April 5, 2011 6:06 AM

Today's "WTF??" moment: Hey, it's not like they killed hundreds or anything....

Corporation, n., An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

  • Ambrose Bierce

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

  • Edmund Burke

There’s stupid, there’s immoral…and then there’s the face-palm-inducing news that Transocean Ltd. (yes, the same folks who brought you last April’s Deepwater Horizon disaster) is paying bonuses to its top executives. And they’re not getting just any old garden-variety, we-made-a-shitload-of-money-this-year bonuses. No, they’re getting bonuses for making 2010 “best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”.

In what rational world could killing 11 workers possibly be considered part of the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history?” Transocean Ltd’s policy says that safety accounts for 1/4 of an executive’s bonus. So…killing “only” 11 workers constitutes a good year (What would they call a “bad” year?)? Try selling that insensitive load of crap to the families of the 11 workers who roasted to death on the Deepwater Horizon. I can think of nothing more disrespectful to the memory of the workers and their families than paying safety bonuses such as this to executives. Whatever the criteria may or may not be, there’s nothing about a preventable disaster that needlessly cost 11 men their lives that could possibly be thought to justify paying bonuses to anyone. For ANY reason.

Evidently the message being sent here is that the lives of the workers killed on the Deepwater Horizon are of so little value that they don’t really even factor into year-end results. I’m sorry, but if I ran a business that lost 11 workers to an “accident” caused by decisions made by executives looking to cut corners and save money, I’d be (figuratively, of course) falling on my sword. Then again, perhaps my curse lies in having a functional conscience.

I’m not certain under what standards a year in which 11 workers were killed (and the Gulf of Mexico was fouled, perhaps for years to come) could be considered anything close to successful. Transocean cut corners in an effort to save time and money, and those decisions ultimately resulted in the deaths of 11 workers. Sure, 115 of the 126 workers on the Deepwater Horizon survived, and that’s certainly a wonderful thing. The reality, though, is that 11 workers never made it back to their families and loved ones in part because of the penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions made by their employers. How can any decent human being possibly consider any year which features such a tragedy be considered anything even remotely resembling successful?

Transocean Ltd’s senior executives are being paid bonuses paid for in part by the death of 11 of their employees. Given that decisions made by Transocean’s management contributed to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, it would seem the decent thing to do to pay those bonuses to the families of those who were killed by their employer’s greed and mismanagement. Or are Transocean’s senior executives really so devoid of anything resembling a conscience that they see no problem with accepting bonuses “earned” by essentially ignoring the deaths of 11 of their employees? Do they really consider their employees to be disposable commodities whose utility and usefulness begins and ends with ensuring that executives get their all-important bonuses?

Personally, I can only hope that there’s a special place in Hell for those who think it appropriate to pay (and accept) bonuses celebrating safety when 11 of their employees were killed by their poor decision-making and willingness to cut corners. If 11 dead employees constitutes a good year in corporate safety, you’ve clearly checked your humanity at the door.

The eleven men who died on the Deepwater Horizon (and their families) deserve better.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on April 5, 2011 6:06 AM.

So, you need four more your years to give us "Change We Can Believe In"? was the previous entry in this blog.

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