wolfdancer
02-24-2006, 10:25 AM
On today's news:
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh (AFP) - A total of 51 people were killed and more than 100 hurt when a fire swept through a locked textile factory crowded with night-shift workers in southern Bangladesh.
Up to 500 people, mainly women, were believed to be working in the KTS Composite Textile factory in the southern city of Chittagong when the fire broke out Thursday night, said local fire chief Rashedul Islam.
He said firefighters had found the main entrance to the factory locked and had been forced to rescue trapped workers by breaking open windows and using ropes.
The doors were probably locked to prevent theft, and workers taking breaks. It's companies like these, that WalMart makes their ever increasing demands to lower costs.And companies like these that our workers are asked to compete against, or lose their jobs to outsourcing.
We had our own similiar incident before the labor movement became popular:
In 1911,a fire at the Triangle Waist company in NYC, killed 146 workers.
The Triangle Fire tragically illustrated that fire inspections and precautions were woefully inadequate at the time. Workers recounted their helpless efforts to open the ninth floor doors to the Washington Place stairs. They and many others afterwards believed they were deliberately locked-- owners had frequently locked the exit doors in the past, claiming that workers stole materials. For all practical purposes, the ninth floor fire escape in the Asch Building led nowhere, certainly not to safety, and it bent under the weight of the factory workers trying to escape the inferno. Others waited at the windows for the rescue workers only to discover that the firefighters' ladders were several stories too short and the water from the hoses could not reach the top floors. Many chose to jump to their deaths rather than to burn alive.
Labor unions, that demand safe working conditions have been under attract, and weakened since the days of Ronald Reagan, and the introduction of deregulation. Add in outsourcing...and we might be headed back to the days of employees chained to their machines.....
I wonder if the same posters here, that are against gov't regs for business.........
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh (AFP) - A total of 51 people were killed and more than 100 hurt when a fire swept through a locked textile factory crowded with night-shift workers in southern Bangladesh.
Up to 500 people, mainly women, were believed to be working in the KTS Composite Textile factory in the southern city of Chittagong when the fire broke out Thursday night, said local fire chief Rashedul Islam.
He said firefighters had found the main entrance to the factory locked and had been forced to rescue trapped workers by breaking open windows and using ropes.
The doors were probably locked to prevent theft, and workers taking breaks. It's companies like these, that WalMart makes their ever increasing demands to lower costs.And companies like these that our workers are asked to compete against, or lose their jobs to outsourcing.
We had our own similiar incident before the labor movement became popular:
In 1911,a fire at the Triangle Waist company in NYC, killed 146 workers.
The Triangle Fire tragically illustrated that fire inspections and precautions were woefully inadequate at the time. Workers recounted their helpless efforts to open the ninth floor doors to the Washington Place stairs. They and many others afterwards believed they were deliberately locked-- owners had frequently locked the exit doors in the past, claiming that workers stole materials. For all practical purposes, the ninth floor fire escape in the Asch Building led nowhere, certainly not to safety, and it bent under the weight of the factory workers trying to escape the inferno. Others waited at the windows for the rescue workers only to discover that the firefighters' ladders were several stories too short and the water from the hoses could not reach the top floors. Many chose to jump to their deaths rather than to burn alive.
Labor unions, that demand safe working conditions have been under attract, and weakened since the days of Ronald Reagan, and the introduction of deregulation. Add in outsourcing...and we might be headed back to the days of employees chained to their machines.....
I wonder if the same posters here, that are against gov't regs for business.........