Labor Standards, Oversight, and the Corporation
For me, the past week has been filled with commentary on the lack of oversight and standards on the part of our government. It started with watching Whiskey Romeo Zulu, an Argentine film about corruption in that country’s discount airline business. This seems quite timely considering the current controversy over Southwest Airline’s trouble with inspecting airplanes. It was a excellent film based on a true story and the lead role of Enrique Piñeyro was actually played by Enrique Piñeyro. How’s that for realism. It served to illustrate how corporate greed and motivations, when unchecked, can lead to great harms to society. We must always be vigilant, especially in this age of cost-cutting where often the first corner’s cut are those regarding safety, the environment and workers rights.
Later that evening I watched the investigative magazine Frontline’s episode: A Dangerous Business. This episode chronicalled the labor, safety and environmental offenses of a steel pipe manufacturer, McWane. The original report in addition to the reporting by the NY Times back in 2003 resulted in civil and criminal litigation against the company, managers, and supervisors. Supposedly McWane has cleaned up its act in the aftermath of a situation where even the Bush administration was forced to take action because the grievances were so bad. The company’s safety practices were responsible for over 5 deaths in its plants and its environmental practices were responsible for serious pollution violations in the Delaware River and elsewhere. The story illustrated how most worker safety regulations limit penalties to misdemeanors, while environmental penalties can result in million of dollars in fines and years in prison. Both types of crimes should result in strict penalties for corporations. Both result in deaths and long-term consequences for our communities and society.
The week finished off with Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS on Friday night. This seemed to be a repeat, but nontheless it was an hour interview with Henry Waxman (D-CA) discussing all the happenings in the House Oversight Committee over the last year. Everything from Iraq reconstruction, political activities in GSA (Doan and the Hatch Act), and the use of private security contractors (Blackwater) was discussed. It was depressing in seeing all that is wrong with the system right now, but it also underlined the point that the President is such an important individual, especially in an environment when the Congress seems to be willing to cede its oversight responsibility to the executive. Waxman at times seemed like he didn’t want to take responsibility for having to be the one who initiates the changes. He was aghast congress allowed this to occur, but it begged the question: aren’t you a member of congress and why didn’t you introduce legislation to address all these concerns? Now he did in some cases and his oversight activities now are greatly appreciated, but I feel like many representatives seem so surprised in what is happening in their legislative body. You don’t need to be in the majority to be vocal about preventing these types of activities.
March 15th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
dude, the McWane story has nothing to do with the bush administration. that story began before bush took office, and involved people who were never chosen by anyone linked to bush.
secondly, the reason that the environmental, health and safety fines related to notices of violation don’t amount to much, is because they’re already monumentally larger then those imposed by the countries we compete with. we entered into crappy trade agreements that set us in competition with other countries with no OSHA and no EPA and we’re already in a losing situation. congress knows that they can’t make it worse. if we’re going to give more power to OSHA and EPA, we first need to break the current trade agreements and establish new ones that force competing countries to mirror our environmental, health and safety requirements. that’s the only way that america can stay strong. production is what made this country number 1, all the production we’re sending to china is what’s setting them on the path to surpassing us as the number one economy.
and about the south west thing… you’re bitching about their planes not being inspected frequently enough, but you’d be bitching if they grounded them, and you’d be bitching if they hired more inspectors and raised their prices. nobody got hurt here, don’t take it out of perspective here tough guy…
March 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Crazy Dave,
The McWane situation did in fact have something to do with the Bush Administration as it took the dumping incident in the Delaware river and the Publication of the NYtimes article and the Frontline episode for the Justice Department to take action. Bush’s OSHA appointee is on film basically saying they’ll do nothing.
On standards, sure they should be universal, but the lack of existing standards in other places is no excuse for poor standards here.
And Frankly I’ll take no plane over one that will break up in flight or have other serious structural or mechanical issues…. You think the fact they ignored an FAA directive for years and the FAA allowed it to happen is acceptable?