There should be some consequences to the management who didn’t allow them to leave didn’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 Delaware Baltimore and every factory disaster. Immigrants doing the labor that die for our carelessness, and easy to replace.

If I learned anything durring covid it’s that basically every business is “essential”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Sadly, it might end just fine for the boss. The employee would be better off going to the press first.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Murder wouldnt stick, have to prove intent.

Negligent Homicide or Criminal Negligence on the other hand…

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?

I’m wondering how many missed the chance to stand up for themselves, saw it coming, saw it pass, and knew it.

Something similar happened to me in the 2019 Australian bushfires.

All official advice when I left that morning was that we were safe to continue operating. I worked at a food bank so I considered my job essential. That afternoon, The wind changed, the humidity dropped, the official advice was updated, and my managers immediately shut the centre down. The immediate evacuationoffered me to order came in, it was now or never.

People started leaving. I had 3 underage interns with me, who’s parents were on their way to come pick them up.

I kept looking outside thinking to myself “how the fuck am I going to getting home? And then what? My house is at risk too, it’s too late for a real evacuation, I’m probably safer here with some water and wool blankets”.

I had to an evacuation plan. I even had an evacuation plan assuming I was at work when the time to leave hit. Those plans hinged on me leaving as soon as the order can in, or preferably before.

What I never had was a plan to leave if I had someone stuck in my duty of care and couldn’t take them with me. My conscience was not prepared to leave teenagers alone in a warehouse on fire, and in that moment I acknowledged I might die from this choice.

When the final parent came up pick them up, I was lucky, they had an empty seat in their car so I explained my situation and got in.

They offered to drop me at home, but again, what would I do differently at home other than burn in my own house instead of a warehouse. So we just kept driving.

My manager was pissed when she heard I’d stayed back so late, she told me I should have started jogging as soon as everyone else got in their cars. Ah, hindsight. She asked if I was seriously willing to die for my job… Not my job, but the people I have a duty of care for, sure. my first job was a picu candystriper, we were taught how to fill our pockets with babies in case of a fire, you don’t leave the burning hospital alone. That’s hard to unwire to develop an every man for himself attitude.

Edit: I think my screen reader and text to speech software is inserting random words in the sentences, I’ve been trying to edit them out but as I edit more keep appearing but I’m not sure if it’s visible in the text or if it’s an audio glitch, sorry.

-----E

and address

The good ol rules for me not for thee shenanigans

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Is.

Civil suits? They belong in prison.

And it will happen during the next Hurricane as long as thr employers face zero repercussions.