“I want you to work faster, because we need the
material urgently,” he said.
I screamed. Everyone around me was crying and yelling.
They stopped the assembly line on the female side of
the room, but the men were told to keep working.
"Why do we have to learn this? I'm studying to be an engineer. I'll never be doing this."
The instructor replied, "So you will know the difficulty the tasks you order others to do."
I felt immediately humbled. Fifteen years on, I've never forgotten this. In my position, I can't avoid putting pressure on people to perform anymore. But as much as possible, I've learned to see if it's something I could do myself if I were in the same position.
Pushing people to work harder is not management.
If a management philosophy increases worker stress by 500% but increases widget production by 5%, then companies that implement that philosophy will outperform, outcompete, and devour companies that don't. If one of out ten workers suffer a life debilitating injury but you can reduce the cost of that worker's injury to you to effectively zero (at least, to an amount much smaller than the additional profit you make), then you're still running a sound business.
In theory public outrage might punish companies that do mistreat their workers, but, let's be real: the vast bulk of the market prefers unethically produced widgets to ethically produced ones that are 10% pricier. And even a company that sells itself on being ethical is, as likely as not, just using that as a marketing campaign to hike up profits while still treating workers terribly.
In any case - it's horrifying. I know that the US can't do much about mandating working conditions in factories in other countries. And we can't do much (this is in reaction to a comment ITT asserting that the shareholders shouldn't get their return until this is taken care of) about companies that are not headquartered (nor traded) in the US. (LG is, as you know, not an American company)
That said - this is one of those things that the company's liability insurance should be for. I don't know the mechanics involved, but it seems as if as a condition of importing a product into the US for retails sales, then one could ask for an annual report of claims: Number of factory workers, # of injuries; # of claims; # of settlements; amounts (in number of year equivalents of their normal salary). This could probably be avoided by shell company arrangements, so it may be both bureaucratically onerous and hard to enforce fairly.
It's no coincidence that China is a manufacturing capital of the world, and all independent unions are banned.
In Mexico, where this woman had her hands ripped away from her, unions are theoretically allowed to organize and participate in strike actions. In fact, though, all worker activism has to be approved by the local government, which is more often than not in a corrupt alliance with local businesses.
Maybe if enough people do this, the remaining countries pay attention and try to improve the conditions.
It is a kind of utopian dream, but better than pretending that the shiny TV isn't a product from slavery.
In fact, a recent Mexican law fordibs "people grouping together".
And outsourcing is now legal btw, thanks to another new law. So, any benefits mexicans had they are gone too.
And good luck living with a settlement of USD 1,200 (unique payment)
The logic of raw capitalism concerns private ownership of the means of production. That's all. I can give many examples of state-owned enterprises over the years treating their employees in just such an abominable way.
I've had to metaphorically chisel plenty of nuts from a solid block of metal because of some instruction from an engineer somewhere.
https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html
> 3.3 per 100,000 in the US die
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_12042014.htm
> Over half of the more than 3.0 million private industry injury and illness cases reported in 2013 were of a more serious nature that involved days away from work, job transfer, or restriction (DART cases). These cases occurred at a rate of 1.7 cases per 100 full-time workers, a statistically significant decrease from 2012.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
> Fatalities per 100,000 Licensed Drivers
> 15.84 in 2012, 23.21 in 1994
There are, frankly, far more dangerous for-profit machines that people happily refrain from suggesting those sorts of penalties for.
Edit: I see this situation as more analogous to drunk driving than a simple car accident. We certainly do jail people when they unintentionally injure someone because they were drunk. It would be reasonable jail someone who prioritizes profit over human life and causes an injury as a result.
Are you guilty for buying a cheaper produce when child labor was used to produce it? Does your knowledge of the abuse going into making it cheaper matter?
Where exactly do you absolve yourself of guilt in that transaction?
2) Nothing is 100% reliable or safe. We are lucky to have a 1.7% rate of serious injury/fatality in the US on a full time worker per year situation. You aren't going to be able to reduce that significantly. Operating heavy machines is dangerous.
Where did that figure come from? That would indicate that if you work full-time for forty years, you've got a roughly fifty-fifty chance of serious injury or fatality (or about a thirty percent chance over twenty years).
That seems far, far too high. Is this a particular kind of worker? I'm sure I'd notice if about half of all employees didn't make it to retirement without being killed or seriously injured.
Perhaps I was using a different definition than you were expecting but 'serious injury' to me means serious enough that it impacts your ability to perform your job, at least temporarily.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_12042014.htm
Injuries and illnesses by type of case Over half of the more than 3.0 million private industry injury and illness cases reported in 2013 were of a more serious nature that involved days away from work, job transfer, or restriction (DART cases). These cases occurred at a rate of 1.7 cases per 100 full-time workers, a statistically significant decrease from 2012. (See table 7.) The rates for the two components of DART cases--cases involving days away from work and cases requiring job transfer or restriction--was unchanged at 1.0 and 0.7 case per 100 workers, respectively, in 2013. Other recordable cases--those not involving days away from work, job transfer, or restriction--accounted for the remaining 1.4 million injury and illness cases in 2013 and was unchanged at a rate of 1.6 cases per 100 full-time workers.
The TRC injury and illness incidence rate remained highest in 2013 among mid-size private industry establishments (those employing between 50 and 249 workers) and lowest among small establishments (those employing fewer than 11 workers). (See table 3 and chart 2.)
So? Losing a limb is huge.
"Nothing is 100% reliable or safe. We are lucky to have a 1.7% rate of serious injury/fatality in the US on a full time worker per year situation. You aren't going to be able to reduce that significantly. Operating heavy machines is dangerous."
And this is an incentive for employers to keep up maintenance and make sure that their workers are properly trained. And to not do what happened in this story, which is to try to get people to cut corners so they can make a couple more units.
Should the engineer that was responsible for some XSS flaw 3 years ago used today to extract personal information (which in turn can be used for identity theft) be personally required to pay damages? Should a peer that reviewed and approved their code, and maybe the sysadmin that deployed it and manage who run the projects and didn't use all possible security controls?
What if the error was in the machine's control system logic?
Should, or should not, the production tool (and software) be held accountable for what may have been ill advised use of the machine? (Reaching inside to seat the metal sheet sounds like a dodgy move. Bad design? Broken machine? Stupid operator?)
When tragedy strikes, we, as moral animals, want to assign blame. Seek justice. Maybe even retribution.
Unfortunately, our justice-seeking missiles are rarely a precision instrument, and the ultimate cause of the accident may have been well away from the floor of the accident itself. It might have been the software engineer. Who knows. But the question (as a hypothetical) remains -- if it WAS the software engineer for the control system of the widget-stamping thingie used at LG's factory in Mexico, should that engineer be held accountable?
/s
There's a huge grey area too, as workers often ignore safety rules or bypass them to save time. An accident with a machine might be due to a worker failing to operate it correctly or to double-check that some mechanism is correctly engaged. It might be the fault of a mechanic who has incorrectly maintained the machine. It might be a flaw in the design of the machine, which could not be foreseen. It might be a fault with the machine due to a supplier, e.g. inferior bolts. It might be the fault of a fellow worker, who forgot to perform a safety check - should we throw them in jail? Whatever the case, the employer should compensate the worker - and do so justly - but the issue of the employer's criminal responsibility is complex indeed.
From a legal standpoint it's vital to distinguish between someone who unwittingly designs something unsafe, having followed reasonable and standard practice versus someone who is negligent and actively ignores the safety of others. Criminal negligence exists and is prosecuted, but it's important to realise that accidents can and do happen.
This is not hyperbole, this is simple fairness and justice. The shareholders shouldn't receive a dime until after their victims have received their share, and any person or company complicit in unsafe industrial practices belongs in prison just as surely as if they had directly assaulted someone, because assault is what it is. There is zero reason to risk any human's personal safety just to increase a profit margin, and if we need to put executives, managers and engineers in prison to get that message across, so be it.