Eye Opener

When all of the information became available regarding my daughters accident it was quite an eye opener. I was shocked and appalled to say the least. I had no idea how many rights have been taken away from the worker and how many laws employers are allowed to break, at the risk of their employees' safety, without repercussion. In my frustration I began to talk to people and found that I was not the only one shocked. I figured I would share my findings with you.

My daughter was burned on her face, neck, chest, both arms, both hands and fingers. She has 1st through 3rd degree burns. This accident was caused because she was using faulty equipment, the company knew the equipment was faulty and refused to replace it. They didn't want to spend the money. When the accident happened there was no first aid kit in the store. The company also was aware of this, the store manager had offered to purchase one with her own money and the headquarters told her no it wasn't a priority. There was also no cold running water due to a problem with the pipes that had been ongoing for months. Headquarters didn't feel this was a priority either.

Now, perhaps these issues could be more understandable if this was a small company who was working to fix all of these codes violations and just didn't have the money to have it all taken care of yet. It's not. This is a major fast food chain that most of us have visited many times in our lives. The major age group working in this facility is under the age of 20. Our children work there as their first jobs in high school.

Do you know there is nothing I can do to make them follow the law and have those things fixed? Even though each one of those issues is a violation of the law. Due to a law that was passed protecting corporations who have a workmans compensation carrier they can not be prosecuted even if they are breaking the law and causing unnecessary injuries to their employees.

It is important that you understand I had absolutely no interest what so ever in pursuing a law suit when this injury happened. I only wanted to make sure that my daughter was taken care of. It wasn't until I found out that even after this accident happened they had a 16 year old employee rig the piece of equipment that broke and caused my daughters injuries back together and continue to use it. None of the codes violations have been corrected and they are continuing to put the rest of the children employed there at risk of serious injury. It was then that I contacted an attorney and asked how I can make them follow the law. It was then that I was informed I cant. I was informed this by several attorneys. There is nothing we can do to make them follow the law, there is nothing we can do to make them keep these children safe from unnecessary injury. Due to this wonderful law that was passed to protect them they are, for the most part, exempt from following the law themselves.

What a wonderful world we live in.