from the slap-them-on-the-other-wrist-too dept.
Corporate Crime Reporter reports:
The press release (PDF) from the Los Angeles District Attorney's office reads: "Macy's Pleads in Death of an Employee."
According to the district attorney, Macy's Corporate Services, Inc. plead no contest to a misdemeanor charge of corporate criminal liability for the death of an employee in 2009.
The office said that as part of a negotiated settlement, Macy's will pay a $950,000 fine at a sentencing hearing scheduled for August 15, 2015.
On July 13, 2009, Roy Polanco, 65, was operating a cardboard baling and compactor machine at a Macy's distribution center in East Los Angeles when he fell into an unguarded opening of the unit.
Polanco was crushed to death and decapitated by the machine's hydraulic compacting ram.
Balers are used to compact similar types of waste for recycling. The machine had been modified so it would operate without interruption.Under the terms of the settlement, Macy's also must conduct an audit of all of the balers and compactors at their stores and distribution facilities in California. And the audit must be approved by the district attorney's office.
So, that's according to the district attorney, via the press release.But take a look at the actual plea agreement.(PDF)
According to the actual agreement, upon payment of the fine, Macy's "may return to court, move to terminate probation, and have the conviction expunged."That's not in the press release.
Why not? It's embarrassing.
A worker is dead and Macy's gets to expunge a misdemeanor conviction and terminate probation?
And the district attorney agrees "not to oppose either the termination of the probation or the expungement."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nyder on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:32AM
No surprise. The media stopped searching for the truth a long time ago.
Today money buys votes, it buys laws, and it buys the press.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:35AM
The machine had been modified so it would operate without interruption.
I have worked some hellhole jobs, just as anyone has, but even in the most safety insensitive places I have never seen a company automate a bailer. It indicates a disregard for human life over a minor increase in efficiency. Automating such a device would save just a few moments of paying someone minimum wage a day.
$950,000 is too small. If an individual did this then they would serve serious jail time for involuntary manslaughter or similar. It would be more appropriate to charge whomever authorized this farce with that crime along with criminal conspiracy for anyone else involved. Better yet, just enact a 'prison sentence' for the company as a whole by freezing all assets for an appropriate time, 10-25 years perhaps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:00AM
I am shocked and saddened by this story.
Long ago I used to operate a bailer from time to time but it was a 'floor level' bailer you had to open up to wire the bale, push it out onto a palate and close it back up again for the next load--there was nothing to fall into accidentally.
This bailer must have had a pit you threw/swept/dumped carboard/(trash?) into and it compacted it automatically (illegally).
This is an utter tragedy for the victim, their family/relatives/friends, and for mankind at large for the responsible people at the company to allow/(order?) the creation of a DEADLY safety hazard just to save a few cents on labor for every cycle of the machine....
Terrible.... (-_-)
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday August 17 2014, @02:15PM
...but presumably that's just the fine imposed by the criminal court and, with the conviction in place, the 8-digit civil damages suit by the victim's family will be a slam dunk?
...don't disagree in principle, but in practice, unless you get lucky and find an email from Big Boss saying 'do this and bugger the saftey issues' you'd probably end up jailing whatever poor schmuck the management decided to choose as their scapegoat.
...which will force the company into bankrupcy, get all the lowly workers fired, make millions for the vultures who feed off bankrupcy (including the management if they play their cards right - go read Groklaw) while the creditors - including the victim's family - don't get a bean.
Maybe, for corporations, just convicting them and letting the civil ambulance-chasers extract the punishment on behalf of the victim is the best approach?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @02:52PM
What conviction? It'll be expunged immediately after they pay the fine. Like it never happened.
(Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday August 18 2014, @12:07AM
Charge the "Big Boss(es)". This works in other parts of the world.
Doesn't need to happen, since real people (not make believe corporation people) will be in gaol (aka "jail") - this should encourage other managers to maintain a safer working environment.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday August 17 2014, @02:46PM
The assumption here is that the company modified the bailer. I know that in a lot of places, people will modify safety equipment to make it more convenient to use. I'm not saying this guy did (it could have even been a former user of the equipment), but it's a possibility. It's still really at least partially the company's fault though.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday August 17 2014, @02:54PM
However, in most jurisdictions the company has a responsibility to inspect and maintain safety equipment. And to train employees properly and enforce rules.
Those laws exist specifically to prevent the company from saying "Oh those darned employees!
The only way to stop things like this from happening is to jail company owners and/or make the fines large enough that it really hurts. Right now they're just a "cost of doing business."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Sunday August 17 2014, @03:19PM
"I have worked some hellhole jobs, just as anyone has, but even in the most safety insensitive places I have never seen a company automate a bailer."
Who modified the baler? Was it a Macy's directive or a lazy employee? There is no direct mention of this. My bet is an employee or possibly the victim himself. They modified it, and never told anyone they did so to avoid getting in trouble. I have worked at a few places and if some safety device can be disabled to make a job faster or easier then there will be people who will try to defeat them. Fast and loose is not a corporate policy, it is in many cases illegal and creates a liability. But to the individual employee, fast and loose = easy.
One example is at work we have a building maintenance guy who comes in as necessary. He had to work on a ceiling fan and to reach it he used the forklift and man basket. The man basket is secured to the forks via clamps. The maintenance guy is one of those "Meh, I don't need that ". So I see him with the machinist, who BTW isn't licensed to operate the forklift, take him up in the basket without the clamps. If his weight shifted too far to one side, the basket could tip right off the forks. I told him to come back down and secure the clamps. He rebuffed my request saying it wasn't necessary. I fetched our plant manager who is also in charge of safety. He blew a gasket to say it nicely. The maintenance man and machinist were reprimanded and both had to complete a forklift training course. Some people just don't give a damn about those pesky safety devices and practices.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday August 17 2014, @03:23PM
Ah, forgot to add:
There should have been a safety audit of the machine by a person in charge of safety. Though, I imagine some employees can be clever enough to only disable the safety when using the machine. Once done, they return the machine to normal operation so no one will discover their trick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:22PM
That's why they should do random audits while the machine is in use. Employees caught circumventing safety measures should be punished.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday August 17 2014, @04:15PM
Sometimes it is the individual employee. You and the plant manager did the right thing and probably prevented an accident.
In other cases, the supervisors crack the whip to the point that the individual worker feels he has to cheat the safeties just to get by. The managenment 'just happens' to not notice and if there's an accident, they'll claim they had no part in it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @04:17PM
An asset freeze will make it IMPOSSIBLE to pay low-level workers. They would be laid off/fired and the company shuttered(temporarily) until the asset freeze lifted. By then, all that can be likely done is to liquidate the company and release all its assets back to their rightful owners.
Unscrupulous business owners know this and still act irresponsibly knowing they are essentially 'untouchable'.
The authorities know this and cannot dissolve the commpany as ultimate punnishment as they would lose tax revenue they depend on to run government.
So you get the legal judgements involving fines large enough for the press to take notice and small enough to be considered 'the cost of doing business' by the company and factored into future pricing of their goods and services so they WILL get the fine money they paid back from the consumers who do business with them.
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Sunday August 17 2014, @05:29PM
The company already tries to price its goods at the optimum point on the price/demand curve; either raising or lowering its prices would reduce its profit. So it can't raise its prices to produce extra money to pay the fine, for the same reason that it can't raise its prices to produce extra money to go into its own pocket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @06:47PM
Doing that will save the company money to offset/balance the fine they paid.
Innocent 'working stiffs' are then fired/laid off to pay a fine they didn't owe to punish other(s) for their negligent malfesance that turned DEADLY and got the company fined....
Somebody higher up in the food chain at that company is ULTIMATELY responsible for this senseless death. The pressure to gain profit at all costs came from the higher ups--forcing the 'working stiffs' at the bottom of the corporate ladder to produce or perish (be fired or laid off) AT ALL COSTS. This resulted in the desparate search for shortcuts to save time and boost productivity at the company. In this case, it resulted in the gruesome, senseless death of a human being working hard to earn their keep....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @09:41PM
> The authorities know this and cannot dissolve the commpany as ultimate punnishment
> as they would lose tax revenue they depend on to run government.
That's bullshit. Closing down a handful of companies isn't going to bankrupt the government.
(Score: 1) by gznork26 on Sunday August 17 2014, @04:32PM
"Better yet, just enact a 'prison sentence' for the company as a whole by freezing all assets for an appropriate time, 10-25 years perhaps."
A few years ago, I used a series of short stories to explore how a 'prison sentence' for a corporation might be carried out. The series was set off by a (fictional) ruling by the Supreme Court that granted Mitt Romney's wish, and gave corporations the full rights and responsibilities of personhood. Jubilation over that dimmed when the implications became clear in the opener, "Logical Conclusion". ( http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/short-story-logical-conclusion/ [wordpress.com] ) With that as the set-up, the rest of the series focussed on a company that had stolen from its employees.
It is possible to imprison a corporation. There are ample parallels to how people are incarcerated. Maybe it's past time we started doing it.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday August 17 2014, @06:13PM
Having worked in such places I would be willing to wager dollars to donuts that the modifications were done by the workers, and Macy's crime was that management didn't notice that they have done that.
I've seen workers take absolutely stupid risks, to defeat safety equipment to save climbing a short flight of stairs twice an hour. I've seen them cut the cables on wrist straps that jerk hands back from the the blades of paper giant motorized paper cutters, tape down one of the two switches used to energize machines just so they could start it without putting down their coffee.
On one of my college jobs as shift foreman (back in the 60s) my number one top priority duty dictated by management was to constantly look out for worker safety shortcuts.
Don't be too ready to assume management had anything to do with the modifications, or even knew about them.
I bet it was simple management in-attention (which was clearly their fault).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tynin on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:57AM
Corporations get all of the perks of being a person, and none of the disincentives. Until we can hold a company accountable beyond a fine, this will continue to be a problem.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:54AM
... the California penal code allows for this. Now if it were a felony conviction it would be a different matter entirely.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday August 17 2014, @02:32PM
You might have to change your sig to simply say "Life and Death in Los Angeles."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:28PM
This report also reveals that Macy's was represented by former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney Bill Seki who, along with Joseph Esposito (the current Assistant District Attorney and the number three person in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office), are co-directors of Southwestern Law School’s Trial Advocacy Honors Program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @04:10PM
As a non-native English speaker and without too much knowledge of law this seems impossible to parse. However it does sound interesting. :)
Would somebody care to translate it for (people like) me? If yes, thank you.