When labor rights, suffrage intersect
Women face similar issues amid pandemic
The fire spread in 18 minutes. Inside the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, hundreds of mostly young, immigrant women rushed from door to door, only to find they had been locked by their bosses, part of a protocol to keep the women inside and working. Dozens jumped from the ninth floor of the burning building onto the streets of New York, dying on impact. In all, 146 workers perished.
Eighteen minutes of horror – and the course of a brewing labor movement was forever changed.
It was March 25, 1911. Female garment workers – including the workers at the Triangle factory – had been banding together across the country to shout from soap boxes on street corners and strike by the thousands, fighting for basic workplace protections in the largest demonstrations seen at the time. They were protections that the Triangle Waist Company refused to enact, including unlocking the exit doors so workers could take breaks, before dozens burned.
The labor movement resonated with the white, affluent women leading the push for suffrage, but the outrage over the fire was a catalyst, linking inextricably the fights for representation in the workplace and in government.
Clara Lemlich, a leader in both the labor and suffrage movements, wrote in 1912 in Good Housekeeping: “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 the building in which she must work made clean and safe, the officials do not have to listen.”
A century ago, working women joined women across the socioeconomic spectrum to help pass the 19th Amendment in 1920. Today, working women feel the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and it is galvanizing them to fight for better labor protections.
“Workers are understanding that we don’t have very much of a safety net or social insurance and that there aren’t very many protections,” said Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. “We’re at an inflection point where workers are wanting to join together to balance this power.”
One in three women are essential workers, at times forcing them to decide between their health and economic livelihood.
The deterioration of the child care industry over the past several months and the uncertainty around school reopenings have left many women – who perform the majority of the child care in working couples – in a position of choosing whether to care for their children or cultivate their career.
“People have been arguing that access to child care, paid leave, paid sick time and quality schooling have long been feminist issues,” said Alix GouldWerth, director of family economic security policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “People are sort of starting to realize the degree to which they are also economic issues and engaging and centering that in the economic policy debate.”
Issues of child care and worker protections are likely to be key as the country formulates a coronavirus recovery for American pocketbooks.
The issue of resuscitating the child care industry is likely to be a centerpiece of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Child care will probably be addressed in the next wave of coronavirus relief legislation – if Republicans and Democrats can agree on a package.
The first coronavirus recovery act offered two weeks of paid sick time for the rest of the year to workers at small- and medium-size companies.
But the act included a wide exemption for companies with more than 500 employees and businesses with fewer than 50 employees.
Paid sick leave has not made it into the subsequent proposals for coronavirus relief proposed by the House or the Senate.
The USA is one of the only developed nations without a national paid sick leave policy.
“It is really difficult for the businesses who maybe want to offer better programs for their workers and particularly care about things like retaining their good workers to do so if it’s not a universal program,” said economist Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Congress has shifted its focus to how companies can better protect themselves from lawsuits related to the coronavirus. Many businesses are worried that customers or workers, who may not always abide by COVID-19 safety rules, will try to sue if they get sick.
The federal agency that can protect workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), received 9,190 complaints as of Aug. 17 related to the coronavirus. It issued just four citations.
Labor groups criticized OSHA for failing to set an emergency temporary standard, a national set of safety regulations that workplaces would have to abide by to avoidcitations and other fees. OSHA laid out a set of guidelines that lack an enforcement component.
“It’s sort of an employer-by-employer honor system. There’s no way to hold them accountable,” Dixon said.
OSHA defended the decision to not adopt emergency rules, saying its standards, in addition to its coronavirus guidelines, are sufficient.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia wrote in a letter to AFL-CIO union President Richard Trumka that the agency would not adopt an emergency standard because “OSHA’s industry-specific guidance is far more informative for workers and companies about the steps to be taken in their particular workplaces.”
The AFL-CIO responded by suing OSHA in May, but the case was rejected a month later after a federal appeals court ruled that the agency “reasonably determined that an [emergency temporary standard] is not necessary at this time.”
This story was published in partnership with The 19th, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.