Do You Really Want to Go Back to the Good Old Days of Deregulation?

"The towering metal door at the back of the burned-out garment factory could have been an escape for many of the low-paid textile workers caught in the fire.... Instead, it stands as a testament to greed and corruption at a factory where 289 trapped employees died."

This may sound like a description of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. But it isn't. It's the opening paragraph from an article by Declan Walsh in today's New York Times, describing the scene after the deadliest accident in Pakistan's history.

His article continues,

As hundreds of workers scrambled to escape the flaming factory after a boiler explosion, they found the main sliding door -- 30 feet high, big enough for a truckload of cotton -- firmly locked. Instead of letting the workers escape, several survivors said Thursday, plant managers forced them to stay in order to save the company's stock: piles of stonewashed jeans, destined for Europe.

There was apparently only one open exit, through which employees could escape -- or they could jump from windows "considered too high to require bars." As a result, nearly half lost their lives, most often from smoke inhalation. Many of the survivors are in local hospitals, suffering from third-degree burns.

I wrote about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire a few years ago (post, here), and quoted labor activist Rose Schneiderman, who said, a few days after the disaster, "The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death."

At the time, there were few laws protecting American workers. In contrast, the current laws protecting Pakistani workers are quite strong, "but application is notoriously weak. In textiles, which account for 53 percent of exports, employers routinely sidestep health and safety regulations through bribery and corruption."

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a _big_ supporter of regulation. Because the fire in Karachi is a terrible, tragic reminder of what the "good old days" were like. Regulations alone, of course, are not enough -- you need a strong rule of law, and plenty of alert inspectors on the job.