This guy will get 1 years salary as compensation after winning an unfair dismissal case, and then he will never work in rail again. He'll have to pay much of those winnings back to his legal team.
Over his life, he will almost certainly earn less.
Shouldn't have spoken out. Had he kept quiet, a crush would have happened, a few people would have been pushed off a platform and died under a train, and it would be a "tragedy" - but he'd get to keep his livelihood.
See Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton Thiokol who tried to blow the whistle on design flaws in the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters before the Challenger disaster:
> Boisjoly sent a memo describing the problem to his managers, but was apparently ignored.[8] Following several further memos, a task force was convened to investigate the matter, but after a month Boisjoly realized that the task force had no power, no resources, and no management support. In late 1985, Boisjoly advised his managers that if the problem was not fixed, there was a distinct chance that a shuttle mission would end in disaster. No action was taken.
> After President Ronald Reagan ordered a presidential commission to review the disaster, Boisjoly was one of the witnesses called. He gave accounts of how and why he felt the O-rings had failed, and argued that the caucus called by Morton Thiokol managers, which resulted in a recommendation to launch, was an "unethical decision-making forum resulting from intense customer intimidation."
> According to Boisjoly, Thiokol unassigned him from space work, and he was ostracized by his colleagues and managers.
I get the point you're trying to make here, and the sarcastic undertone, but I'd have issues living with myself if people died because of something that I was able to identify and that was preventable, and I did nothing.
The whole case strikes me as odd. Not only did the higher ups know about the problem, they also left a paper trail about keeping a lid on it and getting rid of the guy. This opens them up to a lot of scenarios, like:
- As demonstrated by this case, the information came out because of the wrongful termination
- If an accident had happened there's a fairly high chance that the investigators would uncover it, either because the engineer in question came forward or because they think they should have known about this, and cracks appear when they start asking questions.
An unspoken rule in a lot of fields is that you make sure that this kind of information never reaches the people that could be held liable for it. The people that are likely to be held responsible at least have to make it appear that they're not trying to suppress information like this. You quickly lose that ability if you actively try to get rid of people that tries to raise an issue. So they surround themselves with middle management that knows to not bring things up to them, without being explicitly told so.
The point is that there are many people sleeping fine or not, that kept their livelihood by not whistleblowing. solely due to the misaligned incentives and lack of accountability
The maximum unfair dismissal compensatory award (in the UK) is £105,707. Imagine if the maximum you had to pay if you stole from or defrauded your employer was £100k ...
The legislation tends to protect the paper entity 'the corporation' rather than the living breathing human.
> He'll have to pay much of those winnings back to his legal team.
I'm not sure about the UK, but in the USA, most lawyers would take this case speculatively and they would charge 30% of the winnings. It's an amount calibrated to just barely be acceptable but it typically isn't as bad as you suggest.
His "speaking out" achieved nothing getting him on TV.
He's no whistleblower with inside information. His engineering role is to design track geometry and nothing to do with stations or passengers so he has no professional authority to speak on the subject beyond that of an ordinary rail passenger.
The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who uses the station.
> The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who uses the station
Then you should be ashamed to even try to impune his credentials and say he had no "" professional authority"" to comment on the safety issue. What the fuck!
Being forced from your home and into moving abroad and into a new career might work out for him, but it's still seems like a lot of unnecessary turmoil for him and and his familybecause he chose to do the right thing.
Yeah, I mean, why even become an engineer? Why work in safety? Let's rubber-stamp everything the manager says it's good. It must be good, they said it! Think about your words the next time you or a relative or a friend is hurt or dies in a preventable accident. Thank god you're not an engineer.
This is going to surprise you, but having more money enables you to spend more of your finite lifespan working on your own initiatives/goals in life (whether they are financially rewarding or not) without needing to persuade someone wealthier than you that they want what you want and are willing to pay to do it.
Ah well I guess I don't understand the relevance of that. Even if you for example have infinite time, doesn't it still make sense a person might be motivated to attain wealth in order to give themselves more freedom in how they spend their life w/o needing to consider affording the survival needs?
Sorry. I was talking about this example where the person choose to risk a financial loss in favor of performing a more virtuous act for the society. He prefered to live a life with integrity over money.
Over his life, he will almost certainly earn less.
Shouldn't have spoken out. Had he kept quiet, a crush would have happened, a few people would have been pushed off a platform and died under a train, and it would be a "tragedy" - but he'd get to keep his livelihood.