But one aspect of the Titanic disaster has only recently come to light, and that was a corporate trick monstrous in its callous disregard of its employees. Individual letters sent to crew that survived and to the families of crew members who died informed them that the employee had been fired in the early morning of April 15. The charge was “gross insubordination” for abandoning ship and “disembarking on the high seas.”
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By firing all of its crew, the corporation did not have to pay wages for the final voyage, pension claims, or any insurance policies of its employees, saving the company thousands and thousands of dollars. It sounds like the kind of heartless strategy that might be used in a massive corporate layoff today, but this happened 100 years ago.

(via Mary Scully and Michael Dale Kowalski, on facebook)