Ninety-Eight years ago on March 25, 1919, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory near Washington Square Park. When it was over, 146 workers, mostly women and girls who lived on Manhattan's Lower East Side, were dead.

The annual ceremony in memory of the fallen and in honor of the union struggles for safer workplaces will be held on Friday March 27, 2009, at 12 Noon at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Streets -- just East of Washington Square Park . The last few years have not seen large attendance as those who remember the fire are mostly gone and those who were told about it by our parents are getting pretty darn gray (where we're not bald.)

The Unite-Here invitation is here , a good online exhibit about the fire is is here .

What’s the bad outcome if your business plan involves exposing workers to hazardous materials and it kills two of them? The Occupational Safey & Health Administration (OSHA) will seek some money from you. In the case of Victor & Carlos Diaz, who died Dec.1, 2007 in a dilution tank at North East Linen of Linden NJ, OSHA seeks $79,250 in penalties. Killing workers certainly seems cheaper than killing pedestrians. Based on what I’ve been told, I think the OSHA charges and proposed penalties understate the wrongs that North East Linen and its owner committed.

For links to my prior posts on this click here.

North East Linen is an industrial laundry. It washes table clothes, napkins, uniforms. It discharges the used wash water to Linden NJ sewers. That water would be too corrosive because the washing process uses alkaline chemicals to clean, so North East adds sulfuric acid to the water to neutralize it. Sulfuric acid, itself, is a dangerous chemical to work with. When you buy it, you get a “material safety data sheet (MSDS)” which tells you about the dangers.  read more »

You may have forgotten but, almost six months ago, two work-place incidents resulted in three deaths:

At the Linden NJ industrial laundry “North East Linen,” on Dec. 1, 2007, Victor & Carlos Diaz, a truck driver and a laborer, died while cleaning a 20,000 gallon dilution tank without respiratory protection or supervision. (As I read the facts, their employer apparently knew about the violation of OSHA rules see prior reports, below).

In New York City, at the East 62nd Street, Solow Residential Tower, window washers Alcides & Edgar Moreno fell 47 storeys when the permanent scaffold from which they worked collapsed. Edgar Moreno was killed on the scene, but his brother Alcides, survived the fall.

For some earlier reports click here, here, here, and here

I remind you of these now somewhat ancient tragic tales because six months is the total time the Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration gives itself to investigate a case. Before six months, OSHA won’t comment. After six months, OSHA still may not comment, but enforcement actions, if any, will be announced. One outcome of this policy of silence is that people following the issues lose track of them. So here are three related updates: one hopeful, one business-as-usual for Mayor Bloomberg’s Buildings (all-fall-down) Dept., and one concrete proposal for improving OSHA criminal enforcement.  read more »

I wrote previously about labor-management neutrality agreements which have been the subject of intense debate among union activists and labor scholars. Under these confidential agreements, union leaders and employers make deals which facilitate union organizing.

“Neutrality Agreements”-- more or less secret deals -- between a union and management involve give and take on both sides. The unions agree to limit their organizing efforts to specific locales, to not campaign against management, and to not strike (under most circumstances). At some sites, Management agrees not to oppose the union’s organizing efforts and to recognize the union where a majority of workers have signed cards asking for union representation. Management gets some stability, some immunity from workplace disruption. Unions get the freedom to organize. Some have charged that such agreements lock out other unions, allow parent unions to dominate locals, and erode workers rights. It’s a difficult balance. At what point does an agreement go too far and align the union with the boss?

To be fair, for a change, I called up SEIU, Unite-Here and a few observer-activists to get their views:

Andy McDonald, an SEIU voice, pointed out that – of the private-sector work-force, 92½% are without union representation. “SEIU is obsessed with addressing the needs of the 921/2 %.” Psychologically obsessed?” Obsessed, he affirmed.  read more »

The union song , above, by Florence Reese, underscores the complete divide many of us grew up with between workers and their labor unions and the bosses. Like many things I learned on my parents’ knees, this model of class struggle may be subject to revision. Some of you may know that, as total labor union membership and share of the workforce has dropped dramatically over the last many years, unions have developed competing labor federations: the AFL-CIO rooted in a long complex history and a newer federation Change to Win (CTW) .

Initially the differences between the AFL-CIO and CTW seemed to be about how to organize new workers. CTW unions, like the Teamsters, the Service Employees and Unite-Here wanted to devote more money and resources to organizing new members than the AFL was prepared to. As time has gone by however, it appears that Change to Win has changed in another way. They’ve abandoned the old paradigm of workers vs. bosses and changed. Will they win?

The Service Employees International Union (Andy Stern Pres.) and Unite-Here (Bruce Raynor & John Wilhelm, Co-Presidents) have embarked on a new era of labor-management relations. While their reasons for doing so are clear and understandable (to me at least) not everyone is clapping and there appear to be some very unpalatable outcomes.

In brief, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, (subscription required, sorry)

Two of the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements." That includes not disclosing them to union members. [emphasis added by me]  read more »