March 25  marks the 100th anniversary of a tragic, pivotal moment in history, when 146 mostly young New York garment workers, all but 17 female, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  Many were immigrants, who came to find the American Dream and went to work in a Manhattan sweatshop on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of a building near Washington Square.  They put in nine hour days, six days a week, hundreds of workers on each floor, surrounded by piles of flammable fabric.  Some of the piles were so large that they blocked the exits that could have saved lives on that terrible afternoon.

When the fire started around 4:30 p.m., it spread quickly.  Within minutes, the workers were caught in an inferno.  The fire trucks, which arrived quickly to the scene, were not able to help.  The ladders could not reach the victims.  The water from the hoses could reach the 6th floor, but no higher.  Many of those on the floors above leapt to their deaths.  An eyewitness later described the crowds who gathered on the street below as “horrified and helpless.”

The bodies of six workers were so badly burned that they were not identified until last month, February of 2011, when a remarkable researcher named Michael Hirsch was able to track down their identities.  A recent article in The New York Times noted that their burial in early April of 1911 was a culmination of collective grief.  “Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers turned out in a driving rain for a symbolic funeral procession sponsored by labor unions and other organizations,” the paper noted, “while hundreds of thousands more watched from the sidewalks.”

It is difficult today, after 100 years, to fully appreciate how the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed America.  These young workers knew their workplace was unsafe.  Two years earlier, they had tried to form a union.  They had tried to exercise their fundamental right to bargain collectively to improve the safety of their hazard-strewn sweatshop.  They had walked in picket lines.  But they had not succeeded.  The trauma of the Triangle tragedy moved a nation to pick up the fallen banner of these workers and fight for the rights they had been denied.

Unions and other organizations, including the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Women’s’ Trade Union League, set out to improve working conditions at sweatshops like the Triangle Factory through collective bargaining . They also organized to force the adoption of fire safety measures in New York that served as a model for the entire country. “The Triangle fire became a central moment in the history of the labor movement and in particular of the ILGWU,” says the Cornell University Library website. “It endured in the collective memory of its members as a symbol of the evils that made it necessary for workers to organize into unions.”

Even today, this tragedy demonstrates why unions are so important in the lives of working Americans, and why working men and women continue to organize and fight for workplace safety and better education for dangerous jobs.  It’s why leaders like Megan Burger, a tour guide at the U.S. Capitol, organized more than 130 tour guides and visitor assistants last year to make sure they had a voice at the table when issues of security are being discussed.  It’s why correction officers come together to make sure that they have the proper equipment and safety standards when dealing with dangerous inmates under stressful conditions. It’s why LaTonya Johnson, the owner/operator of a licensed family child care facility in Milwaukee, fought so hard for the collective bargaining rights that Gov. Scott Walker has stolen with his recent anti-worker legislation.

As was true a century ago, the key to success is organizing.  On Monday, the White House will host an event to commemorate the tragedy of the Triangle fire by focusing on the work of women around the country who are fighting to improve conditions on their jobs and in their communities.  U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Valerie B. Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama, will host a Women’s History Month forum with women who are organizing and making a real contribution to progress for all working Americans.

Deanna Vizi, a child care provider from Genoa, Ohio, and a member of AFSCME Council 8 will be among the speakers at the forum.  She recently fought for three years to gain union recognition for 3,500 dedicated professionals who care for the next generation in the Buckeye State.  “Being a union member is important to me,” Deanna says.  “Many voices together are better heard.  Although I work independently, I know that I have an entire team ready and willing to support me at any time.”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a turning point in the development of broad public support for the reforms that America desperately needed if it was to be free of the corporate abuses and excesses of the Gilded Age.  It helped Americans see the difference between right and wrong.  It had a profound influence on politics, culture and the first stirrings of the New Deal. Today, one hundred years later, this terrible and tragic event can still teach a new generation about the need to pull together, to organize and to fight for the common good.