Clara Shavelson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Lemlich http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/clara-lemlich-and-uprising-...

Clara Lemlich Shavelson (March 28, 1886 – July 12, 1982) was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff.

Contents [show] Early years[edit] Lemlich was born March 28, 1886 in the Ukrainian village of Gorodok to a Jewish family. Raised in a predominantly Yiddish-speaking village, young Lemlich learned to read Russian over her parents' objections, sewing buttonholes and writing letters for illiterate neighbors to raise money for her books.[1] After a neighbor introduced her to revolutionary literature, Lemlich became a committed socialist. She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1903,[2] following a pogrom in Kishinev.[3]

Lemlich was able to find a job in the garment industry upon her arrival in New York. Conditions there had become even worse since the turn of the century, as the new industrial sewing machine allowed employers to demand twice as much production from their employees, who often had to supply their own machines and carry them to and from work. Lemlich, along with many of her co-workers, rebelled against the long hours, low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, and humiliating treatment from supervisors. Lemlich became involved in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union[4] and was elected to the executive board of Local 25 of the ILGWU.[5]

Lemlich quickly made a name for herself among her fellow workers, leading several strikes of shirtwaist makers and challenging the mostly male leadership of the union to organize women garment workers. She combined boldness with a good deal of charm (she was known for her fine singing voice) and personal bravery (she returned to the picket line in 1909 after having several ribs broken when gangsters hired by the employers attacked the picketers).

Lemlich came to the attention of the outside world at the mass meeting held at Cooper Union on November 22, 1909 to rally support for the striking shirtwaist workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and Leiserson Company.[6] After the leading figures of the American labor movement and socialist leaders of the Lower East Side spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Lemlich demanded the opportunity to speak. Lifted onto the platform she demanded action:

"I have listened to all the speakers, and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I make a motion that we go out in a general strike."[7] The crowd responded enthusiastically and, after taking a modified version of the ancient Jewish oath of fidelity to Israel — "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise" — voted for a general strike. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days; this would become known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Lemlich took a leading role in bringing workers out, speaking at rallies until she lost her voice. The strike lasted until February 10, 1910, producing union contracts at almost every shop, but not at Triangle Shirtwaist.

Triangle Shirtwaist became a synonym for "sweatshop" during the following year. On March 25, 1911, nearly 150 garment workers died as a result of a fire that consumed the factory. Workers were either burned to death or died jumping to escape the flames. Lemlich searched through the armory where the dead had been taken to search for a missing cousin; a newspaper reporter described her as convulsed by hysterical laughter and tears when she did not find her.

Suffrage[edit] Blacklisted from the industry and at odds with the conservative leadership of the ILGWU, Lemlich devoted herself to the campaign for women's suffrage. Like her colleagues Rose Schneiderman and Pauline Newman, Lemlich portrayed women's suffrage as necessary for the improvement of working women's lives, both inside and outside the workplace:

"The manufacturer has a vote; the bosses have votes; the foremen have votes, the inspectors have votes. The working girl has no vote. When she asks to have a building in which she must work made clean and safe, the officials do not have to listen. When she asks not to work such long hours, they do not have to listen. . . . [U]ntil the men in the Legislature at Albany represent her as well as the bosses and the foremen, she will not get justice; she will not get fair conditions. That is why the working woman now says that she must have the vote. Lemlich, like Newman and Schneiderman, also had strong personal and political differences with the upper and middle class women who led the suffrage movement. Mary Beard fired Lemlich, for reasons that are not entirely clear, less than a year after hiring her to campaign for suffrage in 1911.

Lemlich continued her suffrage activities, founding the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League , a working class alternative to middle class suffrage organizations, along with Schneiderman, Leonora O'Reilly and two other women garment workers. Yet while the League admitted only working class women to membership, it was dependent on non-working class women for support and, in deference to its supporters' wishes, affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association — the organization to which it saw itself as an alternative — rather than with the Socialist Party Women's Committee.

The Wage Earner’s Suffrage League passed out of existence, however, after organizing a successful rally at Cooper Union at which Lemlich, Schneiderman and others spoke. Lemlich continued her suffrage activities for the Women's Trade Union League, while Schneiderman, who quit the WTUL at that time, went to work for the ILGWU before returning to the WTUL several years later. Other activists, such as Pauline Newman, worked under the aegis of the Socialist Party, which supported suffrage even though many in the leadership considered it a distraction from the more urgent business of class struggle.

Consumer advocacy[edit] Lemlich married Joe Shavelson in 1913. She was the mother of Irving Charles Velson, Martha Shavelson Schaffer and Rita Shavelson Margules. Moving to the solidly working-class neighborhood of East New York, then later to Brighton Beach, she did not return to work, other than on an occasional part-time basis, for the next thirty years. Instead she devoted herself to raising a family and organizing housewives.

Others had organized in this area before Lemlich: Jewish housewives in New York had boycotted kosher butchers to protest high prices in the first decade of the twentieth century and the Brooklyn Tenants Union led rent strikes and fought evictions. After joining the Communist Party, which largely disdained the notion of consumer organizing, Lemlich and Kate Gitlow, mother of Benjamin Gitlow, attempted to organize a union of housewives that would address not only consumers' issues, but housing and education as well. The United Council of Working Class Housewives also raised money and organized relief for strikers in Passaic, New Jersey during the bitter 1926 strike.

In 1929, after the Communist Party created a Women's Commission, Lemlich launched the United Council of Working Class Women, which eventually had nearly fifty branches in New York City, as well as affiliates in Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. The organization recruited among CP members but did not identify the Council with the CP or press non-Party members of the Council to join the party as well.

The UCWCW led a widespread boycott of butcher shops to protest high meat prices in 1935, using the militant tactics of flying squadrons of picketers that shut down more than 4000 butcher shops in New York City. The strike became nationwide and the UCWCW won support outside the Jewish and African-American communities to which it had been limited in New York.

The UCWCW renamed itself the Progressive Women's Councils the following years as part of the Popular Front politics of the day. The Party withdrew support for the councils and discontinued publications aimed at women, however, in 1938. Lemlich continued to be active in the PWC, however, and was a local leader in it after it affiliated with the International Worker's Order in the 1940s. The Councils organized even broader boycotts to protest high prices in 1948 and 1951, before accusations of Communist Party dominance destroyed it in the early 1950s. The IWO was ordered dissolved by the State of New York in 1952.

Lemlich continued her activities as part of the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, which raised funds for Red Mogen David, protesting nuclear weapons, campaigned for ratification of the United Nations' Convention on Genocide and against the War in Vietnam, and forging alliances with Sojourners for Truth, an African-American women's civil rights organization.

Lemlich was also active in Unemployed Councils activities and in founding the Emma Lazarus Council, which supported tenants' rights. The Emma Lazarus Council declared in 1931 that no one would be evicted in Brighton Beach for inability to pay rent, then backed that up by rallying supporters to prevent evictions and returning tenants' furniture to their apartments in those cases in which authorities attempted to effect eviction.

Lemlich remained an unwavering member of the Communist Party, denouncing the trial and execution of the Rosenbergs. Her passport was revoked after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1951. She retired from garment work in 1954, then fought a long battle with the ILGWU to obtain a pension. After the death of her second husband she moved to California to be near her children and in-laws in the 1960s, she entered the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. As a resident she persuaded the management to join in the United Farm Workers' boycotts of grapes and lettuce, then prodded the workers there to organize.

References[edit] Jump up ^ Orleck, Annelise. "Clara Lemlich Shavelson". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Clara Lemlich was born in 1886 in Gorodok, Ukraine, to deeply religious parents. Jump up ^ Dwyer, Jim (March 22, 2011). "Triangle Fire: One Woman Who Changed the Rules". The New York Times. Jump up ^ Orleck, Annelise. "Clara Lemlich Shavelson". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. By the time the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 convinced her parents to immigrate to the United States, seventeen-year-old Clara was a committed revolutionary. Jump up ^ "Biography:Clara Lemlich". Triangle Fire. PBS: American Experience. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Appalled by these circumstances, Lemlich joined the executive board of a local chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), a relatively new organization gaining momentum in the fight for workers' rights. Jump up ^ Lemlich, Clara. "Testimonials: Life in the Shop". The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire. Cornell University. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Lemlich, executive board member of Local 25, sparked the 1909 walkout of shirtwaist makers with her call for a strike. Jump up ^ "Clara Lemlich sparks "Uprising of the 20,000"". This Week in History. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Thus, in Yiddish, 23-year-old Clara Lemlich addressed a crowd of thousands of restless laborers at New York City’s Cooper Union on November 22, 1909. Jump up ^ "Biography: Clara Lemlich". Triangle Fire. PBS. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Further reading[edit] Orleck, Annalise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1995 Shavelson, Clara Lemlich. "Remembering the Waistmakers General Strike," 1909, Ed. by Morris U. Schappes, Jewish Currents (November 1982). Crowder, Melanie. "Audacity", Philomel, January 2015

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Lemlich

Clara Lemlich Shavelson (March 28, 1886 – July 12, 1982) was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff.

Contents [show] Early years[edit] Lemlich was born March 28, 1886 in the Ukrainian village of Gorodok to a Jewish family. Raised in a predominantly Yiddish-speaking village, young Lemlich learned to read Russian over her parents' objections, sewing buttonholes and writing letters for illiterate neighbors to raise money for her books.[1] After a neighbor introduced her to revolutionary literature, Lemlich became a committed socialist. She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1903,[2] following a pogrom in Kishinev.[3]

Lemlich was able to find a job in the garment industry upon her arrival in New York. Conditions there had become even worse since the turn of the century, as the new industrial sewing machine allowed employers to demand twice as much production from their employees, who often had to supply their own machines and carry them to and from work. Lemlich, along with many of her co-workers, rebelled against the long hours, low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, and humiliating treatment from supervisors. Lemlich became involved in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union[4] and was elected to the executive board of Local 25 of the ILGWU.[5]

Lemlich quickly made a name for herself among her fellow workers, leading several strikes of shirtwaist makers and challenging the mostly male leadership of the union to organize women garment workers. She combined boldness with a good deal of charm (she was known for her fine singing voice) and personal bravery (she returned to the picket line in 1909 after having several ribs broken when gangsters hired by the employers attacked the picketers).

Lemlich came to the attention of the outside world at the mass meeting held at Cooper Union on November 22, 1909 to rally support for the striking shirtwaist workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and Leiserson Company.[6] After the leading figures of the American labor movement and socialist leaders of the Lower East Side spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Lemlich demanded the opportunity to speak. Lifted onto the platform she demanded action:

"I have listened to all the speakers, and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I make a motion that we go out in a general strike."[7] The crowd responded enthusiastically and, after taking a modified version of the ancient Jewish oath of fidelity to Israel — "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise" — voted for a general strike. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days; this would become known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Lemlich took a leading role in bringing workers out, speaking at rallies until she lost her voice. The strike lasted until February 10, 1910, producing union contracts at almost every shop, but not at Triangle Shirtwaist.

Triangle Shirtwaist became a synonym for "sweatshop" during the following year. On March 25, 1911, nearly 150 garment workers died as a result of a fire that consumed the factory. Workers were either burned to death or died jumping to escape the flames. Lemlich searched through the armory where the dead had been taken to search for a missing cousin; a newspaper reporter described her as convulsed by hysterical laughter and tears when she did not find her.

Suffrage[edit] Blacklisted from the industry and at odds with the conservative leadership of the ILGWU, Lemlich devoted herself to the campaign for women's suffrage. Like her colleagues Rose Schneiderman and Pauline Newman, Lemlich portrayed women's suffrage as necessary for the improvement of working women's lives, both inside and outside the workplace:

"The manufacturer has a vote; the bosses have votes; the foremen have votes, the inspectors have votes. The working girl has no vote. When she asks to have a building in which she must work made clean and safe, the officials do not have to listen. When she asks not to work such long hours, they do not have to listen. . . . [U]ntil the men in the Legislature at Albany represent her as well as the bosses and the foremen, she will not get justice; she will not get fair conditions. That is why the working woman now says that she must have the vote. Lemlich, like Newman and Schneiderman, also had strong personal and political differences with the upper and middle class women who led the suffrage movement. Mary Beard fired Lemlich, for reasons that are not entirely clear, less than a year after hiring her to campaign for suffrage in 1911.

Lemlich continued her suffrage activities, founding the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League , a working class alternative to middle class suffrage organizations, along with Schneiderman, Leonora O'Reilly and two other women garment workers. Yet while the League admitted only working class women to membership, it was dependent on non-working class women for support and, in deference to its supporters' wishes, affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association — the organization to which it saw itself as an alternative — rather than with the Socialist Party Women's Committee.

The Wage Earner’s Suffrage League passed out of existence, however, after organizing a successful rally at Cooper Union at which Lemlich, Schneiderman and others spoke. Lemlich continued her suffrage activities for the Women's Trade Union League, while Schneiderman, who quit the WTUL at that time, went to work for the ILGWU before returning to the WTUL several years later. Other activists, such as Pauline Newman, worked under the aegis of the Socialist Party, which supported suffrage even though many in the leadership considered it a distraction from the more urgent business of class struggle.

Consumer advocacy[edit] Lemlich married Joe Shavelson in 1913. She was the mother of Irving Charles Velson, Martha Shavelson Schaffer and Rita Shavelson Margules. Moving to the solidly working-class neighborhood of East New York, then later to Brighton Beach, she did not return to work, other than on an occasional part-time basis, for the next thirty years. Instead she devoted herself to raising a family and organizing housewives.

Others had organized in this area before Lemlich: Jewish housewives in New York had boycotted kosher butchers to protest high prices in the first decade of the twentieth century and the Brooklyn Tenants Union led rent strikes and fought evictions. After joining the Communist Party, which largely disdained the notion of consumer organizing, Lemlich and Kate Gitlow, mother of Benjamin Gitlow, attempted to organize a union of housewives that would address not only consumers' issues, but housing and education as well. The United Council of Working Class Housewives also raised money and organized relief for strikers in Passaic, New Jersey during the bitter 1926 strike.

In 1929, after the Communist Party created a Women's Commission, Lemlich launched the United Council of Working Class Women, which eventually had nearly fifty branches in New York City, as well as affiliates in Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. The organization recruited among CP members but did not identify the Council with the CP or press non-Party members of the Council to join the party as well.

The UCWCW led a widespread boycott of butcher shops to protest high meat prices in 1935, using the militant tactics of flying squadrons of picketers that shut down more than 4000 butcher shops in New York City. The strike became nationwide and the UCWCW won support outside the Jewish and African-American communities to which it had been limited in New York.

The UCWCW renamed itself the Progressive Women's Councils the following years as part of the Popular Front politics of the day. The Party withdrew support for the councils and discontinued publications aimed at women, however, in 1938. Lemlich continued to be active in the PWC, however, and was a local leader in it after it affiliated with the International Worker's Order in the 1940s. The Councils organized even broader boycotts to protest high prices in 1948 and 1951, before accusations of Communist Party dominance destroyed it in the early 1950s. The IWO was ordered dissolved by the State of New York in 1952.

Lemlich continued her activities as part of the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, which raised funds for Red Mogen David, protesting nuclear weapons, campaigned for ratification of the United Nations' Convention on Genocide and against the War in Vietnam, and forging alliances with Sojourners for Truth, an African-American women's civil rights organization.

Lemlich was also active in Unemployed Councils activities and in founding the Emma Lazarus Council, which supported tenants' rights. The Emma Lazarus Council declared in 1931 that no one would be evicted in Brighton Beach for inability to pay rent, then backed that up by rallying supporters to prevent evictions and returning tenants' furniture to their apartments in those cases in which authorities attempted to effect eviction.

Lemlich remained an unwavering member of the Communist Party, denouncing the trial and execution of the Rosenbergs. Her passport was revoked after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1951. She retired from garment work in 1954, then fought a long battle with the ILGWU to obtain a pension. After the death of her second husband she moved to California to be near her children and in-laws in the 1960s, she entered the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. As a resident she persuaded the management to join in the United Farm Workers' boycotts of grapes and lettuce, then prodded the workers there to organize.

References[edit] Jump up ^ Orleck, Annelise. "Clara Lemlich Shavelson". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Clara Lemlich was born in 1886 in Gorodok, Ukraine, to deeply religious parents. Jump up ^ Dwyer, Jim (March 22, 2011). "Triangle Fire: One Woman Who Changed the Rules". The New York Times. Jump up ^ Orleck, Annelise. "Clara Lemlich Shavelson". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. By the time the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 convinced her parents to immigrate to the United States, seventeen-year-old Clara was a committed revolutionary. Jump up ^ "Biography:Clara Lemlich". Triangle Fire. PBS: American Experience. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Appalled by these circumstances, Lemlich joined the executive board of a local chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), a relatively new organization gaining momentum in the fight for workers' rights. Jump up ^ Lemlich, Clara. "Testimonials: Life in the Shop". The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire. Cornell University. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Lemlich, executive board member of Local 25, sparked the 1909 walkout of shirtwaist makers with her call for a strike. Jump up ^ "Clara Lemlich sparks "Uprising of the 20,000"". This Week in History. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Thus, in Yiddish, 23-year-old Clara Lemlich addressed a crowd of thousands of restless laborers at New York City’s Cooper Union on November 22, 1909. Jump up ^ "Biography: Clara Lemlich". Triangle Fire. PBS. Retrieved 11 May 2014. Further reading[edit] Orleck, Annalise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1995 Shavelson, Clara Lemlich. "Remembering the Waistmakers General Strike," 1909, Ed. by Morris U. Schappes, Jewish Currents (November 1982). Crowder, Melanie. "Audacity", Philomel, January 2015

קלרה שבלסון (למליך) שביתת פועלות הטקסטיל במנהטן

שיתוף  שביתת פועלות הטקסטיל במנהטן הינה מספר שביתות ומחאות של פועלות טקסטיל במנהטן שבארצות הברית שהתקיימו בתחילת המאה ה-20, שהובילו לחקיקת חוקים ששיפרו את הבטיחות במפעלים ואת תנאי העבודה בהם - תחילה בניו יורק ובהמשך בארצות הברית ובמדינות מערביות נוספות.

ב-26 בספטמבר 1909 החלה שביתת פועלות הטקסטיל במפעל טרייאנגל במנהטן. הפועלות מחו על תנאי העבדות שבהם הועסקו: ימי עבודה בני 14 שעות, שבעה ימים בשבוע בלי הפסקה, העסקת ילדים, ותנאי בטיחות רעועים אשר גרמו לנפגעות רבות. רוב הנשים הועסקו כמתלמדות וככוח אדם לא מקצועי גם אחרי שהוכשרו, והרוויחו כתשיעית מהגברים שהועסקו באותם מקומות. רוב העובדות במקום היו מהגרות יהודיות ולא היה להם איגוד. המחאה דוכאה בסיוע בריונים ששכרו בעלי המפעל, ובסיוע של שוחד לפוליטיקאים מקומיים, כדי שיעלימו עין מהאלימות. נאום סוחף של אשה בשם קלרה למליך הוביל להרחבת השביתה לעובדות נוספות. [1]

ב-22 בנובמבר הפועלות הצליחו לגייס לצידן את כל הענף, בעקבות נאום סוחף של אשה בשם קלרה למליך. באותו בוקר 15 אלף עובדות טקסטיל יצאו לרחובות ניו-יורק. עד אותו הערב האירוע כונה "התקוממות ה-20,000", שביתה כללית של יותר מ-20 אלף פועלות טקסטיל מאוגדות בארגון נשות עובדות הטקסטיל העולמי. השביתה ארכה 11 שבועות, בהם הפועלות יצאו לרחובות, גייסו כספים, ונתקלו באלימות. יותר מ-700 מהן נעצרו, הן הוכו נמרצות. למליך עצמה סבלה משש צלעות שבורות ונעצרה 17 פעמים. הן נקנסו ביותר ממאה אלף דולר ביחד ונדונו לעבודות פרך. אך הצלחתן בשיתוק בפועל של המפעלים הביאה לחתימת הסכמים בין 339 מתוך 352 מפעלי טקסטיל לבין האיגוד. [2]

עם זאת, מפעל טרייאנגל בו החל המאבק לא נכלל בהסכם. שנה וחצי לאחר מכן התרחשה השריפה במפעל הות טריאנגל (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), שפרצה בניו יורק סיטי ב-25 במרץ 1911. בשריפה נהרגו 123 עובדות ו-23 עובדים. רוב הנפגעים היו מהגרים יהודים ואיטלקים בין הגילאים 16–23. הנפגע המבוגר ביותר היה בן 43, והצעירות ביותר - בנות 14. בעלי המפעל נעלו את היציאה מהמפעל ואת הכניסה לחדר המדרגות כדי למנוע גניבה ולקיחת חופשות בלתי מאושרות של העובדים. לכן, כאשר פרצה השריפה חלק מהעובדים קפצו מהקומות העליונות של הבניין כדי להימלט ונספו בנפילה. השריפה הביאה לשינוי מדיניות הבטיחות במפעלים ותנאי התעסוקה בארה"ב. בית המחוקקים של מדינת ניו יורק הקים ועדת חקירה שתבדוק מפעלים ותמליץ על אמצעים שיש לנקוט לשם מניעת אסונות דוגמת אסון מפעל טריאנגל. [3]

בעקבות עבודתה של הוועדה נחקקו במדינת ניו יורק עשרות חוקים חדשים, ששיפרו את הבטיחות במפעלים ואת תנאי העבודה בהם. כמו כן בעקבות השריפה הוקמה בניו יורק, ב-14 באוקטובר 1911 אגודת מהנדסי הבטיחות האמריקאית. אגודה לבטיחות הציבור שבראשה עמדה פרנסס פרקינס (לימים מזכירת העבודה של ארצות הברית), שהייתה עדה לשריפה עצמה. הוגבל מספר שעות העבודה השבועית בארצות הברית ל-54. Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition היא קבוצה שנוצרה בשנת 2008 ושאוגדת בתוכה יותר מ-200 ארגונים, מטרתה להנציח את השריפה.[4]

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בספטמבר 1909 פרצה שביתה במפעל גדול לחולצות מחויטות לנשים (shirtwaist), על רקע סירוב ההנהלה לאפשר הצטרפות הפועלים לאיגוד מקצועי ופיטורי הפעילים שעמדו בראש ההתארגנות. ההנהלה נקטה בכל השיטות המוכרות לשבירת השביתה – התערבות ברוטלית של המשטרה, מאסרים, הפעלת בריונים וגנגסטרים. השובתים עמדו על סף שבירה ואז, בכנס הזדהות שארגן ILGWU, פועלת צעירה בת 19, קלרה למליך (Clara Lemlich), נוכח אי-ההחלטיות של מנהיגי הפועלים שהשתתפו בכנס, קמה ובנאום חוצב להבות קראה לכל העובדות במפעלי החולצות להצטרף לשביתה. בן-יום נענו כל עשרות אלפי הפועלות, הפועלים, הזבניות בחנויות של מפעלי החולצות והצטרפו לשביתה. היתה זו התקוממות הנשים הראשונה בהיסטוריה האמריקנית, ואות לבאות. דעת הקהל – גם של אמריקה השבעה והחומרנית – נטתה לצד השובתות. קלרה למליך הפכה לסמל ודמותה סיפקה השראה לכמה רומנים שנכתבו במשך הזמן. לאחר שבועות של מאבק חריף, בו נשפטו ונאסרו מאות מן השובתות המפגינות, נכנעה ההנהלה ונכנסה למשא-ומתן עם השובתים. בהסכם שהושג קוצצו שעות העבודה מ-65 ל-52 בשבוע, הוכרו ארבעה ימי חופשה בתשלום, בוטל הנוהג ולפיו חייבים הפועלים להביא אתם את כלי עבודתם, תוקם ועדה משותפת להנהלה ולעובדים לבירור וגישור בכל מחלוקת שתתעורר.

תוצאות שביתת פועלות המחט עודדו את ה-AFL לארגן ביולי 1910 את השביתה הגדולה הבאה של העובדים בתעשיית הבגדים. 65,000 פועלים נטשו את המפעלים. שוב התפתח מאבק חריף ואלים בין השובתים לבין המעסיקים היהודיים, שלא בחלו באמצעים כדי לשבור את השביתה. המנהיגות היהודית-גרמנית התבוננה בחרדה אל הסכסוך המעמדי המתרחב בתוך הקהילה היהודית. בלחצה הסכימו השובתים והמעסיקים לבוררותו של עורך-הדין והמשפטן לואי ברנדייס (Louis D. Brandeis), שקנה לו מוניטין בהשקפתו הפרוגרסיביסטית ובהצלחות שצבר ביישוב סכסוכי עבודה. בהסכם שעיצב ברנדייס נקבעו 50 שעות עבודה שבועיות, 10 ימי חופשה בתשלום, תוספת תשלום של 50% על שעות עבודה נוספות, ביטול הנוהג של שימוש בקבלני-משנה, הקמת ועדת גהות משותפת לפיקוח על התנאים הסניטריים במפעלים. כמו כן הוסכם לקיים ועדת בוררות משותפת ליישוב כל המחלוקות בין העובדים והמעסיקים. "פרוטוקול שלום" (Protocol of Peace) נחתם בין העובדים והמעסיקים, והכל קיוו לייצוב היחסים במערכת העבודה.

היה זה הישג היסטורי ותקדים שלאורך ימים שינה לגמרי את תנאי העבודה במשטר הקפיטליסטי הפרוע בארצות-הברית של תחילת המאה העשרים. פועלי תעשיית בגדי גברים בשיקגו החרו החזיקו אחרי הפועלות בניו-יורק. 33,000 פועלים, בהנהגת סידני הילמן, פתחו בשביתה שנמשכה ארבעה חודשים, עד שהושג הסכם דומה לזה שהשיגו הפועלים בניו-יורק. בעקבות השביתה הוקם ארגון הגג של פועלי תעשיית בגדי הגברים, "איחוד עובדי הבגדים של אמריקה" (Amalgamated Clothing workers of America ), על פי המודל של ILGWU.

ב-25 במרס 1911 קרה אסון נורא במפעל לייצור חולצות נשים בו עבדו כ-800 פועלות וכמה עשרות פועלים. שריפה פרצה בקומות העליונות של המפעל ששכן בבניין בן עשר קומות. דלתות היציאה העשויות פלדה היו חסומות, כחלק מנהלי העבודה במקום. המנהלים המבוהלים נמלטו על נפשם בלי לפתוח את הדלתות. הפועלים נלכדו בלהבות ובעשן. רבים קפצו אל מותם מן הקומות העליונות. 147 פועלות ו-21 פועלים נספו. בלוויה ההמונית של הקורבנות השתתפו למעלה מ-100,000 איש וה-Lower East Side שבת מעבודה. מנהיגת הפועלות, רוז שניידרמן (Rose Schneiderman), התייפחה בהספידה את המתים וקראה: "לא אבגוד בנשרפים ולא אדבר שלום ואחווה. – – – חיי אנשים ונשים הם כה זולים פה והרכוש כה מקודש. – – – העמדנו אתכם, האזרחים, במבחן, ואתם הושטתם לאמהות השכולות כמה דולרים כצדקה. אבל בכל פעם שפנינו אליכם לשפר את התנאים הבלתי נסבלים במפעלים הפעלתם נגדנו את ידו הכבדה של החוק. – – – דם רב מדי נשפך. אני אומרת מניסיוני – רק ציבור הפועלים יכול להושיע את עצמו. הדרך היחידה היא תנועה מאורגנת חזקה של מעמד העובדים." אירוע מזעזע זה הגביר את נחישותם של האיגודים המקצועיים של תעשיית הבגדים, בהנהגת ILGWU ו- Amalgamated Clothing Workers, שבסדרה של שביתות בשנים 1916-1913 כפו על המעסיקים תיקונים נוספים בתנאי העבודה וחסמו את הניסיונות להחזיר את הגלגל לאחור.

http://elam.sapir.ac.il/page/98/