May 27, 2008 3:49 pm
If a guy beats someone to death, it’s murder, right? And so the nation’s labor laws hold an employer liable for the death of a worker when unsafe working conditions caused the death.
But what if the worker doesn’t die? What if the worker only loses his arms, or legs, or arms and legs?
No death, no crime, U.S. law says.
What if the employer poisons the worker with cyanide that eats away the worker’s brain?
No death, no crime, U.S. law says.
My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Employers who maim their workers face, at worst, a maximum civil penalty of $70,000 for each violation.
Read a plea to change the law, in the New York Times, from David H. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
Posted by Ed Darrell
Categories: Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Free market economics, Freedom - Economic, Government, Gross Injustice, Health care, Human Rights, Labor and unions, OSHA, Politics, Public health
Tags: Business, Business Ethics, Civil Rights, Environmental, Gross Injustice, Labor Law, Occupational Safety, OSHA, Worker Rights
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Appalling.
In Italy it’s not much better, by the way. We have hundreds of deaths because of unsafe working places every year. And guess what, quite often it’s irregular immigrants who work for a piece of bread.
Cheers,
T.
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By dorigo on May 28, 2008 at 2:12 pm