Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Daily Outrage

Imagine this headline -- CEO of Company Responsible for 11 Deaths Receives Six-Figure Safety Bonus. You say you missed that in this morning's paper? Didn't hear it on the evening news? I'm sure you didn't, because I just made it up -- the headline, that is, not the fact.

The CEO of TransOcean, whose Deep Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year, killing 11 workers, received $374,000 above salary for his company's safety record. A presidential commission determined that the explosion resulted from "lax standards," but according to TransOcean, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record."

As Laura Flanders put it, "Eleven workers dead, untold volumes of sea-life poisoned and more than 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the sea.  If that's what an historically good year for safety looks like at TransOcean, I'd hate to see a bad year."

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