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By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the Triangle Factory Fire and its legacy, UAW Non-Profit Legal Service lawyers on strike, and honoring our monumental women.

March 25,  2024, is the  113th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Greenwich Village that killed 146 mostly young immigrant female garment workers and launched the worker safety and labor movements. 

This show is the last in our Women’s History Month cycle where we focus on the foundational role women played in the origins of the American labor movement, while also calling out how, in the 21st century, blatant gender and race discrimination continue to  persist in the form of inferior pay and benefits for women of color as evidenced in the treatment of  the New York City’s FDNY EMS  workforce that’s mainly composed of women and people of color.

More outrageously, EMS is not alone. We see the same dynamic in play in how New York City Probation officers are treated, as well as the women in the 24/7 home health care workforce, and the non-profit social service sector.

It's also painfully manifested in the immoral decision by the City of New York in its attempt to shift 250,000 retired civil servants off of traditional Medicare and into a predatory Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan which is neither Medicare nor an advantage. As we have seen with the recent unprecedented roll back of women’s basic reproductive rights in this country, social progress is not an automatic —there’s no hidden conveyor belt propelling us forward automatically. This is the work we must do collectively for ourselves and our descendants.

In this episode, we visit with Mary Anne Trasciatti, president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, and director of Hofstra University’s Labor Studies Program to discuss the significance of that tragedy and how it remains so relevant over 100 years later in the midst of organized labor second wind in the 21st century. Trasciatti is also the co-editor of Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire  by New Village Press.  

We also get an update on the month-long strike by the unionized staff at Mobilization for Justice, one of the city’s  most effective legal services non-profits providing essential representation for the families that need it most. We hear from senior staff attorneys Liz Fisher and Brian Sullivan. Their Legal Services Staff Association, which is affiliated with UAW’s Region 9 A had a massive turnout on the steps of City Hall last week and Work-Bites was there.

In out final segment, retired FDNY Captain Brenda Berkman is back to give us an update on the Monumental Women Project which in 2020 unveiled the first statue of real women in Central Park: women’s rights pioneers Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Berkman discusses plans to honor the work of African American sculptor Augusta Savage and recreate Savage’s Lift Every Voice and Sing sculpture made for the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York. 

Listen to the entire show