Your point was about their risking their lives in exchange for overtime and pensions. My point is that there are many jobs that have more risk and no overtime or pensions and maybe those are the jobs we should be talking more about.
Conversely, people can stop working jobs that value economy over safety. I guess they must make enough money to not worry about the risk, which is somewhat sad.
It's not supposed to harm them, it's supposed to make it economically sensible for them (and companies like them) to employ one or two people with the sole responsibility of making sure stuff like this doesn't happen.
It's not about whether they can or can't. It's about the massive liability for the company if they fuck up on the job and cause property damage or bodily injury.
No need to get defensive here — the point is still valid that risks are being placed on workers that would otherwise be on the company. For example accidents, sickness, etc.
Business taking insufficient safety measures pose a risk to their employees and the wider community. Due to the broad and delayed nature of the risk and the effort required to deal with it, it's not clear that business will voluntarily take the best course of action.
For the sake of protecting employees from unsafe conditions and protecting the wider community from secondary effects in a timely manner it's better to implement broad measures first and deal with the details later.
The cost of temporary unemployment is nothing compared to the cost of surpassing the capacity of healthcare services.
Not every job that pays $9.70 is necessarily dangerous, so I fail to see your point. That article is more of a representation of a greater potential issue.
Police, Fire Department, transit workers yes but the vast majority of public servants are not taking "unprecedented risks" when they are at work. They're inspectors, judges, teachers, budget analysts etc.
Literally nothing I said stated about society and risk stated that dangerous jobs are only for low level construction workers. You're just using silly ad hominem ("desk jockey") and emotional appeals (poor vs rich!) without considering the point.
In fact, one of my examples of risk was the Apollo project, where the most notable 3 casualties (Apollo 1's Virgil Grissom, Edward White II, and Roger Chaffee) were highly paid astronauts with engineering backgrounds. I'm not discriminating against construction workers, I'm making a statement on acceptable risk in society in general.
Finding a balance on putting price on human life is simply a necessity. I have a friend who's a petrol engineer working dangerous jobs at a high salary, and it's a risk he's willing to take. However, the modern general public is culturally shifting to people like you who literally hear the words "possible risk" and the frontal cortex of the brain shuts down and start ignoring the costs.
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