I know that it said in both articles that there’s no specific law against this, but shouldn’t the management be held responsible for this sort of shit, anyway? I mean, I’ve had cruel, stupid managers before, but this seems to be way above mere incompetence and mild malevolence. We’re talking a completely moronic and evil human being, here!
Haha wow those guys would (for once quite rightly) get their asses sued hard if they tried that over here. Especially when the wife is given her own heater. I’d almost hope someone would get frostbite and sue them, but then someone would have gotten frostbite. Instead I just hope everyone leaves and they go out of business.
EDIT: Also, it IS both moronic and evil. It’s moronic because he’s going to lose employees, and customers. It’s evil because he’s forcing his employees to work in unacceptable conditions.
While I feel the owner is a moron who’s getting a lot of well-deserved bad publicity, I can’t see how cutting off the heat to the store is illegal or wrongful. He said it himself - if his employees don’t like it, they can quit.
I doubt he cares about the employees - unskilled, low pay, no benefits, completely disposable. But with this stunt he’s going to get more than he bargained for and lose lots of customers as well.
I actually don’t feel that sorry for the employees. Life is hard, and they could always get another job. Most of the people in the Third World have to work in much poorer conditions.
That isn’t a fair basis for comparison. We’re not talking about these third world countries, we’re talking about a specific country, the United States. In the United States, there is a minimum standard that an employer has to maintain for their employees. I’m not saying that they have to bend over backwards for their employees, but I do believe that it is the employer’s responsability to provide a reasonable accomidation for the people that he’s employees.
Furthermore, as a businessman it’s just a bad idea to do something like this. Even without media coverage, the quality of their performance had to be affected. Given that there IS media coverage, he is surely losing business, which is going to impact his business more negatively than if he had just kept the heat going.
Employers don’t have a moral requirement to provide a comfortable environment for their employees. All they have to do is pay them. If they make an uncomfortable environment, nobody will work for them, and they’ll go bankrupt. But there’s no grounds to sue, IMO. Of course I’m sure legally there probably is some kind of precedent for this, knowing our society.
I would agree they don’t have to provide them with a comfortable working environment (though it’s advised). However, I would say they have a moral requirement to provide a safe working environment - I wouldn’t consider conditions below freezing temperature safe.
Puhleeze, I know I live in Georgia and it doesnt get that cold, but I used to work at a Quiznos where it was freezing in the morning most of the time because our owner didnt have the heat cut on. Life sucks. I also worked at a hot wings place where the entire place was regularly 102-104 degrees because of the proximity of the kitchen to the work space. That was really brutal. So seriously, get over it.