If you make it there; you won’t have a union and labor protections will be struck down in kangaroo courts, OSHA safety requirements were already a main driver of people not wanting to work these kobs–and that was before the current and future dismantling of OSHA related rules.
Also, how are you going to get 90k when federal minimum wage is what is was in 2009? Many of the southern states have even passed “counter-wage” laws forbidding the state from passing it’s own improved min wage law–truly hateful of the average person.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Is OSHA really enforced? My only dealing with them was 20-years ago somewhere in Chicagoland. We were new there and I went to the office to ask what job safety requirements looked like for us cable guys. They stared at me like I was an alien. (And BTW, encounters like that are why conservatives are all, “hell yeah! slash them jobs! fuck the gubermint!” The older you get, the most BS stories ya got. I have some positive ones from my local redneck city!)
The main safety driver, from my experience and current POV, is worker’s comp insurance. Employers do not fuck around with rising insurance rates, or getting sued. A worker’s comp investigation can be expensive, then come the higher rates. Employers want to show every way they’ve trained you, given you safety gear and trained you some more.
If you blatantly ignore the training and procedures, and get hurt, no comp for you. Perfect example is Lowe’s “safety knife”. Nope, can’t possibly hurt yourself with it, but you can barely do your job. They turn a blind eye to those of use who bring our own box cutters, but insurance ain’t paying if I split my finger open. (Well, they might, but if it came to litigation, they wouldn’t have to. And shouldn’t have to.)
tl:dr; Worked in the payroll industry. Worker’s comp insurance is a way bigger deal than most know.
pdxfed@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Just like the IRS, these are strategically deranged/under-funded and understaffed by conservatives and their oligarchy backers. 99% of trump voters if you asked them if they want to be physically protected in their workplace would say they want their company regulated by an enforcement body, but if you ask them if they like big government, their brainwashing will say no.
Democrats are deliberately bad at branding because they’re beholden to oligarchs as well. Progressives, who badly want to fight for these common sense things have been squeezed out due to concentration of election power, e.g. communication, into a money war and oligarchs choose winners .
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 2 days ago
My hometown is famous for stonework. Gravestones, mausoleums, etc. Slabs of granite weighing tons are moved around on cranes, over the heads of workers, suspended by thick nylon straps that fray over time. Straps that are not replaced until they are much too close to snapping.
Whenever someone would get inevitably injured, or killed, the town “Powers That Be” industry agency would scramble to inform the owners of businesses to prepare of OSHA’s arrival. And most times, OSHA wouldn’t show up at all, due to “under staffing.”
I worked in this industry briefly in my mid 20’s. I saw live wires in puddles of water, no hard hats, no steel toed boots, or respirators to avoid silicosis. My high school girlfriend’s father died from being crushed by a stack of slabs tipping over, and crushing him, from the waist down. No one knows how long it took for him to die, they found him a few hours after he didn’t come home.
10 years after I left that nightmare, I saw a guy I worked with then missing a hand. It had to have been crushed between 2 slabs.