Mother of Gabriel Infante, 24, sues employer for $1m, saying construction workers had no protections from extreme heat

  • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Infante later died in a hospital from severe heatstroke and had a recorded internal temperature of 109.8F (43.2C). The Center for Disease Control states a body temperature of 103F (39.4C) or higher is a main symptom of heatstroke.

    The poor man was fucking cooked alive and the foreman wanted to do a piss test! I wish Abbott and his funders could experience that.

  • elbowdrop@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fuck them. Require a licensed doctor on site observing the workers. Fuck this I think your on drugs bullshit. Why the actual fuck would Texas take away water breaks? How much more value is that aqueezing out of your workers. I think this lady deserves WAY more than a million. You kill an employee due to neglect, pay a billion. But that’s too high. It’s supposed to be a punishment. Fuck it. A billion a year forever.

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re taking away the workers’rights to get water breaks, not the supervisors’ rights to give them. So, if you’re a happy and compliant little drone who kisses enough ass maybe you’ll get one, and making workers’ feel the need to do things like that is where the real value in this lies for the bosses I think.

      • SmarfDurden@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You know, before this I really thought access to water was one of the few things conservatives wouldn’t have a problem with. They’re sadists

  • prole@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    So let’s pass a law that removes any requirement in Texas to allow construction workers to drink water while they are working… That’ll fix things.

    Fucking evil shit.

  • Blamemeta@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Problem is, heatstroke looks like drugs to idiots, and Ive never met one who wasn’t an idiot.

  • MoonshineDegreaser@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Good way to m lose your business license if you aren’t a general contractor. But since they are, supervisor is getting fired and nothing else is going to change.

    • grte@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Working someone until they die of heatstroke should be a murder charge, not risk losing a damned business license. What a sick society.

      • MoonshineDegreaser@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’re absolutely right. However there were rules and amenities put in place way before we were born

        I’ll give you an example. When I worked as a utility locator, I caught a GC’s team doing HARD drugs on a construction site. I reported it to the county. Nothing happened. Same team, same habits. I would speak to the GC directly about their teams, and they didn’t care.

        A week passes and the entire site is roped off with police tape. A heavy machinery operator from that team ended up running a cleaner over in one of those JLG cherry pickers with the monster truck tires. Turns out he had meth and thc in his system. He was fired. No charges towards the individual or the GC because it was chalked up to a workplace accident.

        Now why were they able to get away with that you ask? GC’s have to maintain state and county contracts and they even do work for the counties and states. They literally have all the power when it comes to construction. The only real way to get a GC shut down is if there are multiple accidents resulting in an unusual number of injuries or death. But even then, that’s usually when the feds and OSHA get involved

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Not in Texas. Not anymore. They are actively making it so much worse with the recent bill removing a requirement that employers allow construction workers to drink fucking water.

  • exothermic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A million dollars is hardly enough. The lawsuit should be for the dollar amount of his lifetime worth of gainful employment. Anything less is despicable and wrong.

    • Master@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      and then times it by 10. If it bankrupts the company so be it.

      I work in construction. We have a re-roof job running right now. They go through almost a pallet of water every day and are required to have x amount of rest in shade. When it got to hot the hours were moved to night till mid day to protect them from the heat.

      If they suspected him of being on drugs they should have pulled him from the job site immediately once symptoms were showing. Anything less is a danger to the employee as well as everyone else on the site.

      What this company did was illegal, morally wrong and down right evil.

  • Weirdfish@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I got pretty bad heat stroke once while running in Texas. Was in the military, and due to a stupid miscommunication was told I was not allowed to drink water.

    Lap or two later and I started having symptoms I’d never experienced before.

    I can 100% believe that my look and behavior could have been mistaken for drug use.

    I had stopped sweating, looked pale and disoriented, I’m sure I was not speaking clearly. My friend grabbed me and dragged me to a water fountain.

    Once I had time to recover, get some A/C, and rehydrate, I was pretty much fine, though I remember having one hell of a headache like a hangover.

  • marx2k@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The inevitable conservative argument: “If we didn’t have open borders, construction companies would need to cater to their employees better because they’d have less competition from cheap labor. Thanks Biden”