Ebenezer Scrooge era um bom patrão

No seguimento do Conto de Natal, escrito pelo BrainstormZ , deixo-vos este artigo que lança um olhar diferente sobre a personagem de Dickens que muitas vezes tem servido como sumo exemplo da maldade capitalista (via Las Vegas Sun):

Don't believe all of that bah-humbug that Ebenezer Scrooge was an unfair and uncaring employer.
It can be argued, a UNLV professor says, that the Charles Dickens' character from the Yuletide classic "A Christmas Carol" paid a fair wage and provided decent benefits, at least for the era when the story takes place -- the early 19th century.###
(...)The arguments supporting that Scrooge was a fair employer, Weinstein says, include:

* He paid his accountant Bob Cratchit 15 shillings, six pence, a week -- a prevailing wage of the early 1800s for a small business such as Scrooge & Marley.

* Although Scrooge complained about it, he gave Cratchit Christmas Day off with pay at a time long before most employers gave their workers holidays off.

* Although Scrooge was concerned that he was wasting a lump of coal by allowing Cratchit to put it in the office furnace to keep warm, many businesses at that time, "especially the factories where children were forced to work," did not even have furnaces.

* Although readers might feel sorry that Cratchit had to work by candlelight, there was little Scrooge could do about that because Thomas Edison's lightbulb was still about 75 years away from being invented. Candlelight was the only way to work after it got dark in the days long before the 40-hour workweek became the norm in the workplace.

Weinstein also noted that while readers are saddened that Cratchit's son, Tiny Tim, is dying and his father cannot afford health care for him, "health insurance was an alien concept in those days."