Comment by themaninthedark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themaninthedark | Hacker News Reader

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themaninthedark

There are some people who like the rote work. You and I may not but some of the people I talk to like that they can basically "turn their thinking off" and get paid.

>Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up This should not be possible in the US. OSHA is still in existence(you could argue that the future state is unknown)

https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19... >1910.212(a)(1) >Types of guarding. One or more methods of machine guarding shall be provided to protect the operator and other employees in the machine area from hazards such as those created by point of operation, ingoing nip points, rotating parts, flying chips and sparks. Examples of guarding methods are - barrier guards, two-hand tripping devices, electronic safety devices, etc.

> a stamping machine has all its safeties break because maintenance didn't maintain them right. When the safety on a machine fails, the machine should stop. If it does not, then the safety was not installed correctly.

Sounds nice but not reality. The price of paying out a finger every few years is a lot cheaper than paying for maintenance and safety equipment.

Where was this? Because that's not true in the US, land of the personal injury attorney. My brother used to be a machine salesperson. He got a call from a law firm couple years after his company sold a machine asking about a particular one that was sold (not even by him) because their client lost a body part. Those payouts often end up in the millions.

A payout in the million doesn't seem in disagreement with the OPs assertion that the payouts make economic sense for these companies.

I think the picture you paint of the US is rosier than the reality. Brings to mind the death of a 16 year old working in a poultry processing plant:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slaughterhouse-children...

These companies know what they're doing.

It looks like a company was using uninformed and "scared" employee population to commit labor violations. Also using the same tactic that I alluded to in one of my other comments: Production workers are hired from a staffing agency and dispatched to the job site, that way the company HR doesn't know(and can't legally ask about work eligibility).

It looks like that plant in particular has serious issues. Someone else died after the 16 year old, bringing the number of deaths in recent years to 3.

This one in particular seems to know what it is doing: Googling "Mar-Jac Poultry" does not bring up any of the issues, nor are they listed in the Wiki page.

I've worked some in metal fabrication and supported some light industry. if you think anyone in a normal business in the US that hires less than 50 hourly people has even read the OSHA regs, you're completely unconnected with the reality

we really do call those stamping machines 'finger eaters'

I work in manufacturing and stamping machines scare the shit out of me, usually because of the forces involved but I did work on some that were not guarded. That was not in the US however.

My first job with a stamping machine was in a company with about 30 production workers. This was early 2000s in the southern US, all the workers were from Latin America and I think that most of them were not here legally(I say this because the company used temp agencies to employ the workers and at one point later they wanted to bring one of them on in a management role so they had me(also a temp) ask if the person wanted too switch the the higher paying but also requiring them to submit legal documents role).

Even under those circumstances, I never saw the company do something that skirted OSHA regs. Their stamping machine was a POS that was annoying as hell to use, mostly because the light curtain and other safetys kept tripping but it was never bypassed.

Or more likely, the safety measures were bypassed because they were a PITA. You can put all of safety measures you want on equipment, but humans have this insane mindset of faster = better. Yes, that includes top to bottom of companies.

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