Today in Labor History March 25, 1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed 146 people, mostly immigrant women and young girls who were working in sweatshop conditions. As tragic as this fire was for poor, working class women, over 100 workers died on the job each day in the U.S. in 1911. What was most significant was that this tragedy became a flash point for worker safety and public awareness of sweatshop conditions.

The Triangle workers had to work from 7:00 am until 8:00 pm, seven days a week. The work was almost non-stop. They got one break per day (30 minutes for lunch). For this they earned only $6.00 per week. In some cases, they had to provide their own needles and thread. Furthermore, the bosses locked the women inside the building to minimize time lost to bathroom breaks.

A year prior to the fire, 20,000 garment workers walked off the job at 500 clothing factories in New York to protest the deplorable working conditions. They demanded a 20% raise, 52-hour work week and overtime pay. Over 70 smaller companies conceded to the union’s demands within the first 48 hours of the strike. However, the bosses at Triangle formed an employers’ association with the owners of the other large factories. Soon after, strike leaders were arrested. Some were fined. Others were sent to labor camps. They also used armed thugs to beat up and intimidate strikers. By the end of the month, almost all of the smaller factories had conceded to the union. By February, 1910, the strike was finally settled.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #TriangleShirtwaistFire #workplacedeaths #strike #union #immigrant #sweatshop #childlabor #workplacesafety #fire #women #prison #newyork

There are many people around the world in terrible situations: #sweatshop workers, for example.

There is an understandable impulse to outlaw such situations. But those workers do not suddenly disappear; they've just lost the best option available to them (which is why they were there, barring literal #slavery).

If people want to end those situations, as I hope we all do, it's much better and more effective to offer a better situation rather than outlaw the terrible situation.

Today in Labor History November 22, 1909: The “Uprising of the 20,000” occurred in New York, as female, mostly Jewish, garment workers went on strike for better pay and an end to sweatshop working conditions. It was also known as the Shirtwaist Strike. 19-year-old Clara Lemlich, who led the strike, said she had no patience for talk and called for her coworkers to join in a General Strike. She made this speech not long after leaving the hospital after thugs had beat her up. By February, their strike had won some gains for workers, like a raise and a reduction in work hours to 52 hours per week, but did not end sweatshop conditions in the industry. During the strike, a Judge told arrested picketers, "You are on strike against God." The Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred one year later.

In the black of the winter of nineteen-nine
When we froze & bled on the picket line,
We showed the world that women could fight
& we rose & won with women's might.

Hail the waistmakers of nineteen-nine
Making their stand on the picket line,
Breaking the power of those who reign,
Pointing the way, smashing the chain.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #shirtwaist #union #strike #jewish #immigrant #newyork #claralemlich #GeneralStrike #sweatshop #vigilantes #women

Altijd al een modehuis willen komen?
Dit is je kans!

#Fundafun #Funda #Modehuis #Sweatshop #Andelst #Bedrijfaanhuis #energieneurtraal #Goedemorgen #Mode #Kleding #ontwerp #genoegparkeerplek #wattedoenmet2miljoen

Credits: @gevoel

https://www.funda.nl/detail/koop/andelst/huis-waaldijk-9/43079765/

Remember the Dead Internet Theory?

A couple days ago I found a network of AI-generated Wordpress sites and did a surface-level investigation. They're all generated with GPT-4 Turbo — they all have "out of credits" errors on half the pages. There are sites in English, German, French, Spanish, Turkish and probably more. They're backdating posts too so you can't just believe the date of the posts — some sites have just appeared but they have GPT-written posts "from 2016".

They're probably farming ad revenue like crazy, but they need organic visits for SEO right? So they've created a "botnet" of real people who are being paid ~0.35TRY per visit, which works around to roughly 15 TRY/h per hour if you are super efficient. That's 0.4$/h. So it's a sweatshop.

Base of operation? Turkey.

#DeadInternet #DeadInternetTheory #sweatshop #botnet