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n a spring afternoon in New York City, March 25, 1911, black smoke began to rise from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory near Washington Square. Within minutes, the ten-storey building was engulfed in flames. Inside, 146 young women—immigrants, mostly—were trapped behind locked doors. They screamed for help but the exits had been bolted to prevent theft and unauthorised breaks. One after the other, they jumped off the floors; their bodies striking the pavement. The city watched in horror.
Among the witnesses that day was a 31-year-old social worker named Frances Perkins. She stood frozen, unable to look away as the fire consumed the workers. Years later, she would recall the moment as the day that “changed the course of my life.” Twelve years later, she became the first woman in American history to hold a cabinet position—as Secretary of Labour in the administration of Franklin D Roosevelt. Her journey defined the future of labour rights in the modern world.
Perkins had always been curious about poverty and inequality. As a child growing up in Massachusetts, she asked her father why hardworking, decent people were often poor. His answer was blunt: “Because they are weak or lazy.” She refused to believe the argument. During her college years, she studied physics. A visit to some textile mills along the Connecticut River altered her trajectory. There she saw girls no older than fifteen, bent over machines in stifling air; their fingers mangled and their lungs filled with cotton dust. She understood then that the problem was not personal failure but structural neglect.
Rejecting the comfort of a predictable life, Perkins studied economics and sociology at Columbia University and joined the New York Consumers League in 1910. Her work involved documenting factory conditions and lobbying lawmakers to regulate hours, ventilation and fire safety. “These people are not dying,” she told them. “They are being murdered.”
Her words were considered inflammatory; her insistence, improper. Yet, she persisted.
When the Triangle fire broke out the following year, it was precisely the kind of disaster she had warned about. The aftermath led to the creation of a Factory Investigating Commission, of which Perkins was a key member. Her contribution was not rhetorical but regulatory. She pressed for practical, enforceable changes—unlocked exit doors, fire escapes, sprinkler systems, and mandatory rest days. Factory owners protested that these measures were an attack on free enterprise. Perkins countered that the value of a human life could not be measured against profit. In time, her position prevailed. New York adopted some of the first comprehensive workplace safety laws in the United States.
The lessons Frances Perkins left behind transcends borders and eras: workplace safety is not a privilege but a right; poverty is not a sign of personal weakness but a policy failure.
Two decades later, as Roosevelt assembled his team to rescue the nation from the Great Depression, he turned to Frances Perkins. She accepted his invitation to join the cabinet only on the condition that her policy agenda would include a 40-hour work week, minimum wage, an end to child labour, unemployment insurance, and pensions for the elderly. Roosevelt hesitated but she stood firm. He appointed her anyway.
As Secretary of Labour from 1933 to 1945, Perkins became the driving force behind two of the most significant legislative reforms in US history: the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938. Together, these laws established the framework for old-age pensions, unemployment benefits, the 40-hour work week, and the prohibition of child labour. In effect, they defined the moral architecture of the modern welfare state.
Despite her historic achievements, Perkins remained a target of hostility. Newspapers derided her as “unfeminine” and accused her of interfering in men’s work. Business lobbies sought her resignation. She endured it all with the same composure that had guided her since the day of the fire. “If profit is more valuable than people,” she once said, “then we are no longer human.”
After Roosevelt’s death in 1945, she resigned from public office and began teaching at Cornell University. “As long as any woman dies of hunger,” she had once said, “I cannot sleep in peace.” Frances Perkins died in 1965 at the age of 85.
Her name is not widely remembered, yet her influence surrounds us in invisible ways. Every emergency exit, every weekend rest day, every pension cheque, every workplace inspection carries her legacy. She transformed the memory of 146 women who burned behind locked doors into a national conscience and, through law, into lasting protection for millions who came after them.
For those of us working in the field of occupational safety and health, her story remains a point of reflection. The Triangle fire was not an accident; it was a failure of policy, regulation and empathy. More than a century later, similar fires continue to claim workers’ lives in developing economies, including Pakistan. In 2012, the Baldia Town factory fire in Karachi killed more than 250 workers, many of whom were trapped behind locked exits—an echo of the same avoidable tragedy. It remains one of the deadliest industrial disasters in Pakistan’s history.
Despite periodic reforms and international attention, Pakistan’s occupational safety framework continues to suffer from weak enforcement, outdated inspection systems, and a lack of accountability. Millions of workers in the informal sector—particularly women and home-based labourers—remain outside the protective scope of labour laws. Like the New York seamstresses of 1911, they too work long hours, often in unsafe and unregulated environments, with little recourse to justice when disaster strikes.
The lessons Frances Perkins left behind transcends borders and eras: workplace safety is not a privilege but a right; poverty is not a sign of personal weakness but a failure of policy; and that policy can also be made to save lives. Every life lost to negligence is an indictment of governance. Every door that opens in an emergency and every worker who returns home safely is a quiet continuation of the promise Frances Perkins made more than a century ago—to never let the girls who burned be forgotten.
The writer is a media development specialist with extensive experience in labour rights, governance and human rights advocacy. He has led national and international projects on workers’ welfare, democratic freedoms, and media innovation. He writes on social justice, labour reforms and marginalized communities in Pakistan.