Speaker For The Diodes - March 29th, 2011

05:24 am - QotD

Two quotes from last week's anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911:

"In 1913, Blanck was fined $20 -- in this context, a paltry sum even before the days of inflation -- for locking workers in at another factory he owned. The same year, he and Harris lost a civil suit connected with Triangle, but they paid out only $75 per victim. They later received an insurance check for $60,000 more than they had reported as losses.

"The two men earned about $411 per dead worker."

-- ms-daisy-cutter, 2011-03-24

---

"Prediction: conservatives will roll their eyes and point out that this horrible tragedy happened 100 years ago, and everything has changed. [...]

"[...] The notion that owners nowadays aren't the Gilded Age assholes who don't care if their workers live or die as long as they're replaceable is simply a lie. And I think the Wisconsin protests are beginning to focus attention on this. The dripping contempt that Scott Walker has for the teachers and other public sector workers in his state couldn't be more obvious. The slobbering eagerness to bash them he exhibited during the sting phone call with a fake David Koch was particularly damaging. In the face of this, and in the face of the utter indifference to the deaths he caused exhibited by the mine owner in West Virginia should settle the matter. If the upper class could take away your weekends, your health care, your right to go home at a certain hour, your right to fair compensation, your assurance that you won't die at work to save them a couple of bucks, your right to save for retirement? They'd do it in a heartbeat. Now, as then, most of the people who pull the strings see working Americans as chattel and nothing more. And the mere existence of unions is our best defense against this mentality.

"If you doubt that, look at how hard they are working to destroy unions. You don't do that unless you do see them as a check on your power."

-- Amanda Marcotte, 2011-03-24

[thanks to the folks who linked to these, including realinterrobang and I've forgotten who else]