Public Employee Press

Profits over people
Gulf spill exposes pitfalls of right-wing policies

By JANE LaTOUR

First in fascination, then in horror, the world watched as 200 million gallons of crude oil gushed into Gulf Coast waters after the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers.

The catastrophe sparked deep concerns about the safety and environmental practices of BP and the other oil giants, their cozy relationship with government regulators, and the conservative political philosophy that values profits over human life and nature.

"This disaster could teach the public how large companies routinely ignore safety, health and environmental rules to maximize their profits," said Fitz Reid, the president of Health Services Employees Local 768.

Despite the known dangers of drilling for oil, workforce safety is a low priority for BP, which ignored its own internal warnings of a serious accident if the company didn't stop flouting safety and environmental rules.

After BP's Texas City, Texas, refinery exploded in 2005, killing 15 workers, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration hit the firm with a record $50 million fine. "The size of the penalty rightly reflects BP's disregard for workplace safety," said U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. In the last three years, OSHA has cited BP 862 times for violations at two of its refineries.

OSHA chief David Michaels said BP has "a serious, systemic safety problem." After the Gulf Coast disaster, BP banned cleanup workers from wearing respirator masks to protect themselves from the toxic fumes, because safety gear would have alerted the public to the danger.

According to news reports, BP's negligence includes its Alaska, California, and Texas drilling operations. Even before the April 20 explosion, BP was threatened with bans on its federal contracting and on new oil drilling licenses. At BP, greed created a corporate culture of dangerous behavior - using cheap and inadequate materials and well components, outsourcing risk assessment to get "zero risk" reports, and failing to test cleanup methods in case something went wrong.

The systemic cause of the Gulf tragedy was the "free market" anti-regulation values of BP and its supporters in Congress. In the name of profits, this ideology resists efforts to cut global warming with a tax on carbon emissions but has no problem with destroying sea birds and fish, beaches and wetlands, Gulf Coast jobs and workers' lives.