PBS%20Triangle%20Fire%20http://video.pbs.org/video/1817898383

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PBS Triangle Firehttp//video.pbs.org/video/18178
98383

• What are some of the factors that led to the
  Triangle Fire?
• What are the factors that led to reform?

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The Triangle Fire

• Garment industry/consumer culture
• 1909 International Ladies Garment Union (ILGWU)
  strike in NYC
• 20,000
• Lasted 14 weeks
• 20 of work force
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
• Protest dangerous and demeaning conditions
• Picketers arrested
• Women organize
• Female dominated industries

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March 25, 1911

• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Asch Building,
  Greenwich Village (now science building for NYU)
• 146 women died. Oldest 48. youngest 11
• Deadliest industrial fire in U.S history

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• 500 women worked on 8, 9, 10 floors
• Cost of needles, electricity and thread deducted
  from pay
• Economic competition and workers wages
• Lint and combustible cloth ignite
• Owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris immigrants who
  made it

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• Safety precautions buckets of water, rusted fire
  escape
• 250 workers on 9th floor not warned
• Most 8th floor workers escaped via stairs
• Doors locked to stairwells
• Crowded elevators
• Firemen with nets arrive
• Ladders reach only to 6th floor
• Jumping out of windows

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Reform

• Better building access
• Fireproofing
• Alarm systems
• Eating and toilet facilities
• Limits on work hours
• 1916 Adamson Actfederal law mandated 8-hr work
  day for interstate RR workers

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May 10, 1993 Bangkok, Thailand

• Kadar Industrial toy factory (with 3,000 workers)
  ignites
• JC Penny, Fisher Price, Hasbro, Toys R Us
• Fire kills188 workers
• 469 severely injured
• Bodies incinerated in intense flames
• Most of the dead young women (as young as 13)
• Managers locked exit doors

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Apple iphone factoryMay 2010

• Shenzhen, China
• 11 suicides
• Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly undercover
  report
• employee who lost a next-generation iPhone
  prototype committed suicide

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Savar, BangladeshApril 28, 20131100 people
killed