Dig It
Coal mining sucks. The hours are long, the work is backbreaking, and the conditions are miserable. Oh, and on top of that, if anything goes wrong there's a good chance that lots of people will die. Mining companies have a centuries-long tradition of not caring even the slightest about the health and safety of their workers. A hundred years ago, they'd beat and shoot miners who tried to unionize. Happy are we, then, that the federal government is there to enforce safety standards.
Or not. In the case of the Junta, it's decidedly not. They've decided to come down heavily on the side of the robber barons and against the rights - and health and lives - of workers. I'm sure you're just as shocked as I am.
Never let it be said that there was a penny on the ledger sheet that Little George wouldn't kill a worker to spare an industrialist.
In this case, the lie is that there are lots of violations being written up, but that doesn't solve the problem. To solve the problem, you have to stop enforcing the law altogether so that mine companies will like you.
Once they like you and know that you're their friend by allowing them to kill miners at will, they will, presumably, lose their appetite for murdering their workers. This, clearly, is the Bush Labor Doctrine; stop enforcing all labor protection laws so companies make more money. What happens to the workers is not within the scope of the doctrine.
As will all Bush Doctrines, this is the exact opposite of what should happen, and the effect of its sub-human wrong mindedness is to kill, impoverish, and otherwise destroy the lives of lots of people who are neither rich nor powerful. The message to workers is: "be glad we're just neglecting you and not rounding you up to be tortured and imprisoned outside any legal system."
And the fines that don't work? Often $60. They top out at $10,000. So, for a mine making millions a year, the penalty for endangering workers is next to nothing. And since the Junta has actually stopped collecting the fines in most cases, the real cost is really nothing. Except lives.
By why worry about that when there are rich people to enrich?
Or not. In the case of the Junta, it's decidedly not. They've decided to come down heavily on the side of the robber barons and against the rights - and health and lives - of workers. I'm sure you're just as shocked as I am.
Never let it be said that there was a penny on the ledger sheet that Little George wouldn't kill a worker to spare an industrialist.
In this case, the lie is that there are lots of violations being written up, but that doesn't solve the problem. To solve the problem, you have to stop enforcing the law altogether so that mine companies will like you.
Once they like you and know that you're their friend by allowing them to kill miners at will, they will, presumably, lose their appetite for murdering their workers. This, clearly, is the Bush Labor Doctrine; stop enforcing all labor protection laws so companies make more money. What happens to the workers is not within the scope of the doctrine.
As will all Bush Doctrines, this is the exact opposite of what should happen, and the effect of its sub-human wrong mindedness is to kill, impoverish, and otherwise destroy the lives of lots of people who are neither rich nor powerful. The message to workers is: "be glad we're just neglecting you and not rounding you up to be tortured and imprisoned outside any legal system."
And the fines that don't work? Often $60. They top out at $10,000. So, for a mine making millions a year, the penalty for endangering workers is next to nothing. And since the Junta has actually stopped collecting the fines in most cases, the real cost is really nothing. Except lives.
By why worry about that when there are rich people to enrich?
posted by fiduciary at 11:51 AM
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