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Is it a problem that unions have the power to stop the work for safety reasons? On the contrary, I believe that this is a necessity if you want to preserve the
by marvin 13y ago
Is it a problem that unions have the power to stop the work for safety reasons? On the contrary, I believe that this is a necessity if you want to preserve the value of human life under dangerous work.
I am currently reading about the history of the North Sea subsea workers during the great petroleum expansion from 1960-2000, and the safety culture which followed from American drilling companies was just atrocious. Divers would be forced into lethal working conditions in situations where it was completely out of proportion to the importance of the work. 16-hour shifts under water, aggressive decompression tables which frequently led to both acute diving sickness and long-term delibitating injury, in addition to frequent accidents. (An "accident" under water usually means death). One time they sent down a guy who had been picked up from a pub three hours prior, who started the dive by puking in front of the whole crew. He died.
So tl;dr, giving unions the power to temporarily stop the work for safety concerns is vital if you want to make sure that the workers mostly get home safely.
- e12e 13y agoYou might enjoy "Gangster Capitalism: The United States and the Global Rise of Organized Crime": http://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Capitalism-United-Globalization-Organized/dp/0786716711 http://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Capitalism-United-Globalizati...
- jacques_chester 13y agoI'm not saying that it's good or bad. I'm saying that from the POV of production, a stoppage is a stoppage, regardless of what caused it. If you improve safety by removing humans from dangerous situations, you reduce interruptions to operations. For a company at the scale of Rio, that's millions of dollars per day.
- marvin 13y agoNo question that it's a good idea to get people out of harms' way. But on principle, I think that the "ethics-neutral" view of "a stoppage is a stoppage" has caused a lot of injury and death over the years. You can say that this view isn't good or bad, but if it is applied to human workers the result will definitely be bad.
- jacques_chester 13y agoWhat causes injury and death is defective safety systems and poor safety culture. This is true of any dangerous enterprise, whether operated for profit or not.
- marvin 13y agoYou'll see defective safety systems and poor safety culture a lot more often in unregulated, for-profit businesses than in union- or government-regulated businesses. I don't think you'd need a scientific study to verify this claim. I mean, the whole point of regulation is usually to improve safety.