Ann Marie Buerkle: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

On March 25, I went to New York City to attend the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I looked through the crowd and public officials on stage, hoping against impossible odds that I would see Ann Marie Buerkle there. 

After all, the fire happened in her own state.  She does proudly and publicly proclaim about the humanitarian advocacy she has done for women and children. Other national figures including Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Senator Chuck Schumer came to speak about and to witness the significance of this terrible disaster. 

Yet she was not there. It would have been a good thing for her to experience this solemn  annual gathering in recognition of the tragedy that took the lives of 146 women and girls working in sweat shops at the top of a loft building near Washington Square. 

It would have been good for her to know that the spirits of those women and girls lived on in the years that followed the fire. The tragedy triggered reform all over America. The rights of workers became a national priority. OSHA, NYS DIsability and Workers' Compensation law have their roots in that fire.  

Instead Buerkle has made it her priority as my Representative in Washington to gut the regulations that protect workers in America. She claims that regulations are bad for business.  

It's true. The deaths of those 146 Americans were bad for business. Greedy sweat shop owners were forced to unlock the doors during work hours and allow workers to go to the bathroom. They had to install sprinkler systems and fire escapes. They eventually had to stop using child labor. They had to install fans to draw the lint away from the shops, lint that triggered asthma and fueled fires.

Back in those days before safety regulations, the two wealthy factory owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory avoided all legal consequences of those 146 deaths, by the way. 

Ann Marie would not have liked to stand there in that crowd on March 25 and imagine girls and women jumping from the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of that building to their deaths. None of us do. But it would have been a good thing for her to witness anyway. Our laws and regulations protecting workers were put in place after years and years of hard fought reforms that have always been deemed in the national interest.

Is she so arrogant as to think that she can play the Washington game of partisan politics without consequences? Who is she to be a mindless follower in a deadly serious march to reduce one hundred years of reforms to rubble? When she thinks about a better environment for business, why is it that worker protections go on the line? 

Yes, I would have liked very much to have found her there at Greene St. on March 25.