LABOR DAY TODAY

Monday, September 7, 2015

Labor Day

Labor Unions are needed more than ever. Workers are expected to be on demand 24/7. Many jobs have no pension or health plans. Without unions workers are demoted, fired and humiliated with no power to defend themselves. Children and families suffer because the absence of fathers or mothers who are forced to work more in order for the families to survive. African-Americans and Hispanics suffer the most. Teachers and nurses are usually underpaid and often have no unions to assist them.

Being against unions is a plank of the Republican Party and most business leaders.

Many workers say they do not want unions. They resent paying dues and other workers who collect their salaries and do little work.

The greedy, get rich, accumulate more ethos of American society has little concern for the sick, poor and unemployed. They see no value for them in helping co-operatively to get fair wages and working conditions for others.

I suppose it will ever be thus. But Labor Day does remind us that there is another way to get fairness and justice for all workers.

Remember:

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men^[1] – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23;^[2][3][4] of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and "Sara" Rosaria Maltese.^[5]

Because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, a common practice used to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and pilferage,^[6] many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

The factory was located in the Asch Building, at 23–29 Washington Place in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, now known as the Brown Building and part of New York University. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.^[7]

^-Wikipedia