Workers facing lethal hazards were coerced back into dangerous tunnels

Evidence

A miner who closed a tunnel for lack of air was threatened with firing if he did not reopen it. On the day before he perished, one miner described the inhumane working conditions: “Man, they got us up there mining, and we ain’t got no air. I’m just scared to death to go to work because I’m just scared to death something bad is going to happen” (Tavernise, 2011). It did. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1816

Categorization

• QUESTION: A mine officially notorious for safety failures — where exactly did regulators’ ‘enemies’ framing leave individual accountability, and how did the company avoid criminal liability while employees faced it?
• DEEPTHINKING: The gap between workers’ voiced terror (‘scared to death to go to work’) and their continued presence, plus why the threat of firing outweighed the evident mortal risk, is a dense moral-psychology puzzle.