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
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.
Do employers not have a duty of care to their employees over there?
Or the word “twice”?
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
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.
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.
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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.
So if I kill someone, not with malice, but with glee then technically it’s OK, right?
Evacuation Warnings should carry a legal responsibility to close all nonessential businesses until the immediate crisis is over.
Honestly, even the Waffle House manager should hand over the keys to the Fire Chief. Those guys know how to cook, and clean up after themselves, should the need arise.
If I learned anything durring covid it’s that basically every business is “essential”.
Yep.
Watching my 19yo niece wake up every morning to go work at the breakfast restaurant during the pandemic because she was essential.
My 60yo mom waking up to work at the pastries factory with hundreds of other people during the pandemic because she was essential.
Yep. Company I work for didn’t miss a day of work because our boss had the HR manager make up a certificate for us to all put in our cars telling the police that we were considered ‘essential’.
I don’t think we are, but hey ho.
When I read the shelter in place order from my governor, its definition of “essential businesses” was so broad it would have been shorter to list businesses not covered.
Exactly. The only thing COVID changed was that all the resturants became carry out only. The only things I can think of that actually closed were bars.
In my area, fitness clubs closed as well
It’s essential for the bottom line.
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.
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.
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.
Archive link to the story. There should be some consequences to the management who didn’t allow them to leave when the flash flood warning was issued.
There will be about the same consequence as the Amazon warehouse that wouldn’t let their employees leave during a tornado. Nothing.
There absolutely were consequences. A longer-than-it-should-have-taken investigation was done from which they discovered that killing your employees is very naughty and were told that they shouldn’t do that anymore. In return, Amazon made a very sincere “whoopsie-doodle 👉👈, I sowwy. But we didn’t directly kill these production assets, so no harm no foul.”
That matter isn’t settled yet but my guess is that Amazon will ultimately settle out of court for a lot of money. With that said a Tornado is a different kettle of fish than a flood. The warning time for a tornado is usually measured in bare minutes, sometimes when you’re lucky you get 20 minutes and even then where exactly are you going to go?
Floods like this one though had HOURS of warning and there’s positively no reason for employees to get caught like this. There was more than enough time for these folks to get a known safe place. It’s despicable.
Hold up, those plastics aren’t gonna do whatever that place does by themselves. The owner probably only has one or two vacation homes, should he or she do without? He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, illegal immigrants, gas stoves, Elon musk is a genius, aaaand I’m spent
There should be some consequences to the management who
didn’t allow them to leavedidn’t send them the fuck home immediately.I work in a factory that sits on a flood plane. It’s happened more than once that by the time a decision is made to cut people loose, it’s already difficult to leave the area. Often by the time a flash flood warning is issued there are only a few minutes of clear roadway left.
It’s entirely possible that a similar situation happened here, that the safest place for those people to be was in that building, that there was no way out and they would have been swept down stream regardless.even if that’s the case, this company should be held liable for sitting on their hands and keeping people at work through a storm where the risk of flooding was so great. That decision should have been made much sooner. If there was a job to come back to you can always post them for a Saturday and wouldn’t have to pay overtime until they actually hit 40 hours.
I’m so fucking fed up with the false urgency in these places. This company made high density plastic parts. Literally nothing they were making is life or death. Nothing they were making couldn’t wait another day. No customers were going to bail because the factory they needed their parts from got hit by a fucking hurricane.
But everyone, every fucking person in leadership, is constantly pressured to squeeze out more units, more production. Keep people working as long as possible, because every second they’re not making a product is a second the company is losing money. And because now every fucking company has jumped on to the lean manufacturing model, they are constantly, perpetually, chronicly behind. The second an order comes in it’s already too late and we need those units NOW. no lead time, no back orders. So stay at your machine because the boss man needs another Lexus.
Fucking burn it down
Why? They were immigrants so they could be disposable labor right?
One of the employees who died, Bertha Mendoza, 56, fell off the truck and vanished into the flood, according to Ingram and a representative from Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Same with the fucking bridge that got destroyed in
DelawareBaltimore and every factory disaster. Immigrants doing the labor that die for our carelessness, and easy to replace.Do you mean the bridge in baltimore? We lost 6 immigrants on that one, all of them with families. It’s heartbreaking.
I did. But yeah every time I read an article about some worker dying these days I swear it mentions they were immigrants or are being represented by an immigrant group because they literally didn’t have the legal protections themselves.
I’m so tired of it. And hearing that people that died due to negligence of any origin doesn’t make me feel great but this is telling of who is considered disposable labor.
If we can’t treat people like humans we don’t deserve to be relying on their labor.
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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
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.
Oh no, the store burned down just after you left! What a shame!
The good ol rules for me not for thee shenanigans
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.
We really need to break our conditioning that employment is the highest priority in our lives. That employers can dictate whether we take live saving action depending on how many pennies it’ll cost them.
And this isn’t to victim blame. What happened to these people is a travesty and the company holds the blame for it, 100%. It’s more to point out that we’re the only ones that can take action on this. Nobody (certainly not corps) is going to break this mindset or norm on our behalf. Look out for yourself and your peers. You’re more important then your employer’s bottom line.
If only our health insurance wasn’t tied to our jobs.
If only wages were high enough to have something extra to cushion.
If only we didn’t have to work so long, wr could think and make better decisions.
If only I could afford rent one month while looking for a job
We really need to break our conditioning that employment is the highest priority in our lives.
It’s not really conditioning when it’s actually the case. Without my job I’m likely homeless or dead within weeks. If Iose my job then I can no longer pay my bills, within a few months I’ll be homeless. More urgently though I lose access to my health insurance which means I lose access to the medications keeping my mental illness in check. Finding a new job normally is a pain; finding one when you’re so depressed that you really don’t even care if you live or die is next to impossible. Also once it flares up you tend to stop caring about even seeking treatment for it making it a self perpetuating issue. If I got fired I would have only a few weeks to find a new job before I wound up in a position I likely wouldn’t recover from. Sure there are things like unemployment but that doesn’t even come close to paying my bills let alone affording my own health insurance.
So it would take a lot for me to risk walking away from my job and risk getting fired. I could easily see myself in the same position as these people, waiting until it’s too late to run out of fear of losing my job. If we want people to be able to walk away from situations like this then we need to make survival possible without employment. We need healthcare to not be tied to employment and we need real unemployment pay to keep people afloat while they find a new job.
That employers can dictate whether we take live saving action depending on how many pennies it’ll cost them.
If nothing else we must internalize this fact. i think many are still operating under the impression that their employers value their lives. We must understand viscerally that our lives do not, to them, at all. I think the rest takes care of itself once we get over that hump
Well the companies that have dead peasant insurance do assign some value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance?wprov=sfla1
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
I do not understand the mentality. Companies do not care for your well-being. Don’t die for them just because your manager is an idiot that says “stay put”.
We have the hindsight with full knowledge of the risk they were taking. I’d bet they only thought they were risking their next paycheck, not their lives.
You think floodwaters rising towards your building isn’t sufficient signs to know that you’re in a dangerous situation?
I’m sorry but I’ve seen enough in life to know you do not fuck with water on the move. Floods are dangerous as fuck. If the water is rising around you, get the fuck out of dodge or as high up as you can get.
Nobody has ever been surprised by flood waters before. Paths of travel in low lying areas have never been cut off unexpectedly before. It must just be these dumb workers fault they drowned. /s
That area has never had that level of flooding since it was settled. Sure, everyone knows floods are dangerous, but not even the meteorologists were expecting the extent of flooding they actually got.
Have some humility and realize that you have access to knowledge now that would have sounded crazy before the events.
I think people are generally slow to realize that they are in a life-or-death situation. I’m not talking about just the victims here, but rather about everyone accustomed to living in safety (including the bosses who told the victims to stay). We’re so used to making choices where death is not a potential outcome that we simply don’t take the possibility into account.
I was in downtown Manhattan on 9/11, close enough to the World Trade Center that I felt the building I was in shake when the towers were hit. The funny thing is that I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even horrified. I couldn’t see the towers from my window but I watched the smoke rising and experienced only a strange excitement. I didn’t leave the area until they told us to, hours later. (I don’t blame them. They were as stunned as I was.) The whole thing didn’t feel real.
Now I know that I was in absolutely no danger (except from all the pollutants I ended up breathing after they eventually made us come back to the area before the air was clean) but I couldn’t have known that at the time.
Edit: The thing with the pollutants is a good example too. I could smell that the air wasn’t clean; everyone could. They told us that they were monitoring the air quality and I trusted them despite having my throat sore by the time I went home every day from the irritants in the dust I was breathing. Hell, I could see the dust rising nearby when cranes loaded debris from the towers onto barges and I still just did what I was told with no objections.
And f you’re in a factory hard at work, presumably can’t see the water rising, aren’t listening to the news? While they should have known ahead of time there was a bad storm, that’s different from knowing the factory would flood, and it’s quite possible they had no way to know while they worked. This is purely on management for staying open
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Homesslessness in the US is about a coin flip off for death or suffering, every hour of every day. Quitting your job or getting fired for insubordination prevents you from collecting unemployment, and most Americans have less than a weeks expenses saved due the the last 60 years of low pay and exponentially rising expenses, causing homelessness if you lose your job. You might die in a hurricane induced flood, but that risk can seem less than slowly dying while homeless or in prison for being homeless.
How likely are you actually going to get fired for not showing up one day during a hurricane?
I if the entire staff just didn’t show up that one day they’re probably not all going to get fired.
I’m guessing you’re not American.
Very likely. Every worker is replacable and they may be able to replace you for less money too.
Born and raised here. 1 day of insubordination isn’t the end of the world, especially when the world is ending (for other reasons). Finding, and training a new person will take more than the 1 day of productivity lost.
In hindsight, your job is probably secure now that they are short staffed (which is fucking disgusting).
If flood waters are entering your place of business you’re not going to have a job tomorrow.
I don’t know why people are missing this. If your fucking workplace gets flooded you won’t have a job anyways. If it’s so bad you’re moving parking spots your workplace is toast anyways. Get your ass moving!
Most people don’t understand how dire their situation is when mother nature shows up. Especially immigrants who may have never experienced such weather.
Did it wash into the building, or just the people in the parking lot trying to save their means of transport that allows any type of work in most parts of this country?
Water got to roof level and the building was destroyed.
https://www.aol.com/tennessee-factory-employees-clung-semitruck-143515436.html
This isn’t as easy for immigrants. If they’re on a work visa and lose their job, they can be deported. So many will stay for fear of being fired.
A lifetime ago I worked at a place that gave a shit on paper for legal reasons.
One night I hear an unfamiliar alarm, as does everyone in my immediate vicinity.
My contribution to the conversation about the nature of the alarm was to say they could stay and discuss it if they wanted to. But I was not about to burn up for the assholes who ran the place. I was out the fire door with all its alarms before they figured out it was a phone left off the hook.Seriously! As a Floridian, I’ve told bosses I’m leaving on several occasions. It wasn’t a request. I’ll be back when it’s safe to do so.
