If you have official paperwork showing you were fired for an injury on the job, lawyers would be happy to do the lawsuit on a contingency basis. It would be a foregone conclusion.

You'd think. But there's no governmental agency or office to assist with these illegal actions. I'm depending on the charity and hope of profit of a lawyer.

One attorney I talked with didn't do cases on contingency. Another refused because it was against Walmart.

And that was that. Sure, I was wronged. Not a damned thing I can do about it.

You needed to talk to more lawyers. If the case is like you said, it’s open and shut. Walmart gets successfully sued all of the time when they are at fault for workplace accidents.

I personally know of two separate acquaintances’ relatives who were hurt at Walmart, fired, sued with no up front legal fees, and won. One got hit by a parking lot shopping cart train and the other got injured in the mechanic shop.

It's not unreasonable to be discouraged when you reach out to two professionals and neither of them seem to think that it's worth their time.

Lawyers work in niches. It’s unreasonable to expect to find one after only speaking to two.

Maybe you missed the part that I said I was working at Walmart and got fired. This is your typical grunt job, not an IT position with respect and dignity.

I wasn't rolling in dough prior to it, and had even less afterward. The thought that I'd be able to shop around with lawyers and schedule a consultation, and all that while I'm scrambling for looking for another job... Well, it speaks to many people here that do have buffers in their income and savings. I, and all whom I worked with at the time had no buffers.

Maybe I'd have won. Or not. But what I do know is the lawyers who did want to hear my case both said no. Others, I left the details with the secretary. Nothing.

I am sorry that you had this experience.

But manual labour is dangerous and unfair. It’s worse in Ag field and even children and families who live near large farming communities are affected by drift and the spraying and watershed poisoning and general environmental degradation. This is why we must automate and get machines to do the dangerous jobs.

Yes, that will be a post labour world but that’s easier to figure out. It’s better to give dignity to people than make human beings work for other human beings. I abhor the very notion.

I thank you for your sympathy. But in a way, I'm glad I was able to experience this. I wouldn't have gained the perspective of this had I not experienced it for myself. I know many here on HN certainly haven't.

I've lived involuntarily homeless for a time. I've been on food stamps. I've been injured and fired on a job. I've had dozens of crummy bad jobs; no benefits, don't care if youre sick, dangerous. You're a "piece" of work, and treated as such. You're a less-than-nothing, because you are who you are.

And then there's IT work. I've finally been able to claw up in the IT world as a systems admin. And the treatment I 'suffer' (laugh) are things like good insurance, PTO, actual honest to goodness sick days - and I'm actually believed, free coffee/espresso/lacrois, snack plates during lunch. And we have at least 2 catered lunches a month. Recently, my employer also sent me to DerbyCon. $1200 right there. Covered.

IT is radically different compared to what most employees go through. We are treated with respect and dignity, and compensated fairly with our salary and perks. Those who serve us when we go into bookstores, supermarkets, restaurants, and more are kept at the basic maintenance level of living - and that is if everything goes right. It usually doesn't. Cars break down; bodies break down; emergencies occur; accidental pregnancies happen; life happens.

Yes, I am a socialist, and also see automation as a solution. And also, unlike the propaganda, there's enough resources that we all can live decently compensated and respected lives. We're not quite there with 100% automation, and still need human labor for a bit... But there's no reason (other than greed) for barely-but-not-quite maintenance wages.

I am not a socialist. I believe that our lives are better because of capitalism and there is a space where there is a third system..that is neither pure capitalism or pure socialism. I also don’t beleive that resources are unlimited or that everyone has an equal claim to it. Unless we drastically curtail human population numbers. We do live upon a resource constrained rock. All ‘groups’ must have equal claim..which means non human species and nature and habitat have equal claim to natural resources that we monopolise and appropriate. I also believe that some jobs shouldn’t be done by human beings at all. Freedom is foremost. Dignity is next but if we give people true freedom, everything else will follow. That is freedom from exploitation and also freedom from coercion. I detest poor people exploited just as much as rich people being shamed. One day, jobs will disappear as will wages. What then? We have to plan for such a future. We have to create new models of relationships and how we interact with others.

So it's ok with you if companies treat people like crap, because the alternative is fewer jobs? By that logic, it's ok for companies to kill off a few of their workers through horrible safety practices, than not offering any jobs at all, because ++ jobs is more important than anything. We've spent the last couple of centuries trying to correct that line of thinking, why hang on to it?

The alternative to crappy business practices isn't people starving in the streets because of lack of jobs. The alternative is that the people with excess resources distribute some of those resources to others that would otherwise starve.

There are many nations out there with working systems that don't accept that sort of abuse of it's workers - why do people insist on choosing ideologies that are so obviously not in the interests of the majority of the people?

>why do people insist on choosing ideologies that are so obviously not in the interests of the majority of the people?

Because policies that depend on taking from the economically productive to prop up the unproductive eventually become unsustainable.

Does it upset you that people work jobs instead of voting to receive a million USD annual stipend? Would you vote for a policy giving that to every person?

Back to the Walmart story. There is more we aren’t being told. There are thousands of lawyers drooling to take a case against a company the size of Walmart firing people for simply getting hurt due to the company’s incompetence. OP more than likely was at fault for the accident, which would be grounds for termination in most European countries as well.

> Because policies that depend on taking from the economically productive to prop up the unproductive eventually become unsustainable.

1) There are many very stable nations that have had long-term policies of treating their disadvantaged much better than you seem to be proposing, so this point is demonstratively false. Why do you believe it's true?

2) There are many people in every country that aren't economically productive - the elderly, the very young, the chronically ill, etc. Most countries manage to afford to take care of these people in some manner without collapse. It's possible because technology has driven our average productivity extremely high in historical terms, and there are more than enough resources available to take care of them. Doing so doesn't cause those societies to collapse. I'd suggest it makes them more stable when fewer people are desperately poor.

I'm not saying you're arguing that those example groups of people don't deserve assistance. But you do seem to be saying that _some_ economically unproductive people shouldn't be helped to survive. What is special about the second group of people? Why does helping them somehow lead to an unsustainable society when supporting other groups doesn't?

I believe my free-market opinions are in the best interest of the people. Of course, it’s in some people’s interests (those who produce significant real value) more than others (those who produce little value) but I still think it’s in the best interest of everyone

Also, I would rather keep my money and not redistribute it to the bottomfeeders.

> Also, I would rather keep my money and not redistribute it to the bottomfeeders.

That's such an horrible, ugly, selfish way of thinking. How can you sleep at night?

> So it's ok with you if companies treat people like crap

This is a severe misstatement of that person’s argument. Believing that there is no better alternative isn’t the same as believing something is good.

I didn't say he thought it was 'good'. I restated his rhetorical question as a statement: that he was ok with the tradeoff ( poor working conditions for more jobs ). I think it's pretty clear that's what he was saying and I doubt he'd disagree. I am trying to point out that there ARE better alternatives. We've been making a lot of progress in that direction for years, so it's clear that it's an option if we choose it.

I'm honestly trying to understand why people would suggest that its ok to accept that tradeoff. I get why in any individual case someone might choose to make that decision - they may truly have no other options available to them, and the alternatives are much worse (real hunger, homelessness). I just don't understand why people seem to promote that situation as a political position - that somehow as a society that's the best we can do, or it's the best policy to allow it.

I, for one, would prefer that sick people stay at home. Especially food service workers. It would improve public health.

There's a carrot and a stick for you:

Paid sick leave with a urgent care clinic available at no charge. Someone gets sick (esp with food service) and they work for you, they should provide that clinic at no charge, and you get a legit sick day.

The stick: the health dept should be able to come in and close that food service thing down right then and there if someone is obviously sick. And because it was negligence of the company, the company is still legally obligated to pay the wages of everyone they screwed over. Tipped staff will go by average weekly reported wages.

.... But that's wishful thinking. The NRA - National Restaurant Association pays more and is better connected than public health and respectful treatment. I mean, who really cares if a few sick workers spread influenza as hotspots in food service, and infect many more, and likely kill a few with compromised immune systems? /sarcastic

I think most people would agree, but then there are a lot of workers who simply cannot afford to take any time off, no matter how sick. I just witnessed this with my mom's nurse practitioner, who had to cut her own maternity leave short because the paid leave was not enough to cover her rent.

What about people who can’t tell if they have the flu? Peak contagiousness and peak symptoms don’t occur at exactly the same time.

We need a few mandates that will affect the decisions.

Someone will step up to make the money and be more human about the whole thing.

this needs to be at the top