> The company’s silence on the incident is a particularly dramatic reflection of a core dynamic in America’s new space race: The unspoken truth that human lives are at play at every level.
???? Does a company need to make an announcement or public statement for every incident that occurs at work?
There are risks at every job. How is this even an article-worthy?
> There are risks at every job. How is this even an article-worthy?
A sadly large % of the people reading news on-line have nearly forgotten that hazardous real-world jobs still exist. (Vs. office jobs where "fell and sprained wrist while getting out of an extra-comfy wheely chair" is just about the worst workplace injury they can imagine.)
Also, it's SpaceX. Loads of construction, roofing, etc. workers get maimed & killed every year, and are barely worth a passing mention in the local paper.
There is a difference if a job is dangerous and somebody gets hurt or dies despite compliance with all safety measures or if an accident happens because of safety violations.
Reasonable Assumption: A whole lot of the barely-covered injuries and deaths at various little tree-trimming, construction, roofing, etc. firms also involve safety violations.
I'd imagine they're silent regarding it because 1) it's an active safety investigation 2) legal will be involved 3) it's frankly nobody else's business, seeing as it's a private business
Essentially all public functions that create records create, by definition, public records. There are exceptions, but they're much narrower than you'd expect. You're entitled to demand copies of the records that federal agencies collect, and those records are created with the expectation that they can be produced on demand. Most agencies do a reasonable job of making things overtly public, so you can just download them. But even if they don't, you can just FOIA them.
I mean #2 is obviously correct but that shouldn't make the public feel any better. Precisely because there are downsides (including legal and political) for announcing incidents they will only do so if they have to.
The family started a public GoFundme page. I think its clear that it is in the interest of both the family and labor at large to get stories about workplace injuries to the public.
> frankly nobody else's business, seeing as it's a private business
Uhh, wut? How many people have to die inside a private business before it does become other peoples business. And how do you know if you've got your blinders on.
>3) it's frankly nobody else's business, seeing as it's a private business
It is however a private business taking public money. If a government was pumping millions of dollars into a company that was producing an unsafe work environment resulting in injury and death (not saying that is the case) but I think the public has a right to know.
That's OSHA's job, not SpaceX's. And I don't think you can take a single incident and use that to determine if a workplace is safe or not. Especially considering the context of it being a rocket factory.
So, this basically serves no real purpose, other than keeping appearances and sending proper signals to bored strangers on the internet, affecting nothing at all.
???? Does a company need to make an announcement or public statement for every incident that occurs at work?
There are risks at every job. How is this even an article-worthy?