The Roots of Workers’ Comp: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Nearly 150 people died more than 100 years ago during a fire at a garment factory in New York City. From their deaths was born workers’ compensation insurance and safety reforms still used by property insurers today.
At around closing time 100 years ago on March 25, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in New York City.
It was the start of what would be known as the deadliest workplace disaster in the city until the attack on the World Trade Center. Due to the fire and the horrific manner in which it took the lives of 146 people, a new kind of insurance was born in New York and building safety standards were instituted — standards that insurers today still devote resources to verify when underwriting a commercial property policy.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed America, and it sparked the reforms that resulted in our modern workers’ compensation system. Propertycasualty360.com describes how the tragedy came to create our comp system throughout the nation.
In 1914, New York passed a workers’ compensation law (the state’s first attempt at passing a similar law was deemed unconstitutional. Wisconsin was the first to pass such a law in 1911). In July 1914, the New York State Insurance Fund began offering workers’ compensation insurance. [Francis] Perkins [an eyewitness to the fire] became the NYSIF commissioner when she was named New York’s first woman industrial commissioner by then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1929. Later, she was named U.S. Secretary of Labor when Roosevelt became president.
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