DOGE and safety: Eliminate OSHA

Welcome to the 48th edition of Safe For Work. Today is the release of the workplace risk calculator, then some scifi from Matt Cantor inspired by the possibilities of DOGE, and a new release from SFW Films.

Workplace Safety Calculator

Just released today, the worker safety calculator let’s you see your chances of dying at work today

Simpson’s Mr. Burns vs Jetson’s Mr. Spacely

Matt Cantor

The payout for wrongful death here is a little shy of one-hundred-thousand dollars. Nobody who talks about this quite remembers what the exact number is or how it was settled upon, or by whom.

A hopeful guess is that someone with something next to a heart said something like “Well, that’s about two-and-a-half years of wages if things stay steady on the market for two-and-a-half years,” and then they said something like “Surely, that will enough time for the family to recover from the lost income. Two-and-a-half years will be enough time for a stay-at-home spouse to find a job or get remarried. It will be enough time for a working spouse to get a promotion. People will need a little time to make up the difference, let’s give them that time. Plus the cost of the funeral, of course.”

A less hopeful guess is that someone with something next to a law-degree said “When they complain, we can just tell them ‘well, we already gave you nearly a hundred thousand dollars-- what more do you want?’”

Mitchell really doesn’t know which of those two things it was, or if it was a third thing entirely. It’s already been different at the different companies he’s worked for. Here at Mensin Industrial, it’s something somewhere between ninety-five and ninety-eight thousand dollars. Back when he was working at Gerson’s, it was one-hundred-fifteen thousand, or thereabouts. Before that, at Yanny Manufacturing, it was fifty-six-thousand on the dot-- he remembers that one, specifically. He remembers seeing payouts of that.

“Thank goodness for you,” the Supervising Manager had told him. “Thank goodness for you. You really came here just in time, you know that?”

“Yes, I know that,” Mitchell had said back. “I can see that.”

He’d tried to reply as though he was laughing, without actually laughing. He’d tried to reply as though he was on the inside, like he was on the team, because he really hadn’t known how to reply at all to something like that, and that had seemed like a way that might have worked.

“Really,” the Supervising Manager had said-- a man with a pair of glasses on his face, and a second pair of glasses tucked into his breast-pocket-- Mitchell remembers that, noticing that, thinking about that as the two of them had been talking-- “Really, imagine if you had come here a week later. Man, just imagine.”

“Yeah,” Mitchell had nodded back.

Maybe the man had two different pairs of glasses for reading and for everything else-- people sometimes did that, didn’t they? Or maybe he lost or broke his glasses so often that it made sense to always carry around a spare, right at hand? Mitchell remembers wondering, right there in the middle of the conversation, if Yanny Manufacturing offered good vision insurance-- and then he’d wondered about what a funny thing that was, to wonder about, in the middle of a conversation like this-- and then he’d laughed slightly, finally, nevermind not wanting to actually laugh, and then the Supervising Manager had laughed, too, and it had all gone well enough, walking away from that.

Walking away from that, he thinks to himself as he flips a few switches on the control-panel. The heavy machinery of the plant’s macro-lathe whirs into life. Fourteen-inch blades gnashing and pulling and singing-- oh, the way the machines sing, after the modifications. Something to do with the way that the slightly more serrated blades rip through the air-- just a different resonance, just a nicer resonance. Mitchell tells himself that the resonance is why he does this work-- why people pay him to do this work, company after company after company. Yanny Manufacturing had given him a ten-thousand dollar bonus out of all the money they’d saved, last-minute, nick-of-time-- and they hadn’t had to do that, and something about the fact that they’d chosen to do that had left him up late at night in the bathroom for a few days, staring into the mirror and digging his fingernails into his palms.

“You don’t get vision insurance, working freelance,” he had told himself. “What am I going to do if I get cataracts?-- there’s nothing to do but save.”

You have to take every job. You have to hold onto every opportunity.

Mitchell takes the large raw he bought from the grocery-store this morning-- paid for by the company, of course-- and it’s a shame, he thinks, as he’s carrying it down from the control-room to the factory-floor, this is a real nice cut of meat-- and then he thinks to himself about what a funny thing that is to be thinking to himself while doing something like this, and he laughs, but the Supervising Manager of this plant here at Mensin Industrial really couldn’t possibly have any idea why, could he?-- because he’s laughing, too-- and you wouldn’t be laughing, too, if you knew why Mitchell is laughing, would you?

A hopeful guess is that you wouldn’t.

“Here goes,” says Mitchell, when he’s back to a straight face. He stretches out the large bit of meat towards the raging blades of the macro-lathe-- closer, closer, closer-- until, of course, the steel snags them with a slight jerk-- and for a moment, just a moment, it seems like the machine will just clog on the suddenly-shredded meat-- it’ll just stay stuck here, halfway, with its deep gashes and twisted-around bits-- but only for a moment, only for a moment.

But then, before Mitchell can even think about trying to pull it out, which any person would do if it was their arm, for instance, the newly-replaced blades, with a different texture and geometry-- subtle, but substantial, oh, how they sing!-- they tear the meat straight out of Mitchells hand and the rest of the way into the machine-- it’s only a quick reflex, and having done this a few times before, that makes him let go of it in time.

A few seconds pass as the macrolathe chews the meat and the ghost of whatever else might have been attached to it into thin strips and scraps and chunks of bone all over the floor and the insides. It’ll be a slight chore to clean, but that’s for someone else to do, and the payout for Wrongful Death from Mensin Industrial is only a bit less than a hundred-thousand dollars.

Grievous Bodily Injury on the other hand, that’s well over half a million a pop. Medical bills. Physical therapy. Workers comp. Psychological treatments, these days.

Better to finish the job. Or, more accurately, better to make sure the job is finished.

“Fantastic,” says the Supervising Manager. He’s already on his way back up to the control-room to turn the machine back off so someone can come in and clean it. “Absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much.”

“Yeah,” says Mitchell.

“I mean, thank goodness we’ve finally gone and gotten this done,” says the Supervising Manager. “We’ve been one of the last companies to do it, you know?-- you didn’t hear this from me, yada-yada, but honestly, we’ve always been slow to get with the times, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Mitchell.

“We’ve gotten lucky so far,” says the Supervising Manager. “But you never know, right? Better safe than sorry.”

SFW Films presents: Through Glass Flame

In the shadow of the sun, one man faces the mysteries of the universe—and the devastating power of a star. Set aboard a solar observatory on the edge of the photosphere, Through Glass and Flame explores humanity's fragile relationship with the forces we cannot control. Haunted by a solar catastrophe that destroyed half of Earth, Dr. Hayes is tasked with unraveling the sun's secrets. But as he whispers into the glow of its fiery light, he realizes the answers he seeks may come at a cost.

Adapted from the short story in issue 40.

See you next week as we make some predictions and then wrap things up with a year end review.

Stay safe.