Sociology

In the 1980s, eight children and four adults died of leukemia in Woburn, Massachusetts.  It was later known that a tannery with links to two giant corporations, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace, were contaminating ground water with toxic chemicals.  This true story became the basis of the movie A Civil Action.  It portrays issues such as the ethics of production or environmental ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate manslaughter and legal forms of bribery (settlements).  Many corporations today continue to be unethical with regard to these issues, resulting in numerous social and environmental catastrophes.  These cases are often tried as civil cases, but I believe that the offense is so severe that it should be criminalized and tried as criminal cases.

Many corporations nowadays, not just the ones mentioned in the movie, are guilty of ignoring corporate social responsibility and environmental ethics, leading to disastrous consequences.  As employers, companies should be considerate of society who are their customers and ultimate bosses.  If companies harm people, the word gets out and they will lose customers, leading to a loss in revenue and possible bankruptcy or closure.  Laws may also be amended or added to prosecute corporate executives, not just to pay fines, but possibly also to put them in prison, or in China, suffer the death penalty. In a tainted milk scandal in 2008, three Chinese milk producers that sold melamime-tained milk which killed six infants and sickened thousands of others, were sentenced to death.  And in 1984, Union Carbide (Dow Chemical Company) in Bhopal, India, was tried civilly and criminally, after it released methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other toxins, resulting in 16,000 deaths.   25 years after the gas leak, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the plant continue to leak and contaminate groundwater in Bhopal. 

However, in the case of Union Carbide, the case is still pending in the United States District Court, Manhattan, after 25 years.  No one has been prosecuted yet.  Like in the movie, A Civil Action, American law is slow to move on environment criminals.  Dow Chemical the current owner of Union Carbide denies the charges made against them, even after paying millions of dollars in settlements and donation propaganda.  Dow is also a supplier for Dole of the pesticide dibromochloropropane, known as DBCP, which has caused numerous abnormalities for the farmers and families who use this pesticide for Dole agricultural products.  They have paid millions in settlements for over 200 lawsuits.  As more and more people become aware of it, consumers stop buying products from these corporations.    And with environmental activists like Greenpeace coming into the picture and actively promoting the boycott of environmentally unfriendly products, revenue for the companies involved will decrease.  Eventually, some of them may become bankrupt and shut down, but unlike China which issues death penalties to these offenders, the American government is slow to take these charges seriously.

In the U.K., they have a new law for corporate manslaughter which attempts to patch the loopholes of lax laws where criminally-liable corporations were able to escape from punishment or censure.  In the movie, A Civil Action, it was clearly shown that American law is not tough enough against those who are unethical.  The plaintiffs lawyer reached bankruptcy before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated the case again.  However, unlike China, the defendants simply made millions of dollars in payment and were not imprisoned or sentenced to death for the numerous deaths that they caused.

This makes settlements another unethical issue.  In the movie, the plaintiffs lawyer refused to settle at first, but yielded later due to his debt problems.  Somehow, the criminals still get away because of this.  So in effect, settlements are like facilitation payments or legal forms of bribery to close the case. Accepting a settlement is like accepting a bribe, so somehow American law should really be changed to avoid this.

The American government does not seem to be serious with corporate social responsibility and environmental ethics because many of the lawmakers, the Senators and Congressmen, are businessmen themselves or are lobbyists for business interests.  Their agenda is clearly for profit alone, not people.  While the U.S. government often criticizes China, American businesses have taken 50 of the worlds resources for 5 of the worlds population (the American people).  On the other hand, Chinas president, Hu Jin Tao, is a hydraulic engineer, and their Premier is a geologist and engineer.  Unlike businessmen, they are also concerned about the environment and are now trying to balance their industrial needs with the future of the planet.  They are now cleaning up, leading the world in solar energy, wind power and hydro-electric energy.  They are getting tougher against toxic polluters, and they enforce laws immediately.

As they look at corporations and society as one organism, they become economically more competitive.  And as American businesses keep continuing to be unethical they become less competitive.  Being ethical pays off, and its only a matter of time before more people realize this.