PSA: before the advent of organized labor, workers would often negotiate with tactics such as “be fair to us, or we’ll break your kneecaps and burn your fucking factory down”.
And then the factory owners got organized, got the police unionized, and we can’t do this anymore.
There are still more of us than there are of them
I hope the management gets wrongful death suits launched against them
Civil suits? They belong in prison.
Yeah but they’ll hide behind their corporation so there’s no “person” to throw in prison.
Corporations aren’t people no matter what the supreme court says
Sorry boss. I don’t die for nobody. Oh you want to fire me? I’m sure the Department of Labor and OSHA would love to hear about how you forced us to stay in a dangerous environment under threat of termination. I’m sure that’ll end super swell for you.
Sadly, it might end just fine for the boss. The employee would be better off going to the press first.
Not arguing, but how? How would this not be a slam dunk for a labor law lawyer? The law is pretty clear on prohibiting threats of termination in the face of danger.
Song along with me!
🎵 It always will end up fine… When you’re rich! When it’s capitalism controlling the ship! 🎵
You are correct but you have to survive not being paid long enough to win the court case. Sometimes even when people know their rights they are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot risk being fired.
Did you just say you would rather die than not get paid?
For some families, that’s the reality, not being paid means no housing, no food, no medications. For people who have dangerous debt, not having available money could be a threat to their life.
Obviously your life is priceless, but we’ve developed a system where you simply can’t live without money, and put people in circumstances where the money in their hand now is worthy more to their survival today than twice as much money in their hand tomorrow.
I’m just grateful that’s not my situation.
Right, but if you die, your family might only see the life insurance settlement from your workplace group insurance. They won’t see any further benefits and they lose a family member. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by putting yourself in harm’s way to appease your employer who is acting unlawfully.
That’s a windfall payment and one less mouth to feed in the long run. Morbid, Yes, it’s not the best long term solution but anything you can do to survive true poverty never is.
What’s to say losing your job doesn’t have 3 of you dying from exposure in your car a week after you’re evicted?
If you haven’t lived the trauma of life and death poverty, I’m glad, but I don’t think it’s something that can be fully explained.
Trauma changes the way your brain processes risk, people living in chronic poverty don’t have the same risk assessment framework as you.
The part of your workday that you’re most likely to die during is your commute, especially if you drive, which is not covered by DoL or OSHA.
ETA: Okay, if you’re a crab fisherman or salvage diver maybe your job is more dangerous. But for almost every job I can think of driving to work is more dangerous than everything you do.
I think imminent natural disaster trumps that just a tad bit.
The part of your workday that you’re most likely to die during is your commute, especially if you drive, which is not covered by DoL or OSHA.
FWIW this is because of DoL and OSHA making sure that once you get to work they have to keep you reasonably safe. This was not always the case in the past.
In my state, as long as you don’t make any stops between home and work, you are covered by workers compensation.
I’m glad to hear that. It’s at least something.
Every time I hear about a fatal crash during rush hour I feel terrible for the person who died going to work.
Your comment doesn’t really address my point. I’m talking about people who died at work who were threatened with termination if they attempted to leave a dangerous work environment.
Charge the manager with a separate count of murder for every employee that died due to their orders.
In old Japan, they would have made a bunch of management chop their finger off or commit seppuku.
Im not suggesting that. I’m just saying.
I’m suggesting it.
Murder wouldnt stick, have to prove intent.
Negligent Homicide or Criminal Negligence on the other hand…
TN has a strong felony murder statute. You dont need to prove intent, you just need to prove they were perpetrating a related violent felony.
I’m not a lawyer but in this case it seems like management have probably met the criteria for felony theft or kidnapping. Any properly motivated DA could then add a felony murder charge for each death.
That’s a question for the jury. Charge the manager with all and let the jury decide.
It doesnt meet the criteria for murder.
Section 1751(a) of Title 18 incorporates by reference 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111 and 1112. 18 U.S.C. § 1111 defines murder as the unlawful killing of a human being with malice, and divides it into two degrees. Murder in the first degree is punishable by death.
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Man if it’s a state of emergency let the mgr sink with the ship.
It so sad, they probably complied because they needed their jobs.
Well on the bright side at least now they don’t? I hope their families sue the shit out of the company and the manager.
I worked at a major destination-store focused on fishing and hunting products.
We had a hurricane hitting and the manager on duty made it clear that anyone going home to help out their families would be fired. Then when he got the call that water was rising near his house, he took off.
I’ve never hated a manager more than in that moment. When I was in management later, I made sure that I took all the shitty holiday shifts so my staff didn’t have to work until 10pm on Christmas Eve and then be back in the building changing prices for the after-Christmas sale at 2am on the 26th.
The good ol rules for me not for thee shenanigans
Oh no, the store burned down just after you left! What a shame!
Wait till you read Impact Plastics’ public statement…
So they were only dismissed when the plant lost power and the workers were of no use to the company
And very literally after it was too late to safely leave.
Which means, by definition, they were not dismissed while they could safely leave.
“After the parking lot filled with water and the power went out, they were dismissed. For some reason they hung around??? It’s peculiar that they chose to stay in a building after they were dismissed into the floodwaters.”
The company location
Didn’t the triangle waistshirt fire happen because the employers were fucking assholes and locked the fire escapes? This is like that, but with water instead of fire.
I hope their productivity wasn’t impeded by this minor inconvenience. I’d hate it if their dying led to their employer making marginally less money. So rude of them.
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Heh? I don’t get it. What are you trying to say here? Where do you think government mo ey to invest in flood protections come from? Taxes…?
I believe it’s a parody of the people that will gab any nonsense to rail against taxes.
Besides, from the income of putting prisoners to work obviously.
Non-specific outrage. What a way to communicate
The worst part is the Trump appointed SCOTUS basically made this legal to do.
EDIT: This comment of mine was misleading and unfair. Neil Gorsuch was not on the SCOTUS when he decided a truck driver forfeit his job without means of legal recourse by choosing to abandon his trailer and prevent death from Hypothermia.
Man if I’m moving my parked car to avoid rising waters, I’m not re parking. I’m out of there.
I’m sure most people did the same thing.
The ones who were too loyal to the company died.
In the article and the after statement from the company it seems that a lot of employees left earlier but the ones that stayed were non native English speaking immigrants that paid with their lives to be cheap labor and are being represented by a refugee and immigration group in the area for their deaths.
So not loyal but those trapped to the company that held power over them. As you would expect of people that need the job to stay and allows for the company to have absolute power over their workers like they want.
but those trapped to the company that held power over them.
So slaves with extra steps.
Yeah. I mean people that are excellent workers cause they are cheap. Can be told to pay their own way to training themselves and will do it because they are desperate. Able to be deported to a country where they won’t have have any legal discourse for any reason so they won’t complain and take what they can get, or else lose their money, the cost of paying to get here and potentially their family.
So, yeah I mean. No wonder anyone with a business loves them.
Meanwhile, at my workplace, we had to evacuate over the possibility of roads flooding in a tropical storm.
I thought this kind of nonsense was a thing of the past.
Honestly, in the course of our species living in servitude to a few thousand sociopaths who’ve used their capital/power to convince us that meaningless productivity for toxic economic metasisis is “the only way forward” and the meaning of life, I’ve come to realize their terraforming of our only habitat against our physically fragile species in their blind, reckless pursuit of ever moar is a purely accidental mercy.
Extinction is far preferable to generation after generation sacrificing themselves from cradle to grave solely to enrich our modern pharoahs of avarice and their nepo progeny without end. Sometimes extinct is better.
You’re free to disagree, of course, but better to see the silver lining in what our species is quite literally dead set to do and well into accomplishing. Im just glad greed caused climate change won’t permit this torturous, exploitative civilization to continue for more than another half century or so.
There are some studies that say the Sahara desert is actually the result of mass farming goats in the area that removed so much of the vegetation it started a cascading effect of desertification.
We have a long history of fucking up the planet for reasons that are silly in hindsight that leaves scars that literally affect the future of the planet. Unfortunately I don’t think there will ever be a swift and merciful end but one that drags out so don’t go praising the suffering to come yet.
Do employers not have a duty of care to their employees over there?
Or the word “twice”?
