Santo_MShin

"Roger, I'm headed out. The meeting's supposed to start in about fifteen. Do me a favor; try to keep the hotheads away from it." "I'll try," the voice at the other end of the line said doubtfully. "But the ruling on the accident came back this morning -" "Operator error. I saw." M’Shin's tone could have cut duranium. "I don't blame anyone for being upset, believe me. Tell them we're handling it, and ask them to hold off for a while until we've exhausted the legal channels." "That'll buy you a day or two, at most," Roger warned. M’Shin took advantage of the fact that the link was audio only to let his head fall back wearily against his chair. "I know. But even a couple of days will help. We have to keep it calm and rational, Roger. The supposedly 'neutral' mediators they sent are Starfleet. We don't need to give them any more reasons to side with management then they'll already have." There was a long pause. "I'll do what I can," Roger said finally. "Out." A soft chime marked the closing of the comm line, and M’Shin sighed. Of all the days for the investigating panel to hand out a ruling on the accident at the Korol processing plant, it had to be the day of the first meeting. Naturally. They must have known what the reaction would be, and been counting on the (righteous, in M’Shin's opinion) public anger to weaken the position of the miners in Starfleet's eyes. The riots were a bit much, perhaps, but he could understand why they were happening. For the last two months -- no, further back, if he thought on it, just exacerbated by the new rulings two months ago. For the last few months, then, matters had been getting steadily worse. There had been jokes at first that the operation had been acquired by a particularly greedy Ferengi, but all the humor had long since gone out of the situation. The additional security procedures had evoked no more than quiet grumbling; many of the long-term workers were annoyed to be 'treated like spies', but everyone was on edge because of the attacks on other sites. The additional production quotas had made sense, after other facilities were put out of commission by those attacks, either temporarily or permanently. But the extended hours to meet those quotas had gone down harder, and the cut corners in safety procedures had turned the grumbling into a dull roar. The first resulting accident was like match to tinder. And hard on the heels of that had come what the management called "Crisis Directives" and everyone else "Bloodsucking Exploitation." Higher production levels. The excess to be earmarked for Starfleet and Federation emergency agencies' use, at pre-crisis costs. The (slim) profits from those sales not to be shared among the workers as was standard procedure; no one had yet said where the funds were going. Worse, profits from the excess not taken by Starfleet -- sold at the new, high market rates -- not shared either. Continuing accidents from over-hasty operations, and management doing everything in its power to avoid paying its fair share of both cleanup costs and support to injured workers or to the dead workers' familes. 'Operator error' was their new favorite phrase, neatly absolving them of responsibility for anything that remotely connected to machinery. Nevermind that they insisted on skipping proper sounding and stability tests before tapping new veins, and were skimping on shoring and emergency forcefield generators. It was far more likely (in their opinion) that a twenty-year veteran of the operation plowed the resonance-extractor into a wall at speeds high enough to collapse the whole section of cave. Obviously. Shaking his head, he gathered up the various documents for the meeting, slipping them into his slim briefcase. Hopefully the Starfleet negotiators would be more reasonable, but he didn't hold out much hope for that.