You are correct but you have to survive not being paid long enough to win the court case. Sometimes even when people know their rights they are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot risk being fired.
For some families, that's the reality, not being paid means no housing, no food, no medications. For people who have dangerous debt, not having available money could be a threat to their life.
Obviously your life is priceless, but we've developed a system where you simply can't live without money, and put people in circumstances where the money in their hand now is worthy more to their survival today than twice as much money in their hand tomorrow.
That's a windfall payment and one less mouth to feed in the long run. Morbid, Yes, it's not the best long term solution but anything you can do to survive true poverty never is.
What's to say losing your job doesn't have 3 of you dying from exposure in your car a week after you're evicted?
If you haven't lived the trauma of life and death poverty, I'm glad, but I don't think it's something that can be fully explained.
Trauma changes the way your brain processes risk, people living in chronic poverty don't have the same risk assessment framework as you.
The part of your workday that you're most likely to die during is your commute, especially if you drive, which is not covered by DoL or OSHA.
ETA: Okay, if you're a crab fisherman or salvage diver maybe your job is more dangerous. But for almost every job I can think of driving to work is more dangerous than everything you do.
The part of your workday that you’re most likely to die during is your commute, especially if you drive, which is not covered by DoL or OSHA.
FWIW this is because of DoL and OSHA making sure that once you get to work they have to keep you reasonably safe. This was not always the case in the past.