8 ms·

When I lost my hands making flatscreens I can't afford, nobody would help me

161 points by werber 11y ago

reagency 11y ago
America's wealth is built upon the labor of foreigners whose treatment would be illegal if they were in America. Even our working class benefits. We reflect blame to the "greedy billionaires" but in reality all of us enjoy $thousands of consumer value derived from the suffering of non-Americans. Some of us ignore it, others of us hide behind willfully twisted logic about how the laborers are better off with jobs than without, ignoring the lies employers tell, the violence against employees, and the outsider-driven destruction of their independent opportunities.
- Zikes 11y ago
  We need harsher penalties and stricter oversight for companies responsible for such activities. Consumers cannot be expected to know the complete history of every product they purchase, especially when companies have so many levels of subcontracting that even government agencies have a hard time untangling them. We need to push for reforms at the political level, but we can't all bear the guilt personally. Our only other option would be to completely halt spending.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- melling 11y ago
  How many American companies make flatscreens? I bet if you read the article you'll find that it's not an American company.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    The comment you're replying to seems pretty clear on that point. > America's wealth is built upon the labor of foreigners whose treatment would be illegal if they were in America. American companies outsource this sort of manufacturing because it's cheap. Stories like this are part of why it's so cheap, and corporations have been pretty effective at disconnecting consumers from this sort of human cost to their expensive consumer devices.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      American companies outsource this sort of manufacturing because it's cheap. Which American companies? LG is not an American company, and they are nobody's subsidiary.
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        LG has over a hundred local subsidiaries, of which LG USA is one. As with most consumer electronics companies, they outsource much of their production to smaller companies like the Mexican factory in the story.
        melling 11y ago
        So we're all in agreement that it's a Korean company? The mothership is in Seoul. The rant about American companies is misplaced here.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - reagency 11y ago
    Who is talking a about companies? GP post is about consumers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gnu8 11y ago
This person should rightfully be receiving most of the gross profits from the company making the displays as compensation for the loss of her hands, and the people responsible for designing an unsafe production process should be in prison, treated exactly the same as if they had walked up to her on the street and chopped her hands off with an ax. 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.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  I think this is unreasonable simply because industrial accidents do happen and they aren't 100% preventable, much like car accidents. There should be [large] amounts of financial compensation [like $2.5 million, or about 10x what she'd have made at $400/month for 50 years] but "most of the gross profits" and "jail time" is ridiculous. https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html 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 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 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.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    I don't think it's unreasonable. If the costs of these accidents are high, then they'll invest in making their processes safer. There is absolutely no excuse for having a machine like that in use.
blazespin 11y ago
I can't do much, but I can take 3 seconds to tap this up. I hope everyone does the same. Thus community should reflect a moment on the downside cost of all this electronics we have.
- dimino 11y ago
  You won't do much. You can find this man, give him your spare income, and help support him for the rest of your life. You could do this. Hell, you could be his personal butler for the rest of your life. You won't, and personally I think that's completely okay, but your comment reads a little too much like slacktivism for my tastes. Pretending like we can't help even though, technically we can, is disingenuous. It shouldn't be an awful thing to say you won't help someone in need.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Do we want to regulate the use of 'can't' to only apply in cases of physical impossibilities?
    - dimino 11y ago
      Semantics aside, I'd rather us recognize that we're all capable of doing more for people less fortunate than ourselves, but we don't. And that's perfectly alright.
ceejayoz 11y ago
She has a GoFundMe up, it seems. http://www.gofundme.com/newhandsforrosa http://www.gofundme.com/newhandsforrosa I sent a comment into the charity to ask if it's legit. edit: Got a response. > Thank you so much for your email and for your interest in Ms. Moreno's story. We are extremely pleased to see the outpouring of support from around the world for Rosa. Presenting her with the Illuminating Injustice Award is just a small way for us to help make her life easier, and I am certain she will be very gratified at the encouragement and assistance she receives from kindhearted and outraged folks such as you. That being said, we cannot confirm whether the link you provided is to a legitimate fundraiser for Rosa. We are directing everyone who asks to the link below if they wish to donate to Rosa: Rosa Moreno Fund: www.rosamorenofund.com
- mping 11y ago
  I can't find any donate buttons on the last site...
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    There's a PayPal donate button. Maybe you've got it adblocked?
    - anotheryou 11y ago
      and you got to click the "donate" button, not the paypal logo
- sixdimensional 11y ago
  I'm finding it difficult to tell if any of these links are legit although they appear to be. The gofundme page is not asking for much (£5,000). I wonder if Watsi.org could help here as well.
rayiner 11y ago
Also happens here in the U.S., though not as bad of course. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-is-your-arm-worth-depends-where-you-work https://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-is-your-arm-wort.... This sort of thing is what frightens me the most about globalization.[1] We have a hard enough time convincing our own scummy businesspeople that someone who is disabled in the course of their work should be taken care of. Globalization forces us to fight that battle against scummy businesspeople all over the world, in places that value human life and dignity a lot less than we do.[2] Several years ago, I was in Buffalo, NY, a city devastated by deindustrialization. I was chatting with my cab driver, a woman. She was telling me about how her husband got injured at his factory and could no longer work. He gets a small disability benefit, but not enough to get the surgery he needs to be able to get back to work. That sort of thing is such a huge societal loss. We'd rather save a bit of money up front at the expense of keeping this guy on disability the rest of his life. [1] Even within the U.S. there is a race to the bottom. Alabama pays out only $37,000 for the loss of a hand, not much more than this woman received in Mexico adjusting for purchasing power. In Illinois it's about $280,000 for one hand. [2] Even if we don't always value it as highly as we should.
rifung 11y ago
I completely understand that there are certain jobs which are going to be inherently dangerous no matter how much people try to advocate for safety. On the other hand, it's unacceptable how safety is just throw to the side for the sake of efficiency. This article just makes me realize how fortunate I am, when I'm pressured to do things faster I always complain that it leads to poor quality and less maintainable code. But hell, we can always go back and fix it later. Besides donating to this person, I wonder what we can do to stop things like this from happening. Would having things manufactured in the US help prevent something like this with labor laws? I mean with all the technology we have now, I can't believe things like this are still happening.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > Besides donating to this person, I wonder what we can do to stop things like this from happening. Would having things manufactured in the US help prevent something like this with labor laws? I mean with all the technology we have now, I can't believe things like this are still happening. The US has labor laws and unions that exist in part to prevent stuff like this. They're not perfect - people still get hurt here in industrial accidents - but they're pretty important.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  Heavy machines are typically triggered by the operator. In the old days, it might have been with a foot switch. The latest safety protocol would require dual hand switches: that is the operator has to press two different buttons far apart enough to require the use of different hands. However, operators have been found to intentionally set heavy objects on one switch to keep it permanently activated, or bypass safety in other ways. Other solutions include requiring a key to insert and turn the key is physically attached to their body by a cord, such that they can't even reach the danger area with the key inserted. Modern machines also have several redundant safety mechanisms. One of them is the "light gate": beams of light cross the open space between the worker and the machine, and the machine will only activate when the beams are unimpeded. There was a recent comment thread on HN where folks were discussing the "safety relays" that make it possible. Modern heavy machines are designed to safely stop under power loss or the violation of safety protocol. I don't know what safety standards a factory in Mexico would operate under, and we don't know what caused the accident here. For all we know it could be something horrid like a machine on a timer with no safety at all, or a foot pedal with no light gate. I am not up to speed on labor law but my impression was that these precautions are required in the US, and that the typical factory machine, with its dangerous parts wrapped in a cage, with a hole for the operator protected by light gate, or requiring a dual button, that in standard operating mode is relatively safe. Before calling for more safety, we should know more about this situation. Were safety protocols followed? Was the machine properly maintained and working correctly? What caused the machine to activate? (The article says the machine "fell on" her hands which I take to mean that it activated and its movement motion was downward, not fell as in fell over) Why did the safety mechanisms fail? We need an NTSB for accidents like this (if there isn't). Without this information it's hard to say who or whether anyone is at fault, or what we should do to improve factory safety. Nevertheless, some jobs are intrinsically unsafe, like mining. These jobs should offer fair disability or death insurance to the employees for sure, paid for mostly or fully by the employer. Insurance is one good way to solve the problem because insurance adjusters will require the safest factory possible or else hike the company's premiums; so the pursuit of lower premiums will lead businesses to be safer (and if they're not super, then at least the business has fully covered the disability for the worker). The first step to safety should be requiring the factory to paid the costs of the injured worker.
toddmorey 11y ago
So I have an LG television, and now I'm always going to wonder if it came from the same factory and its construction utilized the same dangerous equipment. Does give me a sick feeling after reading this. I'm considering replacing it, but how would that even happen? We have farms that pledge ethical treatment of animals, but I can't even think of an electronics manufacture that pledges any kind of ethical treatment of factory workers. That's pretty sad. I'm sure that Samsung factories, for example, have similar conditions. The sad part is that all of these factory workers are just placeholders until robotic technology advances a bit more.
- clebio 11y ago
  > ... all of these factory workers are just placeholders until robotic technology advances a bit more. Sorry, that's a cop-out. I somewhat agree with you up until that point, and the sad truth is probably that the only way to avoid feeding the beast is not own smartphones or advanced electronics. Full-stop. Which leaves you hanging out with Stallman. Each of us makes this call. But to say that "all of these [people]" are just placeholders, and robotics is just "a bit" further away strikes me as rationalizing. We're probably several decades from wide-spread, pervasive, advanced robotics automation. Heck, auto assembly lines and such have had advanced robotics for several decades already. A whole-sale transition to a post-worker economy is definitely not just-around-the-corner. As a society -- let alone a global population -- we have never succeeded in reducing day-to-day work, despite all the automation we have at our disposal. We just set out expectations higher, to something that still takes 40-hour work weeks to accomplish.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Is it justified to create a market for abuse if the want for what is produced is strong enough?
  - spiritplumber 11y ago
    Depends. An acquaintance of mine moved his small textile plant from Italy to India in 2009, and ended up not even unpacking a good third of the machinery because it was cheaper to do those tasks by hand, and because having a higher employee count helped with local politics.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I can't be bothered to help this poor woman, but I can keep myself from ever purchasing an LG product again.
dimino 11y ago
Just for the sake of debate, can someone offer an argument explaining why it should be a company's responsibility to take care of a worker who gets injured, assuming the worker is fully aware of the risk? Edit: Unfortunately this comment has gotten me chat limited, so I won't be able to participate in this conversation any longer. If you'd like to explore this further, I'll gladly converse via email. Just to be clear, I'm not a monster and think labor laws are great and awesome. I thought it would be interesting to try and suss out what moral underpinnings belie how we feel, rather than just chalk it up to "boo corporations".
- Delmania 11y ago
  Simple: it's the company's responsibility to mitigate as much of that risk as is possible. That woman is selling her time to the company, it's the responsibility of the company to ensure she has the safest and most comfortable working conditions possible. When she is injured, even if she is "aware of the risk", the company is to blame.
  - dimino 11y ago
    Why is the company to blame? They mitigated risk enough to convince her to work there, no one was lied to or misled.
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      How do you know that no one was lied to or misled? The article was scant on details. Putting a high cost on accidents means that companies will take safety very seriously.
    - task_queue 11y ago
      It's unacceptable to "mitigate risk enough" because laborers are motivated by the fact that they have needs and dependents' needs that have to be met. That is their motivation for working anywhere. They have no other recourse but to engage in the time <-> compensation transaction. Because of this, people lose their agency to act a truly free agent in that transaction. Companies have the privilege of total knowledge of their facilities and processes. They also know there is a teeming pool of people that will take shit jobs because food and shelter is a necessity. There is an asymmetry in that relation that allows some pretty evil things to happen as history has shown. We've decided that pulling the "it was truly informed consent" card is a dishonest way to describe that transaction, because desperate people will be injured and killed so an employer can save a buck.
Delmania 11y ago
If you're up for some slacktivism, when you share the article on Twitter, put @LGUS in front of the word flat screen. Should raise some awareness...
notNow 11y ago
We maybe should help this lady and send in donations to her to lessen the effect of disability on her health and finances. I don't think The Guardian would run a scam or misrepresent her story to make us feel sorry for her and bad about ourselves (collective guilt). Maybe we should contact the journo who authored this peace and ask him/her how we can help her or get into contact with her to discuss the matter.
- peterder 11y ago
  This organization can probably help her directly with the prosthetic hands: http://www.ln-4.org/ http://www.ln-4.org/
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  It would be nice. And at one point, I needed such benefits and was really grateful. But I'm sure you can find many stories of worse circumstances every day. Should The Guardian have a donate link at the bottom of every story about someone unfortunate? Would the money be better spent trying to get things changed?
  - notNow 11y ago
    It was only a suggestion, not mandatory. I just noticed that the discussion was heading into the usual "intellectually stimulating" HN route where people arguing over occupational safety & industrial regulations and away from the poor lady that lost both her hands stripping her from a very crucial income source for the rest of her life.
werber 11y ago
I think MNCs should have to follow the strictest labor laws of any country they do business in across their entire company. The current global business model preaches that 400$ dollars a month in Mexico is the equivalent of a legal American wage. This system makes slave masters out of the elite in any country, and regular people slaves.
adamio 11y ago
She now has a prosthesis http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2015/02/03/new-hands-for-mexican-mom-after-industrial-accident/22821245/ http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2015/02/03/new-hands-f... It's not bionic, but those are in the tens of thousands $ range

161 points by werber 11y ago

America's wealth is built upon the labor of foreigners whose treatment would be illegal if they were in America. Even our working class benefits. We reflect blame to the "greedy billionaires" but in reality all of us enjoy $thousands of consumer value derived from the suffering of non-Americans. Some of us ignore it, others of us hide behind willfully twisted logic about how the laborers are better off with jobs than without, ignoring the lies employers tell, the violence against employees, and the outsider-driven destruction of their independent opportunities.

Zikes 11y ago
We need harsher penalties and stricter oversight for companies responsible for such activities. Consumers cannot be expected to know the complete history of every product they purchase, especially when companies have so many levels of subcontracting that even government agencies have a hard time untangling them. We need to push for reforms at the political level, but we can't all bear the guilt personally. Our only other option would be to completely halt spending.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
melling 11y ago
How many American companies make flatscreens? I bet if you read the article you'll find that it's not an American company.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  The comment you're replying to seems pretty clear on that point. > America's wealth is built upon the labor of foreigners whose treatment would be illegal if they were in America. American companies outsource this sort of manufacturing because it's cheap. Stories like this are part of why it's so cheap, and corporations have been pretty effective at disconnecting consumers from this sort of human cost to their expensive consumer devices.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    American companies outsource this sort of manufacturing because it's cheap. Which American companies? LG is not an American company, and they are nobody's subsidiary.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      LG has over a hundred local subsidiaries, of which LG USA is one. As with most consumer electronics companies, they outsource much of their production to smaller companies like the Mexican factory in the story.
      - melling 11y ago
        So we're all in agreement that it's a Korean company? The mothership is in Seoul. The rant about American companies is misplaced here.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- reagency 11y ago
  Who is talking a about companies? GP post is about consumers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gnu8 11y ago

This person should rightfully be receiving most of the gross profits from the company making the displays as compensation for the loss of her hands, and the people responsible for designing an unsafe production process should be in prison, treated exactly the same as if they had walked up to her on the street and chopped her hands off with an ax. 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.

fweespeech 11y ago
I think this is unreasonable simply because industrial accidents do happen and they aren't 100% preventable, much like car accidents. There should be [large] amounts of financial compensation [like $2.5 million, or about 10x what she'd have made at $400/month for 50 years] but "most of the gross profits" and "jail time" is ridiculous. https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html 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 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 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.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable. If the costs of these accidents are high, then they'll invest in making their processes safer. There is absolutely no excuse for having a machine like that in use.

blazespin 11y ago

I can't do much, but I can take 3 seconds to tap this up. I hope everyone does the same. Thus community should reflect a moment on the downside cost of all this electronics we have.

dimino 11y ago
You won't do much. You can find this man, give him your spare income, and help support him for the rest of your life. You could do this. Hell, you could be his personal butler for the rest of your life. You won't, and personally I think that's completely okay, but your comment reads a little too much like slacktivism for my tastes. Pretending like we can't help even though, technically we can, is disingenuous. It shouldn't be an awful thing to say you won't help someone in need.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Do we want to regulate the use of 'can't' to only apply in cases of physical impossibilities?
  - dimino 11y ago
    Semantics aside, I'd rather us recognize that we're all capable of doing more for people less fortunate than ourselves, but we don't. And that's perfectly alright.

ceejayoz 11y ago

She has a GoFundMe up, it seems. http://www.gofundme.com/newhandsforrosa http://www.gofundme.com/newhandsforrosa I sent a comment into the charity to ask if it's legit. edit: Got a response. > Thank you so much for your email and for your interest in Ms. Moreno's story. We are extremely pleased to see the outpouring of support from around the world for Rosa. Presenting her with the Illuminating Injustice Award is just a small way for us to help make her life easier, and I am certain she will be very gratified at the encouragement and assistance she receives from kindhearted and outraged folks such as you. That being said, we cannot confirm whether the link you provided is to a legitimate fundraiser for Rosa. We are directing everyone who asks to the link below if they wish to donate to Rosa: Rosa Moreno Fund: www.rosamorenofund.com

mping 11y ago
I can't find any donate buttons on the last site...
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  There's a PayPal donate button. Maybe you've got it adblocked?
  - anotheryou 11y ago
    and you got to click the "donate" button, not the paypal logo
sixdimensional 11y ago
I'm finding it difficult to tell if any of these links are legit although they appear to be. The gofundme page is not asking for much (£5,000). I wonder if Watsi.org could help here as well.

rayiner 11y ago

Also happens here in the U.S., though not as bad of course. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-is-your-arm-worth-depends-where-you-work https://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-is-your-arm-wort.... This sort of thing is what frightens me the most about globalization.[1] We have a hard enough time convincing our own scummy businesspeople that someone who is disabled in the course of their work should be taken care of. Globalization forces us to fight that battle against scummy businesspeople all over the world, in places that value human life and dignity a lot less than we do.[2] Several years ago, I was in Buffalo, NY, a city devastated by deindustrialization. I was chatting with my cab driver, a woman. She was telling me about how her husband got injured at his factory and could no longer work. He gets a small disability benefit, but not enough to get the surgery he needs to be able to get back to work. That sort of thing is such a huge societal loss. We'd rather save a bit of money up front at the expense of keeping this guy on disability the rest of his life. [1] Even within the U.S. there is a race to the bottom. Alabama pays out only $37,000 for the loss of a hand, not much more than this woman received in Mexico adjusting for purchasing power. In Illinois it's about $280,000 for one hand. [2] Even if we don't always value it as highly as we should.

rifung 11y ago

I completely understand that there are certain jobs which are going to be inherently dangerous no matter how much people try to advocate for safety. On the other hand, it's unacceptable how safety is just throw to the side for the sake of efficiency. This article just makes me realize how fortunate I am, when I'm pressured to do things faster I always complain that it leads to poor quality and less maintainable code. But hell, we can always go back and fix it later. Besides donating to this person, I wonder what we can do to stop things like this from happening. Would having things manufactured in the US help prevent something like this with labor laws? I mean with all the technology we have now, I can't believe things like this are still happening.

ceejayoz 11y ago
> Besides donating to this person, I wonder what we can do to stop things like this from happening. Would having things manufactured in the US help prevent something like this with labor laws? I mean with all the technology we have now, I can't believe things like this are still happening. The US has labor laws and unions that exist in part to prevent stuff like this. They're not perfect - people still get hurt here in industrial accidents - but they're pretty important.
Pyxl101 11y ago
Heavy machines are typically triggered by the operator. In the old days, it might have been with a foot switch. The latest safety protocol would require dual hand switches: that is the operator has to press two different buttons far apart enough to require the use of different hands. However, operators have been found to intentionally set heavy objects on one switch to keep it permanently activated, or bypass safety in other ways. Other solutions include requiring a key to insert and turn the key is physically attached to their body by a cord, such that they can't even reach the danger area with the key inserted. Modern machines also have several redundant safety mechanisms. One of them is the "light gate": beams of light cross the open space between the worker and the machine, and the machine will only activate when the beams are unimpeded. There was a recent comment thread on HN where folks were discussing the "safety relays" that make it possible. Modern heavy machines are designed to safely stop under power loss or the violation of safety protocol. I don't know what safety standards a factory in Mexico would operate under, and we don't know what caused the accident here. For all we know it could be something horrid like a machine on a timer with no safety at all, or a foot pedal with no light gate. I am not up to speed on labor law but my impression was that these precautions are required in the US, and that the typical factory machine, with its dangerous parts wrapped in a cage, with a hole for the operator protected by light gate, or requiring a dual button, that in standard operating mode is relatively safe. Before calling for more safety, we should know more about this situation. Were safety protocols followed? Was the machine properly maintained and working correctly? What caused the machine to activate? (The article says the machine "fell on" her hands which I take to mean that it activated and its movement motion was downward, not fell as in fell over) Why did the safety mechanisms fail? We need an NTSB for accidents like this (if there isn't). Without this information it's hard to say who or whether anyone is at fault, or what we should do to improve factory safety. Nevertheless, some jobs are intrinsically unsafe, like mining. These jobs should offer fair disability or death insurance to the employees for sure, paid for mostly or fully by the employer. Insurance is one good way to solve the problem because insurance adjusters will require the safest factory possible or else hike the company's premiums; so the pursuit of lower premiums will lead businesses to be safer (and if they're not super, then at least the business has fully covered the disability for the worker). The first step to safety should be requiring the factory to paid the costs of the injured worker.

toddmorey 11y ago

So I have an LG television, and now I'm always going to wonder if it came from the same factory and its construction utilized the same dangerous equipment. Does give me a sick feeling after reading this. I'm considering replacing it, but how would that even happen? We have farms that pledge ethical treatment of animals, but I can't even think of an electronics manufacture that pledges any kind of ethical treatment of factory workers. That's pretty sad. I'm sure that Samsung factories, for example, have similar conditions. The sad part is that all of these factory workers are just placeholders until robotic technology advances a bit more.

clebio 11y ago
> ... all of these factory workers are just placeholders until robotic technology advances a bit more. Sorry, that's a cop-out. I somewhat agree with you up until that point, and the sad truth is probably that the only way to avoid feeding the beast is not own smartphones or advanced electronics. Full-stop. Which leaves you hanging out with Stallman. Each of us makes this call. But to say that "all of these [people]" are just placeholders, and robotics is just "a bit" further away strikes me as rationalizing. We're probably several decades from wide-spread, pervasive, advanced robotics automation. Heck, auto assembly lines and such have had advanced robotics for several decades already. A whole-sale transition to a post-worker economy is definitely not just-around-the-corner. As a society -- let alone a global population -- we have never succeeded in reducing day-to-day work, despite all the automation we have at our disposal. We just set out expectations higher, to something that still takes 40-hour work weeks to accomplish.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Is it justified to create a market for abuse if the want for what is produced is strong enough?
- spiritplumber 11y ago
  Depends. An acquaintance of mine moved his small textile plant from Italy to India in 2009, and ended up not even unpacking a good third of the machinery because it was cheaper to do those tasks by hand, and because having a higher employee count helped with local politics.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

I can't be bothered to help this poor woman, but I can keep myself from ever purchasing an LG product again.

dimino 11y ago

Just for the sake of debate, can someone offer an argument explaining why it should be a company's responsibility to take care of a worker who gets injured, assuming the worker is fully aware of the risk? Edit: Unfortunately this comment has gotten me chat limited, so I won't be able to participate in this conversation any longer. If you'd like to explore this further, I'll gladly converse via email. Just to be clear, I'm not a monster and think labor laws are great and awesome. I thought it would be interesting to try and suss out what moral underpinnings belie how we feel, rather than just chalk it up to "boo corporations".

Delmania 11y ago
Simple: it's the company's responsibility to mitigate as much of that risk as is possible. That woman is selling her time to the company, it's the responsibility of the company to ensure she has the safest and most comfortable working conditions possible. When she is injured, even if she is "aware of the risk", the company is to blame.
- dimino 11y ago
  Why is the company to blame? They mitigated risk enough to convince her to work there, no one was lied to or misled.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    How do you know that no one was lied to or misled? The article was scant on details. Putting a high cost on accidents means that companies will take safety very seriously.
  - task_queue 11y ago
    It's unacceptable to "mitigate risk enough" because laborers are motivated by the fact that they have needs and dependents' needs that have to be met. That is their motivation for working anywhere. They have no other recourse but to engage in the time <-> compensation transaction. Because of this, people lose their agency to act a truly free agent in that transaction. Companies have the privilege of total knowledge of their facilities and processes. They also know there is a teeming pool of people that will take shit jobs because food and shelter is a necessity. There is an asymmetry in that relation that allows some pretty evil things to happen as history has shown. We've decided that pulling the "it was truly informed consent" card is a dishonest way to describe that transaction, because desperate people will be injured and killed so an employer can save a buck.

Delmania 11y ago

If you're up for some slacktivism, when you share the article on Twitter, put @LGUS in front of the word flat screen. Should raise some awareness...

notNow 11y ago

We maybe should help this lady and send in donations to her to lessen the effect of disability on her health and finances. I don't think The Guardian would run a scam or misrepresent her story to make us feel sorry for her and bad about ourselves (collective guilt). Maybe we should contact the journo who authored this peace and ask him/her how we can help her or get into contact with her to discuss the matter.

peterder 11y ago
This organization can probably help her directly with the prosthetic hands: http://www.ln-4.org/ http://www.ln-4.org/
MichaelGG 11y ago
It would be nice. And at one point, I needed such benefits and was really grateful. But I'm sure you can find many stories of worse circumstances every day. Should The Guardian have a donate link at the bottom of every story about someone unfortunate? Would the money be better spent trying to get things changed?
- notNow 11y ago
  It was only a suggestion, not mandatory. I just noticed that the discussion was heading into the usual "intellectually stimulating" HN route where people arguing over occupational safety & industrial regulations and away from the poor lady that lost both her hands stripping her from a very crucial income source for the rest of her life.

werber 11y ago

I think MNCs should have to follow the strictest labor laws of any country they do business in across their entire company. The current global business model preaches that 400$ dollars a month in Mexico is the equivalent of a legal American wage. This system makes slave masters out of the elite in any country, and regular people slaves.

adamio 11y ago

She now has a prosthesis http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2015/02/03/new-hands-for-mexican-mom-after-industrial-accident/22821245/ http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2015/02/03/new-hands-f... It's not bionic, but those are in the tens of thousands $ range