George,

Today marks one hundred years since an event that changed American history, a fire at a sweatshop that killed 146 mostly young women, most were immigrants earning an average of 13 cents an hour. Two were fourteen! It was known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Many of the deaths were directly caused by the greedy owners (they lived in brownstone mansions on upper 5th Avenue with cooks, maids, butlers and governesses for their children) allowing only one exit where the employees could be checked for the possible theft of thread or a piece of fabric! The other door for escape was locked!

The women had to pay for the needles and electricity utilized by the machines! If they, in haste, accidentally punctured a finger with a needle, (they were driven so hard to produce), they were required to pay for any damage to the material, most never sought medical attention (actually, there was none, anyway) so desperate were they to keep the menial job to help their mostly destitute families survive. As a result of this nightmare, a light was shined on the horrific working conditions and the indifference on the part of most corporations to the welfare of the workers.

It marked an enormous shift in attitude toward the only tool useful to labor, unions.

Only through unionization was labor able to have a voice in the most important product they offered, their ability to work. It has not been an easy road. The corporate honchos did not yield to the idea of an "outside force" telling them how they should treat THEIR employees!

So, from actors, airline pilots, NFL football players to coal miners, truck drivers and automobile workers, nothing was ever relinquished on the part of the majority of companies without stiff, even violent, opposition.

Coal miners were required to live in mining company-owned hovels at obscene rents, buy everything from shoes to coffee from the Company Store ("Lord don't you call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the Company Store"). If they tried to organize, they were blacklisted and boycotted by every company. Often the coal companies hired their children for a pittance (some kids had no schooling and only saw the light of day on Sunday).

Henry Ford hired thugs with iron pipes to beat up union organizers, Andrew Carnegie hired Pinkerton agents to float on barges down the Monongahela River and fire small canons at strikers with grapeshot!

So, for example, the forty hour work week, health care benefits, a living wage, paid vacation and holidays, decent safe working conditions were not given on behalf of benevolent corporations.

But, the combination of enormous corporate lobbying funds, a steady drumbeat of anti union rhetoric and now the biggest blow to Democracy and a desire to create a semi feudal society, the Citizens United decision of our Right wing Supreme Court makes for a return to the Gilded Age, where workers are chattel and the oligarchs and greedy corporations revert back to the ages of horror one hundred years ago. Don't believe it? Take a look at Massey Energy under the control of a CEO named Don Blankenship. On April 5th of last year, twenty nine workers died in a totally preventable accident. Massey did not provide required methane monitors or required oxygen stations. Cited hundreds of times for violations, Massey did nothing, even refusing to pay fines assessed. If any employee complained, he was summarily fired!

Even the workers wanting time off to attend the funerals of their friends were told by Blankenship, "Sure, take the time off, but you won't have a job when you return."

Massey is non-union.

Or the fire at a non-union chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina killing twenty five workers because the escape doors were locked to "prevent theft" At least the executives at Imperial Food went to jail and the company was fined.

Blankenship and Massey, to my knowledge, have to this date, never been prosecuted.

As union membership dwindles, corporate arrogance and indifference once again raises its ugly head.

Be it Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana or wherever the Right wing Republicans have taken control, attempting to destroy the last vestiges of the unions is Priority One!

Harry Tenney (Electronic mail, March 25, 2011)