of 36 new labor laws in the following three years. Those laws became a national model.
We saw similar responses as recently as 1968, when a West Virginia mining disaster led to a general coal miners' strike. That led to the passage of the Federal Coal Mine Safety and Health Act, and shortly afterward to the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
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