CompuServe Messages

>if every basic job pays $3/hour and takes place in toxic smoke filled rooms… If employers get together to maintain a blacklist of troublesome employees…< This is getting pretty sinister. If all my neighbors got together and decided to beat the crap out of me, that would suck, too. I choose not to spend much time worrying about the consequences of unlikely events. Although some abuses do take place, I see no evidence of a conspiracy to kill workers. Sounds like a labor fantasy. If employers fail to inform employees of dangers in the workplace, they are criminally and civilly liable for subsequent health problems. If they DO inform the employees and the employees CHOOSE to accept the risk, the employees TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for the consequences. As to "dangerous machines" and the worker having no choice: Before civilization, if you didn't go get some food, you didn't eat. If you weren't careful, something might eat you. So two primary human motivators ought to be Work and Caution. In our enlightened society, if you don't work, you must be a victim of SOMEBODY, and need to get into a twelve step recovery program and hit the talk show circuit. If you're not careful and, say, spill your own coffee in your own lap and get burned, or have sex on the tracks in a subway tunnel and get hit by a train, it simply must be the result of a conspiracy of callousness. If you don't work, you don't eat. If you're not careful, you'll get hurt or killed. It's a jungle out there, man. Kent