Everyone who says “it’s not in the interest of corporations to harm workers and customers” hasn’t heard of history or cost benefit analysis. Mass industrial slaughter (companies letting workers die because it’s more expensive to enforce safety standards) has killed thousands. The collapse of the Rana Plaza is an example, and Grenfell tower.
triangle shirtwaist factory as well
also: the sampoong department store collapse, where 502 people were killed. the building was known to be unsafe since its construction and structural cracks were noted several times without any response. the building was assessed by civil engineers as a collapse risk. the day of the collapse, “the store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders, as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and it did not want to lose the day’s revenue.” executives, however, had evacuated hours before.
the bhopal disaster had an immediate death toll of 2,259 and an estimated 16,000 people have died since. over 550,000 people were exposed to a toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant when the leak spilled into shanty towns surrounding the plant. there had been smaller leaks for nearly 10 years before the disaster, each of which killed or severely injured workers who were not provided with protective gear. during the major leak, all safeguards against a disaster of this scale either hadn’t been maintained and weren’t working, were inadequate for a spill of this scale, or had been removed years before.
the big blue crane collapse killed 3 ironworkers who were nearby in an observation basket, because higher-ups refused to stop work on the construction of miller park stadium due to unsafe wind levels for crane operation. the original crane operator had refused to do it, so another was brought in. a safety inspector happened to be on site and filmed the incident to document a violation when the crane collapsed entirely. this video has been shown in every OSHA class i’ve ever taken as proof of why 1) safety inspectors aren’t your enemy, no matter how much your boss tries to tell you they are 2) bosses can and will put your life at risk to avoid losing money 3) even if you’re not directly involved in the safety violation–the crane operator survived, but the three ironworkers in the basket were killed when the crane fell on them–your life can be at risk.
there are many, many more of these. more than i can count. and the thing is, these are all just worst-case situations where higher-ups thought they could skate past safety regulations and save a few bucks (or even make a few bucks) without consequences. many of these unsafe conditions went on for years before ending in disaster. the people in sampoong and rana plaza worked in those dangerously structurally unsound building for years before they collapsed, generating money for bosses and executives when no one should have even stepped into those buildings at all. many places are currently skating by and flouting safety regulations, and all of them are living on borrowed time before a disaster strikes.
your life is more important than your job, and in the USA you are legally protected if you choose to report safety violations. bosses love to act like they’re on your side and like OSHA’s out to ruin your fun or kill your productivity or are too worried for no reason, but that kind of cute conspiratorial attitude is what gets people killed. know your rights and use them.
It’s not in the long-term interest of corporations to harm workers and customers, but the people who run these things tend to toss long-term out the window in favor of short-term gains that they can cash in immediately.
As a whole, humans fucking suck at conceptualizing long term risks and odds. We’re really good at “it’s been okay so far, what’s one more day?” day after day after day. That’s why we write out objective (as much as possible) safety standards because just because you’ve done it before and haven’t died doesn’t mean it isn’t still an unsafe practice.
Tag: capitalism
One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit – but rarely articulated – assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.
These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.
During the medieval period, work was intermittent – called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times. During slack periods, which accounted for a large part of the year, adherence to regular working hours was not usual. According to Oxford Professor James E. Thorold Rogers[1], the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was “simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago.”
The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official – that is, church – holidays included not only long “vacations” at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints’ andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.
A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year – 175 days – for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor
“So you want a return to medieval servitude?” NO. We’re simply pointing out that Capitalism bring unique forms of exploitation, one of them being a life where you have barely enough ‘free time’ to get ready for your next working day, and not at all enough to do any actual living that isn’t focussed on getting ready for work again. Our whole lives are stolen from us.
neoliberalreflections.txt
You don’t have to read “why sweatshops are good” articles and analysis because it only reaches the same point: “well it’s better than starving” (ignoring deaths in the workplace and people still starving anyway).
It’s interesting how much analyzing people do to defend sweatshops rather than say “hey, maybe ‘work or starve’ is a bit terrible and none of this suffering is necessary”.
Arguments for capitalism rely on an incorrect perception of the 21st century altogether. So, looking at the 21st century: Resources are abundant, wealth is abundant, and technology is advanced.
What does capitalism do about those facts?
1) Relies on artificial scarcity to function.
2) Fails to distribute that wealth accordingly (it’s completely just that 8 people have more wealth than 3.6 billion people…right?)
3) Tells us to fear automation because there is no other option besides ‘work or starve’.
That is primitive logic. Capitalism treats society as if we’re still cavemen struggling to survive in a dangerous world, because otherwise it wouldn’t function. So, instead of fearing what the future has to offer, ask yourself why you’re afraid in the first place.
How bosses are (literally) like dictators
Consider some facts about how American employers control their workers. Amazon prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this “time theft.” Apple inspects the personal belongings of its retail workers, some of whom lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves while their supervisors mock them.
About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. Soon employers will be empowered to withhold contraception coveragefrom their employees’ health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums.
How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees’ lives, both on and off duty? Most people don’t use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government.
We usually assume that “government” refers to state authorities. Yet the state is only one kind of government. Every organization needs some way to govern itself — to designate who has authority to make decisions concerning its affairs, what their powers are, and what consequences they may mete out to those beneath them in the organizational chart who fail to do their part in carrying out the organization’s decisions.
Managers in private firms can impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. The top managers of firms are therefore the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work — and often even when they are off duty.
Wtf I love vox now
My mom wrote this article so I showed her all the notes and now she’s really happy and hopeful about our generation. Lmao
File this under “Reasons Why Anarcho-Capitalism Is Bullshit”
Loki is the Philosopher King 