Tied to the Tracks

 

Edwardsville, IL  Photo credit: Reuters

If you hadn't heard, that wind we had last Friday was the remains of a tornado that ripped through several states. Dozens of people were killed, all ages. Yes, in December.

Last night I read that at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, workers wanted to go home after they heard about the tornado headed their way. Warehouses aren't built to withstand tornadoes, and they don't have basements. One man texted his wife or girlfriend saying that management wouldn't let them leave. He was killed when the storm collapsed the warehouse. Six workers were killed there. Amazon blames the victims, saying they were not sheltering in the designated area. Who do you think told them not to? Surely not the micromanagers at Amazon who track employee's movements and time their bathroom breaks!

That we even have a text from him describing the situation is remarkable, because Amazon typically has a policy that warehouse workers aren't allowed to bring their cell phones into the building with them. They had temporarily relaxed that policy--I think something to do with COVID--and were getting ready to start banning phones again.

Mayfield, KY  Photo credit: The Guardian

This morning I heard that in Mayfield, Kentucky, the same thing happened at a candle factory. Workers heard the tornado sirens and wanted to go home, but management told them they'd be fired if they left. Eight of those workers have been confirmed dead. Another six are still missing in the rubble. The factory emphatically denies that they prohibited anyone from leaving, but the fact remains that they did not shut down and have everyone seek safe shelter.

This is the kind of thing that, when I write about it online, I'm often accosted by conservatives who first deny that it happened, then deny it again after I show them proof, then switch to blaming the victims and turning it into a culture war thing. I'm so weary of this dynamic. How do you argue with someone about the best way to waterproof a roof when they deny the existence of rain?

I told my wife--who hasn't worked for an employer in a very long time--about these warehouse tragedies...wait. Let me interrupt myself right there. Let's call these what they were: massacres. If a manager tied employees to a railroad track in front of an oncoming train, we'd have no problem calling that murder. A tornado sounds like a train, and it does even more damage when it rips through. These people were in the path of it, and their managers metaphorically tied them to the tracks. As such, I feel we should call these incidents massacres.

Mayfield, KY Photo credit: NY Post

This is where I'd expect to get some pushback from the aforementioned conservatives. "Nobody physically restrained these people. They're all adults. They made a choice to stay and make money instead of running for their lives."

We are conditioned from childhood to obey our taskmasters. When there's a school shooting, why don't all the kids head for the nearest door or window at the sound of the first shot and run home? Like 18th century army officers ordering their troops to stay in formation in the line of enemy fire, their teachers tell them to stay put, and they obey. Does that make it the victims' fault that they got shot, because they failed to flee? No. And why are the kids even there in the first place? Given the choice, most of them would stay home. They're there because they have to be.

Same deal with the workers. I assure you that not one person killed by the tornado in either of those workplaces was there fulfilling a lifelong dream of working for Amazon or Mayfield Consumer Products. Indeed, seven of the workers in the candle factory were actually inmates from the local jail (they all survived, though the deputy who was guarding them was not so lucky). No five-year-old says they want to be a picker when they grow up, and then eagerly looks forward to it all the way up to the day they're finally old enough. Those people--the "free" ones, anyway--were there because they needed the job to pay for the basics of survival. And had they left to seek safe shelter, and gotten fired, the unemployment office would have offered no help, because they would be classified as either having quit or having been "fired for cause." Then they have no income, no way to pay the rent or mortgage, no way to pay for groceries or utilities--a breath away from homelessness. A person shouldn't have to stare down an oncoming train just to earn a living. These were massacres.

As I was saying, I told my wife about these workers not being allowed to leave. Her response was, "Not allowed? Let's see them stop me! If I hear those sirens go off, I'm outta there and nobody's getting in my way!" As I said, she's self-employed. There's something about autonomy that allows common sense to rise up and displace obedience, perhaps because one gets into the habit of not having anyone to obey. We need more of that. If fewer people were pressed by necessity into obey-or-die (and maybe die even if you do obey) situations, we'd have more people acting sensibly. Until then, employees are caged hamsters running on a wheel, trying to earn their morsel of food, and the owner of the cage must be held entirely responsible for their well-being.