Who Will You Sacrifice for a Soundbite?
Jun 21st, 2011 | 6 responses
Several days ago I began writing a well balanced article about right wing ideas to dissolve, curtail or under-fund agencies (who knows actually) like the EPA and OSHA. Regulations are costing us jobs they say. They say the huge pile of private capital on the sidelines would come rushing to create jobs if only for those burdensome government regulations. I planned to point out in my column how a 50 state solution could be counterproductive economically. I wanted to explain how a 50 state solution would actually cost jobs. I planned to tell you, in my expert opinion, being an environmental professional in the transportation field for over 15 years; the country needed nationwide certainty in its environmental and workplace regulations. I intended to approach the subject from a purely economic position.
I won’t do that now.
Yesterday, my daughter’s Papa received a diagnosis we all dread. His doctor told him he had Mesothelioma. He is a good man by most people’s standards. He worked over 50 years and provided a good living for his family. He raised two sons. He also raised a daughter which I married. Two of his kids went to college. He has two grandchildren one of which is my daughter. He goes to church most Sundays. He pays his taxes. He is not sophisticated by his own admission. He is a veteran and loves his country. He depended on that country to protect him in the workplace.
He is no different than most of the other 3,400 people who received a cancer diagnosis yesterday except for one thing. His disease was a preventable man made disease. After all the political spin and corporate hand wringing, his disease represents a gamble by his former employer. The employer decided rolling the dice with his life was cheaper than the cost of retrofits. Oddly enough, that dice roll was the employer’s fiduciary responsibility. Shareholders could have sued the corporation if they proceeded with the retrofit in some cases.
So it was just an unfortunate accident. No one is to blame, right?
The dirty little corporate history of asbestos and Mesothelioma is interesting until it happens to you. By the early 1970s there was pretty convincing evidence Mesothelioma was caused by breathing asbestos fibers. Companies knew this because they were already being sued and were losing/settling. Knowing this linkage and the fact they were probably killing their workers, many waited until they were forced to protect workers from breathing asbestos fibers in 1984. Even having the information, companies had a responsibility to shareholders which trumped their human responsibility. As regulators negotiated the well-organized and funded resistance to any regulation, people died. According to some websites, as many as 500,000 people died during this unregulated period.
The same game is being played again.
Michele Bachman (R-MN), a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, and others are making great sounding political hay at our government watchdogs’ expense. They tell us the EPA, OSHA and others are government monsters devouring our economic engine. They call government watchdogs incompetent, lazy and careless when they find rules on compact florescent light bulbs. After they find a few silly rules like the light bulbs they use the information to advocate trashing the whole system. They tell us corporations will do the right thing or the markets will punish them. They wrap up weakened, under-funded and ineffectual oversight in a blanket of soothing states rights or federalism and tell us eliminating agencies will create jobs. They say stuff like this when people all over this country have been without jobs for years. I have been an environmental professional working for the corporations she calls “small businesses” and I can assure you the deck is already stacked in the favor of the money.
Using government agencies like the EPA and OSHA for appealing conservative soundbites is, in my view, the height of immorality. Politicians who pride themselves on their morality saying these things when people are out of work is especially immoral. I am afraid the siren song of less government is making some of us forget the important work government regulators do to protect us. It is easy to forget when you are unemployed. Do really want to reduce a system which is apparently woefully inadequate. How much deregulation can we stand and what is the corresponding death toll? Just tell us, we can handle the truth. Do we really want leaders who think some of us should be sacrificed on the alter of economic growth? It’s a hell of a way to reduce the unemployment rate. I, for one, would like to live in a country where people who work for a living can depend on the regulatory cop on the beat. A country where good people like my father-in-law can punch the clock knowing they are not trading their lives for a paycheck.
6 Responses to “Who Will You Sacrifice for a Soundbite?”
I thought that fiduciary responsibility had to include both sides of the equation. Aren’t the companies going to lose more money dealing with all of the cases?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are liability limits on lawsuits, which is how the law can tilt protection away from the individual worker.
Prof,
The companies basically gambled that the lawsuits they would eventually have to pay would cost less than the profits made from pretending their product didn’t kill people. Further, no doubt the executives figured they would long be retired by the time the costs got to be too high. This is how the game is played. You use your money to capture (aka buy off) regulators, put out fake studies and a media disinformation campaign, and fight regulation. This is because short term profits are more important to executives than the long term best interests of the company or the people you are hurting. This is nothing new. In Haiti, the French sugarcane farmers calculated that it was cheaper to work their slaves to death (literally) and import new slaves, than to provide enough food, medicine, and rest for them to survive. In China, they spiked milk with poison to boost the protein levels, killing and sickening children. People will do ANYTHING, no matter how EVIL, if they think it will make a profit. Any system that depends on business people to do the right thing, without the threat of force, will fail to protect the public from serious harm.
I’m not expecting the company to act in the best interests of the people. I wouldn’t have mentioned civil courts if I trusted the executives. I just don’t expect the regulators to do so either.
The beauty of our civil court system is the jurors. In fact, I would say that jury duty is a more important civil right than voting. Unlike regulators, jurors are hard to buy off, and hard to stop. The company may have more money, but the other side always gets their say. The decision is normally made in public.
Regulations can be made to favor certain companies, and administrations can purposely corrupt, or hold back what the regulators do, as in the recent financial crisis. Often, the regulators turn out to be executives of the very business that they’re supposed to regulate, as with deep water drilling. There are even cases where the companies, such as drug makers, want to be regulated, because it exempts them from lawsuits. Obviously, the courts scare businesses more than regulators.
Of course, that only applies if the courts haven’t been limited. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. The civil court system was one of the great advances in civilization, right up there with the concepts of transparency and the rule of law. They should be vigorously defended.
Regulators and regulations are much easier to manipulate, and harder to scrutinize.
ProfElwood,
Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you.
To answer your question, it is true CEOs must balance both sides of the equation. But as ZZZZ has pointed out, sadly, workers frequently lose in “time value of money” and “cost benefit” analysis. By pushing costs down the road, immediate profits can be realized and who knows what tomorrow will bring.
In the case of Mesothelioma however, the payouts have been much greater. Meso has become a cottage industry for law firms and a study in torts. Sadly, again the injured estates are awarded a few bucks as a class through legal action in which law firms profit most. The injured worker still pays with his life. Free market worshipers are right; many of the companies which used asbestos recklessly are now defunct due to the class action.
That being said, I guess the thrust of the article, “politicians who say (infer) over-regulation is to blame for unemployment,” is just wrong. Those same politicians who say these things are asking for votes (support) from the people who have the most to lose.
“politicians who say (infer) over-regulation is to blame for unemployment,”
…another pet peeve of mine. Quite often, we’re not dealing with over- or under- regulation, but the wrong kinds of regulation, if it’s even regulation (which is supposed to be consistent rules, not arbitrary decisions based on political power) at all. The calls for more or less regulation, instead of asking for specific rules, rings pretty hollow.
Yeah, the partisan choice either seems to be that all regulations are good and cause no problems or that we should simply trust business to do the right thing.
The main article is as poignant in describing one person’s tragedy as it is poor in actually addressing the issue. It shows quite effectively need to for _one_ type of regulation to prevent real suffering. But does this mean that all regulations are equally needed? Does it mean that even needed regulation, like that of asbestos, could be done more efficiently?
However, it seems this debate is going to be another “regulations good” vs “regulations bad” kind of debate the partisan two party system gives us. Some of us think we can do better than the same old partisan choices.