> Where do you draw personal responsibility?
That depends on the power imbalance.
The power dynamics in a job market are not symmetrical. The employees and employers are not on equal footing and don't wield the same power. The power imbalance becomes more pronounced the lower you go in the pecking order, with blue-collar laborers being the lowest rung.
In short, the more an employer is in position to exploit their workers, the more responsibility they should bear. That's one of two ways to prevent exploitation. The other way is to shift the power balance back, by organizing into unions, which is why Amazon, Starbucks, and similar companies have been engaging in union-busting quite a lot.
> We don't ban jobs like roughnecks and our culture of rewarding working too hard is a problem.
That's one part of the cultural problem. Another important part is the constant indoctrination, from a rather young age, against workers' rights and in favor of exploitation.
That's how we end up with so many people who are biased towards corporations and always looking for ways to absolve them from their wrongdoings.
> There is no political statement besides the always work harder ethic which I don't agree with.
Of course there's a political statement there. The political statement is right there in assigning disproportionate blame to the worker who has repeatedly requested to be treated in a way that would not lead to his death, and not enough blame to the employer who refused to consider those requests.
That's what politics are -- or should be -- really about: real lives of real people. We're all used to looking at politics as machinations of the political class, but that's not how things are supposed to be.