(h/t to The Political Carnival.)
So, let me get this straight, a widow recently bereaved decides to sue a company that is notorious for safety violations and this goof says, "Oh, it's 'free money'."
Sorry, um, I'm counting the loss of a life-partner and breadwinner as a "price paid". I don't actually see that as "free". And I would bet that hardly anyone would choose a big payday at the risk of their beloved. That is simply cold-blooded. But that is very revealing in terms of the way some pro-corporate minds work. In his mental ledger, the death of the worker is more of a nuisance to his employer than to his spouse, since Massey now has to replace him and bother will all this paperwork--let alone deal with with some legal nonsense. Implied: "She should take whatever the going rate for dead husbands is and stop haggling!"
Another story is this piece on Don Blankenship from Businessweek that has one detail about his dealings with a former housekeeper that only reinforces my impression that he has an "ownership" mentality towards people in his employ.
Blankenship, his opponents and supporters agree, simply has to get his way. Nothing illustrates this better than his fight with a maid earning $8.86 an hour. In 2001, Deborah May started working for Mate Creek Security, a company "related to Massey Energy," according to court documents. When Mate Creek assigned her to work for Blankenship, according to the documents, May cleaned his three-story home, shopped, and did laundry. By 2005 she was also cleaning a bus, two cabins, and a mansion in Kentucky. She received one 30 cents hourly raise. After Blankenship said she would also have to care for a "German police dog," according to the documents, she quit.
In November 2005, May applied for unemployment benefits, saying she was forced to leave the job. The state denied her claim, concluding she quit for no reason. In June 2008, West Virginia's top court reversed the state's denial of benefits. Two of the court's justices said "the unrefuted evidence" showed that Blankenship "physically grabbed" the maid, threw food after she brought back the wrong fast-food order, and tore a tie rack and coat hanger out of a closet after she forgot to leave the hanger out for his coat. "This shocking conduct" showed May was in effect fired because she felt compelled to quit, the justices said. They said the conduct was "reminiscent of slavery and is an affront to common decency."
Perfectly disgraceful. But it does reveal a disrespect for persons, and a unique sense of his relationship to people "beneath" him.
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