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.
Charge the manager with a separate count of murder for every employee that died due to their orders.
Murder wouldnt stick, have to prove intent.
Negligent Homicide or Criminal Negligence on the other hand…
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.
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
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.
Man if I’m moving my parked car to avoid rising waters, I’m not re parking. I’m out of there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
capitalism was a mistake
Is.
Will continue to be.
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. 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.
I know they were scared to lose their livelihoods but there’s no way my job could have that level of control over me. ” Sorry fuckfaces but biblical stuff is happening outside, I’m out”
How many times in your life have you been without a meal for an entire day because you couldn’t afford one? Ever been without a place to live?
More times than I can die that’s for sure.
If you don’t leave the building you will not be having any more meals ever again.
Good news! You also don’t need to worry about rent!
Good luck fighting my unemployment when I tell them I got fired for keeping myself safe in a natural disaster.
Most of them were probably more worried about missing the day of pay.
I would rather risk homelessness and starvation rather than drowning. If the water around the place I am is rising I am going to get to safety. Full stop. No job is worth risking my life for.
I understand what you’re saying, but at the end of the day if you are dead, nothing else matters.
You’d be without many meals if you died in a flood.
Good thing preventing employees from leaving the building is illegal.
Yes and yes. And now I don’t rely on untrustworthy businesses for my paycheque. It’s not worth the risk.
Have you ever been dead? Your argument sounds exactly like my question.
I could go without for a day… but if I had dependents, I’d be worried for not just the day, but every day after that too
Yeah, and you might get fired and miss rent, daycare, car payment.
None of those worries now though.
Hindsight is something something.
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.
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
Publish the managers’ names.
-----E
I’d like a G please
I think that’s a pitchfork.
Haha yes. Is pitchfork. For the angry mob to go after these fucks.
–GE
and address
99% of the country votes capitalist every two years, and then everyone clutches their pearls when capitalist things happen. Guys, this is the world you wanted. The ruling parties are not hiding who they are from you.
Well, 99% of the people who vote. The people who dissent do it by not voting.
The world is literally the Matrix, except instead of being kept in a mind prison without seeing your captors, you’re kept in an economic prison, and your captors rattle your cage every day with their massive removeds while they laugh at you.
There’s some truth to that.
Dunno bout “not hiding” I just read 6 Bloomberg articles that said everything’s going great and it must be my gosh darn feelings actin up again
Dems: We Are Capitalists
I mean, capitalism is going pretty great for the Bloombergs of the world.
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 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
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
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 Delaware and every factory disaster. Immigrants doing the labor that die for our carelessness, and easy to replace.
113 Years after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and not enough has changed for the better.
This story and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire should be a reminder that almost every large business owner would kill you if it meant they could make slightly more money.
How much extra value do you think they generated in a couple of hours of making plastic pipes? That’s what their lives were worth to the factory owners.
Can’t really expect change when all we vote for are capitalists. If we want our culture to change, we have to make different choices in the ballot box.
That’s part of it. Unions also made a difference for a while, until the propaganda machine convinced a bunch of people that Unions were bad. When in reality, Unions are a benefit to everyone, they protect workers from bad bosses, and historically they also protected bosses from getting the shit beat out of them by their employees.