The point is that you make it cost the individual when he puts others at risk. The new worker is still liable for the same things the old one is; if there's a 30% chance of critical failure resulting in deaths that would cause him to suffer an equitable punishment then I really doubt he's going to "sign off" on it.
Beside thinking of obscure hypothetical cases in which a company or superior doesn't care about safety or security at all (or the fact that they'd also be punished), is there an objection to this system? I mean, it's worked from time immemorial. We're just too stupid to employ it in our modern corporate structure.
Obviously this system wouldn't work if those with authority are enforcing a lack of safety and good work rather than enforcing safety and good work (which is what you just suggested), but that's silly. There are several objections,
#1 being: if those in authority within a company or corporate structure don't want safety and good work, then having a system of responsibility is still important. No engineer is going to put his life on the line to OK a project that can result in deaths and equitable punishment for him. Equitable punishment in the case of mass murder by neglect likely being death.Wouldn't you rather work in a burger joint than bet your life on bad odds for a paycheck? Or even decently good odds, repeatedly during your career?
#2 is that there is little to no impetus for being an idiot once you are responsible for the consequences. Corporate is demanding that you cut corners fora little more profit or they'll fire you? Each person on the chain of command is directly responsible, and all orders for constructions and large projects are heavily documented. They're not likely to fire you, and if they do then who would want the job? Not only that, but everything in relation to these projects is always heavily documented and you can take them to court, collecting a hefty sum or even lifetime pension, not to mention that they'd be penalized for criminal negligence and several other broken laws and statutes.
This is the sort of thing our court system and laws are supposed to be doing. Right now they are focused on redistributing money in some sort of pseudo-socialistic welfare-healthcare-nicesoundingwordforbadfiscalpolicythatputsusindebt system. They're supposed to protect the rights of individuals and organizations, while maintaining a stable free market economy through regulation and court intervention.
To address your points paragraph by paragraph:
1. The point I put earlier said that in case you refused to work, the company could fire you as an example to the rest of the workers. I think you're underestimating the fear of losing their jobs that most people have, especially in this dire economic situation. Also, I doubt that most oil well managers understand the workings of a drilling rig intimately, otherwise why would they have to hire engineers? I don't think that engineers are required to sign every new proposal, merely inform their superiors if something goes wrong.
2. Believe it or not, most companies would not hesitate to pay employees minimum wage and send them to the Arctic without gear if they thought it would increase profits. A company is built around profit - that's the very definition of one, and it's only the laws that prevent them from rampantly abusing human rights. Even with laws in place, companies still do all kinds of unsafe work knowingly.
3. I wasn't suggesting that companies were trying to actively enforce a lack of safety, it merely comes about as a result of the drive for profit. Sorry if I was unclear in my earlier statements.
4. People will want money less than companies do, but they still want it all the same. Besides, the odds we're talking about here aren't that big, maybe about 0.1% of accidents every try. Looking at the sequence of events leading up to this event, they might have done it a few million times on oil wells all over the Gulf, and it was just this time that they got unlucky.
5. Unfortunately for you, the documentation in this case is likely to be kept (and altered) by the company, rather than an impartial government agency. It is only in the case of lawsuit or accident that the government agencies come around to check. If you were to keep your own documentation, it would hardly be admissible as court evidence, unfair as that may sound. Besides, multimillion-dollar companies like BP can afford to hire whole teams of lawyers and wait out the case, meaning that unless you too are a millionaire, you are unlikely to not go bankrupt during the proceedings.
5. I actually agree with you on this point.
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Topic: There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - One Year Later (Read 110585 times)