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Clara Lemlich And The Triangle Fire

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Prior to the Triangle Fire, union-organized strikes offered new opportunities for women to take leadership roles and demanded better workplace conditions; the unsatisfactory results from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory contributed to the factors that resulted in the countless deaths in the fire. One of the most influential unions during this period, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was founded in 1900, originally embracing the values of conservative leadership and dismissing the role that women could play in the advancement of workers’ rights. On November 22, 1909, thousands of young women, strikers, and members of the ILGWU, gathered at Cooper Union, a college in New York, after a series of spontaneous strikes over working …show more content…

Clara Lemlich’s leadership in granting rights to thousands of workers despite being a poor, Jewish immigrant was a foreign concept at this time, as even American women had hardly ever risen to such roles. Not only did her actions create opportunities for women to participate in strikes and take leadership roles in unions, they also marked the start of a period of reformation in the workplace. The next day, on November 23, 1909, 15,000 workers, most of them being poor Jewish immigrants, went on strike, picketing in front of factories and through the streets in what is now known as the “Uprising of 20,000.” (Historic U.S. Events). The difference between this strike and others in the past was that both garment workers and cutters (who were traditionally men) went on strike, making employees impossible to replace. This unification of men and women in a time where patriarchy reigned in the workplace and women were not taken seriously shows the significance of this strike not only for factory workers but also for

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Both working class and wealthy women joined together to rally and champion for union leagues, such as the Women’s Trade Union League specifically mentioned in Triangle. Leagues such as this one were fueled by the anger and injustice factory women felt toward their employers. One such worker was Clara Lemlich, a young factory worker who was “a model of a new sort of woman, hungry for opportunity and education and even equality; willing to fight the battles and pay the price to achieve it (7).” In the world Clara lived in, “men had the vote; men owned the shops…men ran the unions and political parties (7)” and she and her comrades wanted to change all of that. They knew that if they wanted to achieve change, they would have to do themselves, because male factory workers, even though they faced the same trials, often saw these women as a threat and police officers almost always sided with factory owners (12).

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“It recommended new labor standards and safeguarded existing ones, called for wage rates based on productivity rather than the sex of the worker, and especially fought for health and safety regulations.” (Boris, Michael) After decades of the women’s group demanded equality, they were finally rewarded a policymaking and advisory agency in July 1918. This was created to allow women to be paid by the quality of work rather than gender along with the health of the workers. To top it off, with the continuous movements, they continued to improve the equality that they were striving for to the point where women’s safety and well-being become a permanent agency in the Labor apartment.

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