WASHINGTON—The valedictory journey to Joe Biden’s presidency and its meaning for workers began on March 25, 1911, when a young social worker in Manhattan, Frances Perkins, heard sirens and screams and raced to a tragic scene.
What she saw that sunny afternoon was the horrifying fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, an eighth-floor sweatshop employing young immigrant workers, toiling for pennies a day in a closed room with flammable materials all around.
The owners, upper class white men, had locked the fire doors, allegedly to prevent “theft” by the woman workers they vastly underpaid.
Nobody knows how the fire began. But in the crowded conditions of the sweatshop, with rags and swatches of garments all around, it spread rapidly. The fire truck ladders of 1911 couldn’t reach the women trapped the building. Nor could the hoses.
As the firefighters and the crowd, including Perkins, watched helplessly, the workers, mostly women, screamed, prayed—and jumped.
One hundred and twenty-three women and 23 men died. Some were burned to death. Others were asphyxiated. But most jumped, hit the sidewalk below and died. The Triangle owners? They eventually walked away with no penalty at all.
And the social conscience of Frances Perkins caught fire, too. The pro-worker legislation and regulations that flowed from her activism and drive, starting in New York and eventually becoming FDR’s New Deal and—in its tradition—Joe Biden’s pro-worker, pro-union presidency, was and is the result, as Biden acknowledged in a December 16 ceremony.
Fire codes. Job safety and health rules. Workers comp. The minimum wage. Overtime pay. Unemployment benefits. Social Security. And, of course, the National Labor Relations Act.
All were part of it
All were part of the New Deal which Perkins goaded Roosevelt to push through a sometimes-balky Congress. Some measures, such as the fire codes, she pushed through the New York legislature in the immediate years after Triangle.
There’s a direct line from Triangle to Perkins, FDR’s first and only Secretary of Labor, serving all 12-plus years of FDR’s time in office, and as the Cabinet’s first-ever woman. And from FDR to Biden, whose initiatives to pull the nation out of the coronavirus-caused depression included some leftovers, such as help for child care, from the New Deal.
After all, Biden is in all likelihood the last U.S. president who was alive under FDR, as a child born in November 1942. Roosevelt and Perkins had already been serving for nine and a half years.
And, so, too, was a large part of the militancy, and later political activism, of both the union movement, via the International Ladies Garment Workers Union—which almost literally sprung from the Triangle tragedy–and the women’s movement.
Which is why it was very fitting that Biden came to the Labor Department, in a building named for Perkins, on December 16 to sign a proclamation declaring Frances Perkins’ home in Newcastle, Maine, a national monument.
And which is also why it was very fitting that Biden’s Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su—who never got to drop the “acting” due to corporate-fueled Republican opposition—used the occasion to induct Biden into the Labor Department’s Hall of Honor.
“Honoring Frances Perkins with a national monument does more than acknowledge her work to establish Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage and overtime pay, it is a challenge for us,” said Su. “We must all remember the gains we enjoy today were not gifts, they were hard-fought victories because Frances Perkins dared to believe workers should thrive and not just survive.”
“The story goes, after Franklin Roosevelt asked her to become his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins immediately responded by outlining her goals, what she wanted done,” Biden explained.
“She said, ‘I want unemployment relief, overtime pay, child labor laws, minimum wage, worker’s compensation, national health insurance, and Social Security.’” He paused for laughter, adding “many of the benefits we take for granted as a consequence of Frances’s dedication to inciting courage.
“But can you imagine walking up to Roosevelt and saying, ‘Hey, I’ll take the job, but here’s the deal, man.’” Amid more laughter, Biden added she said “Let’s get this straight.”
Which is what Biden believes, too.
“History will record Joe Biden as the most pro-worker, pro-union president this nation has had,” Su said, to cheers from a crowd of DOL workers and top union leaders. “Leadership matters.”
Taking bold action
“And President Biden demonstrated his commitment to working people daily by taking bold actions and daring to fight the big fights. In the last four years, that has meant fighting to increase overtime pay, pushing for a national heat standard, protecting retirees’ pensions and putting more than $1 billion in wages and damages into workers’ pockets, to name a few.”
Then Biden took the time while he was honoring Perkins to sum up his pro-worker record of the last four years, a record of deep contrast to the anti-worker rhetoric and outright lies that have issued from the mouth of his predecessor and successor, Republican Donald Trump.
There could be no greater contrast than Trump saying, on the same day DOL honored Perkins and Biden, that he’s considering privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, a unionized ladder up into the middle class for millions of workers of color over the last half-century. His minions want to abolish its union contracts, too. And Biden, near the end of his speech, warned the crowd against “what’s coming.”
Trump added another lie at his press conference. “I didn’t have any inflation, and I had massive tariffs on a lot of things. We put tariffs on steel,” he said. “We made a fortune on it.” We didn’t. And Trump had to yank the tariffs after U.S. auto manufacturers pointed out they import a lot of steel for their vehicles, and all their aluminum, from Canada. Trump put tariffs on that, too.
Biden cataloged a much-different record, and it wasn’t just by being the first current president to ever walk a picket line, as he did with the United Auto Workers during their “Stand Up” strike against the three Detroit-based automakers, Ford, GM and Stellantis.
“During her 12 years in office, she [Perkins] accomplished everything on her list, except expanded health care for health insurance. It took 65 years later and a guy named Barack Obama and I to get the Affordable Care Act passed. And thank God all of us here protected and expanded” it.
Trump, catering to the radical right and the health insurance lobby, wants to replace the ACA. With what, he won’t say. “I have a concept for a plan,” he claimed in a presidential debate.
“Look, it’s clear Frances Perkins and a generation of activists and labor leaders laid the groundwork for much of what we’ve accomplished in the last four years,” Biden added.
READ MORE ABOUT FRANCES PERKINS:
“We’re fundamentally transforming the economy by breaking an economic orthodoxy that failed this nation for generation after generation, in my view: Trickle-down economics, the notion that if the wealthy do very, very well, a little will trickle off–off their tables onto our kitchen table.
“Well, you know, the primary benefits to the very wealthy and the biggest corporations were trickle-down economics, and that didn’t do much for working people and the middle class and left too many people behind.” He didn’t have to say so: Frances Perkins, and FDR, did the opposite.
“We know this simple truth: Wall Street didn’t build America; the middle class built America, and, and unions built the middle class. And that’s a fact.”
When unions do well, all do well
“When unions do well, all workers do well-–union and non-union, across the board. It matters. It works. It’s fair.”
Biden went on to proudly remind the appreciative crowd of much of the rest of his record, while, at the end, contrasting it with the looming threat of Trump.
His record includes “the greatest job creation of any single president in a single term: Over 16 million jobs so far, including over 1.5 million manufacturing and construction jobs—good-paying jobs you can raise a family on and don’t have to require a four-year degree. And get this: There are more women, especially mothers, in the workforce than ever before in American history.”
Left unsaid: In his first term, the four years prior to Biden’s, Trump became the first president, since Republican Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression, to see a net loss of jobs.
“And we’re so damn proud to have protected pensions of millions of union workers and retirees—when I signed the Butch Lewis Act,” that provides long-term low-interest federal loan guarantees to right the finances of plagued multi-employer pension plans, said Biden. Their assets tanked due to the Wall Street-caused Great Recession of 16 years ago.
“You know, think about that,” Biden mused. “Imagine what the average American would say if you were going to do that”—trash the finances—“with their Social Security, which this guy,” Trump, “wants to do. Imagine if he said, ‘Your pension, you can’t count on it anymore.’”
“In addition, we’ve recovered more than $1 billion in back wages and damages for over 600,000 workers here in America. We’ve pushed for a right to a living wage and your right to overtime pay.
Jobs and factories are coming back home to America because we invested in the American agenda. We’re modernizing American infrastructure.
“Last time this guy”—Trump, again—“had the job, he had ‘Infrastructure Week’ every week. Didn’t build a damn thing. Well, guess what? We built a lot. And guess what’s coming?…We have $1.4 trillion in infrastructure growth. That’s thousands of good-paying jobs.
“The CHIPS and Science Act investing billions of dollars building these fabs”—microchip factories—“that are going to house hundreds of people working, thousands, and they’re going to be getting paid about average of $102,000 a year and don’t need a college degree.
“So much, so much is going on. But it’s going to take a little bit of time. We got to make sure to protect the onslaught that’s going to come” against it from Trump and the congressional Republicans.
“Because it’s hard to see right away.”
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