Last week marked the centennial of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, in which 146 mostly immigrant workers died. The tragedy prompted widespread labour reforms in the United States, but its commemoration underscores the plight of immigrant workers similarly exploited today.
As Richard Greenwald notes at Working in These Times, the disaster marked "the moment that a strong collective working class demanded its citizenship rights," while today, "we are living in a time where organized labor is weak, fractured and leaderless." He concludes that a rebirth of labour must come, as it did in 1911, from today's new immigrant communities, which continue to bear the brunt of exploitative labour practices.
