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Employee commits suicide after MongoDB fired her during mental health leave
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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In my experience, when you bring up FMLA, then you're going to be fired.
Its a well-intentioned protection, but not enough legal teeth. Corporations have learned how to work around it.
This problem will continue to get worse until workers gain power in our society. Mass unionization or socialist revolution would solve the problem; both are very unlikely.
All that is left is violence; may a thousand Luigi's bloom.
this must be an american thing.
Yes we have no mandatory paid breaks. If you get a holiday you are lucky. We have no medical protection. Few states have mandatory accrual of some days off or sick day. It's horrible here.
Mandatory paid breaks are definitely a thing here. CA is 10 minutes every 4 hours. FMLA and workers comp cover medical protection. I can't remember the last time I even pretended to consider a job without holiday pay and vacation, though i agree they should be mandatory and not optional. Where exactly are you working with conditions like you describe?
it really is wild how toothless american labor is
"American Labor" once threw bombs at police and fought actual battles with the National Guard, it's been a long war and the capitalists have used every means in the last 100 years to bring labor to where it is today. We live under the most sophisticated police surveillance state with a global military with what seems like endless resources. It's not so much labor has no teeth but we are gripped at the throat by capital. We can fight back, we still have the means.
so, let's just say that theoretically there came to be one of those unicorn morale billionaires. someone who came from nothing but eventually came to learn how this whole fucked system came about, then exploited it themselves to grab as much $ as they can (ie. just yoinked $ from the stock market during a crash...about as morale as making $ you didnt work for gets) but they didn't let it corrupt them nor get distracted by the bread & circus.
an actual proper robinhood type, that just has effectively infinite $ to throw into the Great Game, how would this person go about affecting as much pro-labor change in the ol' USA?
to me, the most impactful area appears to be media control. murdoch as his fingers in damn near everything, the propagandas grip undeniable once you finally become aware of it. various other far right/lib billionaires either outright own or otherwise heavily influence damn near every media company, to include NPR. the only mainstream outlet that even remotely acknowledges/covers the genocide in palestine (though still refuses to call it a genocide) is AP news.
Land of the free (to be exploited by a rich white minority)
Supposedly theres a general mass strike planned for 2028. I'll be participating as a UAW member.
Over 2 years away? What will that even do?
This is always what bothered me about being American.
We protest on convenient days because most people can't be bothered on work days.
Without work, we lose our job. Without job, no healthcare or house or food or any kind of assistance. No unions to really speak of and no safety net. System has us by the balls.
They say 36 hours without food causes total upheaval, it seems like that is what will be necessary for an acute change.
It's been in planning for awhile, but mostly the wait is for getting more workplaces in the US unionized to participate. Imo, we would need to convince key industries that could actually shut down the United States, it would be like: airline pilots/stewardesses, truck drivers, railroad workers, teachers, natural gas/electric workers, and health care workers. I don't know how progress is going, but even just 3 of those groups would be enough to cause a halt in what's, best case scenario, a more fragile administration.
Keep the cogs placated.
My body is ready.