Order ID | 53563633773 |
Type | Essay |
Writer Level | Masters |
Style | APA |
Sources/References | 4 |
Perfect Number of Pages to Order | 5-10 Pages |
Evaluation of Carbide in India
Evaluation, Carbide, India
Please read "Content" word file and write paper meeting following requirements.
Consider the concerns as described in this case and prepare a memorandum that
addresses the concerns described below. Your memo should be completed in narrative
form (you may use headings if you choose to do so for organizational purposes, but do
not list your responses in bullet form). Maximum page length: 10 pages (double
spaced).
Identify all of the potential ethical issues you see (if any). Describe and analyze the
implications of each issue, including who or what were affected by the company’s
response. In identifying issues and addressing their implications, your discussion should
be as comprehensive as possible—you should consider any economic, social, or
ecological implications.
Additionally, your analysis should thoroughly identify and discuss at least two potential
courses of action that the company could have taken with respect to each issue you
have discussed. Clearly demonstrate your reasoning process—identify and explain any
ethical principles or arguments you are relying on; do not simply state unsupported
conclusions.
If you apply any approaches to ethical reasoning that you learned about in this course,
clearly state what they are and how you are applying them to this case. Of the possible
solutions you identified, which would you recommend that the company should have
adopted as a resolution? Again, fully explain and justify your recommendations. Finally,
explain how you would implement each solution you have recommended.
Please use format for the paper using "Trevino framework" word file
Please just read Content and use that framework for paper format
All requirements I have listed above
Union Carbide Corporation and Bhopal
On December 3, 1984, tragedy unfolded at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal,
India. Water entered a large tank where a volatile chemical was stored, starting a violent
reaction. Rapidly, a sequence of safety procedures and devices failed.
Fugitive vapors sailed over plant boundaries, forming a lethal cloud that moved with the
south wind, enveloping slum dwellings, searing lungs and eyes, asphyxiating fated
souls, scarring the unlucky.
Bhopal is the worst sudden industrial accident ever in terms of human life lost. Death
and injury estimates vary widely. The official death toll set forth by the Indian
government for that night is 5,295, with an additional 527,894 serious injuries.
Greenpeace has put the death toll at 16,000.
The incredible event galvanized industry critics. “Like Auschwitz and Hiroshima,” wrote
one, “the catastrophe at Bhopal is a manifestation of something fundamentally wrong in
our stewardship of the earth.” Union Carbide was debilitated and slowly declined as a
company after the incident. The government of India earned mixed reviews for its
response.
The chemical industry changed, but according to some, not enough. And the gas
victims endure a continuing struggle to get compensation and medical care.
Union Carbide in India
Union Carbide established an Indian subsidiary named Union Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL)
in 1934. At first the company owned a 60 percent majority interest, but over the years
this was reduced to 50.9 percent. Shares in the ownership of the other 49.1 percent
traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
This ownership scheme was significant because although UCIL operated with a great
deal of autonomy, it gave the appearance that Union Carbide was in control of its
operations. By itself, UCIL was one of India’s largest firms. In 1984, the year of the
incident, it had 14 plants and 9,000 employees, including 500 at Bhopal. Most of its
revenues came from selling Eveready batteries.
Union Carbide decided to build a pesticide plant at Bhopal in 1969. The plant formulated
pesticides from chemical ingredients imported to the site. At that time, there was a
growing demand in India and throughout Asia for pesticides because of the “green
revolution,” a type of planned agriculture that requires intensive use of pesticides and
fertilizers on special strains of food crops such as wheat, rice, and corn.
Although pesticides may be misused and pose some risk, they also have great social
value. Without pesticides, damage to crops, losses in food storage, and toxic mold
growth in food supplies would cause much loss of life from starvation and food
poisoning, especially in countries such as India.
The Bhopal plant would supply these pesticides and serve a market anticipated to
expand rapidly. The plant’s location in Bhopal was encouraged by tax incentives from
the city and the surrounding state of Madhya Pradesh. After a few years, however, the
Indian government pressured UCIL to stop importing chemical ingredients.
The company then proposed to manufacture methyl isocyanate (MIC) at the plant rather
than ship it in from Carbide facilities outside the country. This was a fateful decision.
Methyl isocyanate, CH3NCO, is a colorless, odorless liquid. Its presence can be
detected by tearing and the burning sensation it causes in the eyes and noses of
exposed individuals.
At the Bhopal plant it was used as an intermediate chemical in pesticide manufacture. It
was not the final product; rather, MIC molecules were created, then pumped into a
vessel where they reacted with other chemicals. The reaction created unique molecules
with qualities that disrupted insect nervous systems, causing convulsions and death.
The plant turned out two similar pesticides marketed under the names Sevin and Temik.
In 1975 UCIL received a permit from the Ministry of Industry in New Delhi to build an
MIC production unit at the Bhopal plant. Two months before the issuance of this permit,
the city of Bhopal had enacted a development plan requiring dangerous industries to
relocate in an industrial zone 15 miles away.
Pursuant to the plan, M. N. Buch, the Bhopal city administrator, tried to move the UCIL
pesticide plant and convert the site to housing and light commercial use. For reasons
that are unclear, his effort failed, and Buch was soon transferred to forestry duties
elsewhere.
The MIC unit was based on a process design provided by Union Carbide’s engineers in
the United States and elaborated by engineers in India. The design required storage of
MIC in big tanks. An alternative used at most other pesticide plants would have been to
produce small amounts of MIC only as they were consumed in pesticide production.
The decision to use large storage tanks was based on an optimistic projection that
pesticide sales would grow dramatically. Since an Indian law, the Foreign Exchange
Regulation Act of 1973, requires foreign multinationals to share technology and use
Indian resources, detailed design work was done by an Indian subsidiary of a British
firm. Local labor using Indian equipment and materials built the unit.
In 1980 the MIC unit began operation under UCIL’s management. During the five years
of design and construction, densely populated shantytowns sprang up nearby, inhabited
mainly by impoverished, unemployed people who had left rural areas seeking their
fortunes in the city. A childlike faith that the facility was a benevolent presence turning
out miraculous substances to make plants grow was widespread among them.
In fact, when the MIC unit came online the plant began to pose higher risk to its
neighbors; it now made the basic chemicals used in pesticides rather than using
shipped-in ingredients. One step in the manufacture of MIC, for example, creates
phosgene, the lethal “mustard gas” used in World War I. The benighted crowd by the
plant abided unaware.
In 1981 a phosgene leak killed one worker, and a crusading Indian journalist wrote
articles about dangers to the population. No one acted. A year later, a second phosgene
leak forced temporary evacuation of some surrounding neighborhoods. Worker safety
and environmental inspections of the plant were done by the state Department of
Labour, an agency with only 15 factory inspectors to cover 8,000 plants and a record of
lax enforcement. Oversight was not vigorous.
Meanwhile, the Indian economy had turned down, and stiff competition from other
pesticide firms marketing new, less expensive products reduced demand for Sevin and
Temik. As revenues fell, so did the plant’s budget, and it was necessary to defer some
maintenance, lessen the rigor of training, and lay off workers. By the time of the
incident, the MIC unit operated with six workers per shift, half the number anticipated by
its designers.
Union Carbide’s Relationship with the Bhopal Plant
What was the organizational relationship of Union Carbide Corporation in the United
States to its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Ltd., and ultimately to the Bhopal plant?
How much direction and control did the corporate parent half a world away in Danbury,
Connecticut, exercise over the facility?
Although Carbide employees from the United States managed the plant in its early
years, in 1982, under pressure from the government, it was turned over to Indian
managers. The experience of colonial rule in India created a strong political need for
leaders to put on shows of strength with foreign investors.
Indians felt a burning desire to avoid any appearance of subjugation and demanded
self-sufficiency. This is what had led to passage of the law requiring foreign investors to
use Indian firms and workers in certain ways—and to put pressure on Union Carbide to
turn the plant completely over to its Indian subsidiary.
The Bhopal plant was but one of 500 facilities in 34 countries in the Union Carbide
Corporation universe. There was no regular or direct reporting relationship between it
and Union Carbide’s headquarters in Connecticut. At the request of UCIL, employees of
Union Carbide had gone to India twice to perform safety inspections on the plant.
Other than those occasions, managers in the United States had received information or
reporting about the plant only infrequently and irregularly when major changes or capital
expenditures were requested. Thus, the Bhopal plant was run with near total
independence from the American corporation. In litigation to determine where victims’
lawsuits should be tried, a U.S. court described its autonomy in these words:
[Union Carbide Corporation’s] participation [in the design and construction of the plant]
was limited and its involvement in plant operations terminated long before the accident .
. . [It] was constructed and managed by Indians in India. No Americans were employed
at the plant at the time of the accident.
In the five years from 1980 to 1984, although more than 1,000 Indians were employed
at the plant, only one American was employed there, and he left in 1982. No Americans
visited the plant for more than one year prior to the accident, and during the 5-year
period before the accident the communications between the plant and the United States
were almost nonexistent.
Thus, the Bhopal plant was run by UCIL with near total independence from the
American corporation. Despite this, shortly after the gas leak Chairman Warren M.
Anderson said that Carbide accepted “moral responsibility” for the tragedy.
THE GAS LEAK
On the eve of the disaster, tank 610, one of three storage tanks in the MIC unit, sat filled
with 11,290 gallons of MIC. The tank, having a capacity of 15,000 gallons, was a partly
buried, stainless-steel, pressurized vessel. Its purpose was to take in MIC made
elsewhere in the plant and hold it for some time until it was sent to the pesticide
production area through a transfer pipe, there to be converted into Sevin or Temik.
At about 9:30 p.m. a supervisor ordered an operator, R. Khan, to unclog four filter
valves near the MIC production area by washing them out with water. Khan connected a
water hose to the piping above the clogged valves but neglected to insert a slip blind, a
device that seals lines to prevent water leaks into adjacent pipes. Khan’s omission, if it
occurred, would have violated established procedure.
Because of either this careless washing method or the introduction of water elsewhere,
120 to 240 gallons of water entered tank 610, starting a powerful exothermic (heat
building) reaction. At first, operators were unaware of the danger, and for two hours
pressure in the tank rose unnoticed. At 10:20 p.m. they logged tank pressure at 2
pounds per square inch (ppsi).
At 11:30 p.m. a new operator in the MIC control room noticed that the pressure was 10
ppsi, but he was unconcerned because this was within tolerable limits, gauges were
often wrong, and he had not read the log to learn that the pressure was now five times
what it had been an hour earlier.
Unfortunately, refrigeration units that cooled the tanks had been shut down for five
months to save electricity costs. Had they been running, as the MIC processing manual
required, the heat rise from reaction with the water might have taken place over days
instead of hours.
As pressure built, leaks developed. Soon workers sensed the presence of MIC. Their
eyes watered. At 11:45 p.m. someone spotted a small, yellowish drip from overhead
piping. The supervisor suggested fixing the leak after the regular 12:15 a.m. tea break.
At 12:40 the tea break ended. By now the control room gauge showed the pressure in
tank 610 was 40 ppsi.
In a short time, it rose to 55 ppsi, the top of the scale. A glance at the tank temperature
gauge brought more bad news. The MIC was 77 degrees Fahrenheit, 36 degrees higher
than the specified safety limit and hot enough to vaporize. Startled by readings on the
gauges, the control room operator ran out to tank 610.
He felt radiating heat and heard its concrete cover cracking. Within seconds, a
pressure-release valve opened and a white cloud of deadly MIC vapor shot into the
atmosphere with a high-decibel screech.
Back in the control room, operators turned a switch to activate the vent gas scrubber, a
safety device designed to neutralize escaping toxic gases by circulating them through
caustic soda. It was down for maintenance and inoperable. Even if it had been on line, it
was too small to handle the explosive volume of MIC shooting from the tank.
A flare tower built to burn off toxic gases before they reached the atmosphere was also
off line; it had been dismantled for maintenance and an elbow joint was missing.
Another emergency measure, transferring MIC from tank 610 to one of the other
storage tanks, was foreclosed because both were too full. This situation also violated
the processing manual, which called for leaving one tank empty as a safeguard.
At about 1:00 a.m. an operator triggered an alarm to warn workers of danger. The plant
superintendent, entering the control room, ordered a water spraying device be directed
on the venting gas, but this last-resort measure had little effect. Now most workers ran
in panic, ignoring four emergency buses they were supposed to drive through the
surrounding area to evacuate residents.
Two intrepid operators stayed at the control panel, sharing the only available oxygen
mask when the room filled with MIC vapor. Finally, at 2:30, the pressure in tank 610
dropped, the leaking safety valve resealed, and the venting ceased. Roughly 10,000
gallons of MIC, about 90 percent of the tank’s contents, was now settling over the city.
That night the wind was calm, the temperature about 60°, and the dense chemical mist
lingered just above the ground. Animals died. The gas attacked people in the streets
and seeped into their bedrooms. Those who panicked and ran into the night air suffered
higher exposures.
As the poisonous cloud enveloped victims, MIC reacted with water in their eyes. This
reaction, like the reaction in tank 610, created heat that burned corneal cells, rendering
them opaque. Residents with cloudy, burning eyes staggered about. Many suffered
shortness of breath, coughing fits, inflammation of the respiratory tract, and chemical
pneumonia.
In the lungs, MIC molecules reacted with moisture, causing chemical burns. Fluid oozed
from seared tissue and pooled, a condition called pulmonary edema, and its victims
literally drowned in their own secretions. Burned lung tissue eventually healed, creating
scarred areas that diminished breathing capacity.
Because MIC is so reactive with water, simply breathing through a wet cloth would
have saved many lives. However, people lacked this simple knowledge.
UNION CARBIDE REACTS
Awakened early in the morning, CEO Warren M. Anderson rushed to Carbide’s
Danbury, Connecticut, headquarters and learned of the rising death toll. When the
extent of the disaster was evident, a senior management committee held an urgent
meeting. It decided to send emergency medical supplies, respirators, oxygen (all
Carbide products), and an American doctor with knowledge of MIC to Bhopal.
The next day, Tuesday, December 5, Carbide dispatched a team of technical experts to
examine the plant. On Thursday, Anderson himself left for India. However, after arriving
in Bhopal, he was charged with criminal negligence, placed under house arrest, and
then asked to leave the country.
With worldwide attention focused on Bhopal, Carbide held daily press conferences.
Christmas parties were canceled. Flags at Carbide facilities flew at half-staff. All of its
nearly 100,000 employees observed a moment of silence for the victims. It gave $1
million to an emergency relief fund and offered to turn its guesthouse in Bhopal into an
orphanage.
Months later, the company offered another $5 million, but the money was refused
because Indian politicians trembled in fear that they would be seen cooperating with the
company. The Indian public reviled anything associated with Carbide. Later, when the
state government learned that Carbide had set up a training school for the unemployed
in Bhopal, it flattened the facility with bulldozers.
CARBIDE FIGHTS LAWSUITS AND A TAKEOVER BID
No sooner had the mists cleared than American attorneys arrived in Bhopal seeking
litigants for damage claims. They walked the streets signing up plaintiffs. Just four days
after the gas leak, the first suit was filed in a U.S. court; soon cases seeking $40 billion
in damages for 200,000 Indians were filed against Carbide.
However, the Indian Parliament passed a law giving the Indian government an exclusive
right to represent victims. Then India sued in the United States. Union Carbide offered
$350 million to settle existing claims (an offer rejected by the Indian government) and
brought a motion to have the cases heard in India.
Both Indian and American lawyers claiming to represent victims opposed the motion,
knowing that wrongful death awards in India were small compared with those in the
United States. However, in 1986 a federal court ruled that the cases should be heard in
India, noting that “to retain the litigation in [the United States] . . . would be yet another
example
of imperialism, another situation in which an established sovereign inflicted its rules, its
standards and values on a developing nation.” This was a victory for Carbide and a
defeat for American lawyers, who could not carry their cases to India in defiance of the
government.
In late 1986 the Indian government filed a $3.3 billion civil suit against Carbide in an
Indian court. The suit alleged that Union Carbide Corporation, in addition to being
majority shareholder in Union Carbide India Ltd., had exercised policy control over the
establishment and design of the Bhopal plant.
The Bhopal plant was defective in design because its safety standards were lower than
similar Carbide plants in the United States. Carbide had consciously permitted
inadequate safety standards to exist. The suit also alleged that Carbide was conducting
an “ultrahazardous activity” at the Bhopal plant and had strict and absolute liability for
compensating victims regardless of whether the plant was operating carefully or not.
Carbide countered with the defense that it had a holding company relationship with
UCIL and never exercised direct control over the Bhopal plant; it was prohibited from
doing so by Indian laws requiring management by Indian nationals. In addition to the
civil suit, Carbide’s chairman, Warren Anderson, and several UCIL executives were
charged with homicide in a Bhopal court. This apparently was a pressure tactic, since
no attempt to arrest them was made.
On top of its legal battle, Carbide had to fight for its independence. In December 1985,
GAF Corporation, which had been accumulating Carbide’s shares, made a takeover bid.
After a suspenseful monthlong battle, Carbide fought off GAF, but only at the cost of
taking on enormous new debt to buy back 55 percent of its outstanding shares.
This huge debt had to be reduced because interest payments were crippling. So, in
1986 Carbide sold $3.5 billion of assets, including its most popular consumer
brands—Eveready batteries, Glad bags, and Prestone antifreeze. It had sacrificed
stable sources of revenue and was now a smaller, weaker company more exposed to
cyclical economic trends.
Investigating the Cause of the Mic Leak
In the days following the gas leak, there was worldwide interest in pinning down its
precise cause. A team of reporters from The New York Times interviewed plant workers
in Bhopal. Their six-week investigation concluded that a large volume of water entered
tank 610, causing the accident.
The Times reporters thought that water had entered when R. Khan failed to use a slip
blind as he washed out piping. Water from his hose simply backed up and eventually
flowed about 400 feet into the tank. Their account was widely circulated and this theory,
called the “water washing theory,” gained currency. However, it was not to be the only
theory of the accident’s cause.
Immediately after the disaster, Union Carbide also rushed a team of investigators to
Bhopal. But the team got little cooperation from Indian authorities operating in a climate
of anti-Carbide popular protest. It was denied access to plant records and workers. Yet
the investigators got to look at tank 610 and took core samples from its bottom residue.
These samples went back to the United States, where more than 500 experimental
chemical reactions were undertaken to explain their chemical composition. In March
1985 Carbide finally released its report. It stated that entry of water into the tank caused
the gas release, but it rejected the water washing theory.
Instead, Carbide scientists felt the only way that an amount of water sufficient to cause
the observed reaction could have entered the tank was through accidental or deliberate
connection of a water hose to piping that led directly into the tank.
This was possible because outlets for compressed air, nitrogen, steam, and water were
stationed throughout the plant. The investigators rejected the water washing hypothesis
for several reasons.
The piping system was designed to prevent water contamination even without a slip
blind. Valves between the piping being washed and tank 610 were found closed after
the accident. And the volume of water required to create the reaction—1,000 to 2,000
pounds—was far too much to be explained by valve leakage.
The Carbide report gave a plausible alternative to the water washing theory, but within
months an investigation by the Indian government rejected it. This study, made by
Indian scientists and engineers, confirmed that the entry of water into the MIC tank
caused the reaction but concluded that the improper washing procedure was to blame.
There matters stood until late 1985, when the Indian government allowed Carbide more
access to plant records and employees. Carbide investigators sought out the plant’s
employees. More than 70 interviews and careful examination of plant records and
physical evidence led them to conclude that the cause of the gas leak was sabotage by
a disgruntled employee who intentionally hooked a water hose to the tank.
Here is the sequence of events on the night of December 2–3 that Carbide set forth. At
10:20 p.m. the pressure gauge on tank 610 read 2 ppsi. This meant that no water had
yet entered the tank and no reaction had begun. At 10:45 the regular shift change
occurred. Shift changes take half an hour, and the MIC storage area would have been
deserted.
At this time, an operator who had been angry for days about his failure to get a
promotion stole into the area. He unscrewed the local pressure indicator gauge on tank
610, hooked up a rubber water hose, and turned the water on. Five minutes would have
sufficed to do this.
Carbide claimed to know the name of this person, but it has never been made public. Its
investigative team speculated that his intention was simply to ruin the MIC batch in the
tank; it is doubtful that this worker realized all that might happen. The interviews
revealed that the workers thought of MIC chiefly as a lacrimator, a chemical that causes
tearing; they did not regard it as a lethal hazard.
Now the plot thickens. A few minutes after midnight, MIC operators noted the fast
pressure rise in tank 610. Walking to the tank, they found the water hose connected and
removed it, then informed their supervisors. The supervisors tried to prevent a
catastrophic pressure rise by draining water from tank 610.
Between 12:15 and 12:30 a.m., just minutes before the explosive release, they
transferred about 1 metric ton of the contents from tank 610 to a holding tank. Water is
heavier than MIC, and the transfer was made through a drain in the tank’s bottom; thus,
the supervisors hoped to remove the water. They failed, and within 15 minutes the relief
valve blew.
The investigators had physical evidence to support this scenario. After the accident, the
local pressure gauge hole on tank 610 was still open and no plug had been inserted, as
would have been normal for routine maintenance.
When the MIC unit was examined, a crude drawing of the hose connection was found
on the back of one page from that night’s logbook. Also, operators outside the MIC unit
told the investigation team that MIC operators had told them about the hose connection
that night. In addition, log entries had been falsified, revealing a crude cover-up effort.
The major falsification was an attempt to hide the transfer of contents from tank 610.
A Settlement is Reached
The theory of deliberate sabotage became the centerpiece of Carbide’s legal defense.
However, the case never came to trial. In 1989 a settlement was reached in which
Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government, which would distribute the
money to victims. In return, India agreed to stop all legal action against Carbide, UCIL,
and their executives.
India agreed to this settlement, which was far less than the $3.3 billion it was asking for,
because a trial and subsequent appeals in the Indian court system would likely have
taken 20 years. Carbide paid the settlement using $200 million in insurance and taking
a charge of $0.43 per share against 1988 net earnings of $5.31 per share.
Victims’ groups were upset because they thought the settlement too small, and they
challenged it. In 1992 the Indian Supreme Court rejected these appeals but permitted
reinstatement of criminal proceedings against Warren Anderson and eight UCIL
managers.
In 1993 India issued an arrest warrant for Anderson on charges of “culpable homicide
not amounting to murder,” but it has never been served. At the trial of the remaining
UCIL defendant's Indian prosecutors argued the managers were criminally negligent
because they knew of lax operating procedures but failed to improve them to avoid
costs.
After 18 years, 186 witnesses, and various delaying motions, the court convicted seven
managers (one had died) of a reduced charge, “causing death by negligence.” They
were sentenced to two years in prison, and fined the equivalent of $2,100. All appealed
and were released on bail. Victims and the Indian public found the punishment
outrageously modest.
Meanwhile, the Indian government was slow and inefficient in distributing settlement
funds to gas victims. In 1993, 40 special courts began processing claims, but the activity
was riddled with corruption.
Healthy people bribed physicians for false medical records with which they could get
compensation. Twelve court officials were fired for soliciting bribes from gas victims
seeking payments. All told, 574,366 claims were paid, including 14,824 death claims,
with average compensation about $1,280. Ninety percent of all claims were settled for
$550, the minimum allowed.
Because the claims process moved at a glacial pace for years, the settlement money
accrued interest and, after all claims were paid, $325 million remained. The government
wanted to use the interest to clean up soil contamination at the plant. But in 2004 the
Indian Supreme Court ordered it distributed to the victims and families of the dead in
amounts proportionate to claims already paid.
Aftermath
In the wake of Bhopal, Congress passed legislation requiring chemical companies to
disclose the presence of dangerous chemicals to people living near their plants and to
create evacuation plans. The chemical industry’s trade association adopted a program
of more rigorous safety standards that all major firms now follow.
In 1994 Union Carbide sold its 50.9 percent equity in UCIL to the Indian subsidiary of a
British company for $90 million. It gave all of this money to the Indian government for a
hospital and clinics in Bhopal. After the sale, the company had no presence or current
legal obligations in India. Nevertheless, Bhopal had destroyed it.
As it exited India, it was a smaller, less resilient company. Forced to sell or spin off its
most lucrative businesses, it grew progressively weaker. In 1984, the year of the gas
leak, Carbide had 98,400 employees and sales of $9.5 billion; by 2000 it had only
11,000 employees and $5.9 billion in sales. The end came when it merged with Dow
Chemical Co. in 2001 and its workforce suffered the bulk of cost-reduction layoffs.
The pesticide plant never reopened. According to a recent visitor, “The old factory
grounds, frozen in time, are an overgrown 11-acre forest of corroded tanks and pipes
buzzing with cicadas, where cattle graze and women forage for twigs to cook their
evening meal.” 15 Chemical waste at the site has contaminated the groundwater.
In 1998 the state government took over the plant and made cleanup plans, but never
carried them out.
In 2004 the United States again denied a request by the Indian government to extradite
Warren Anderson. Anderson, who is now 91, has dropped from public view. In the
unlikely event of extradition, he would face a long trial. Recently, his wife told a reporter
that he had been “haunted for many years” by the accident.
The struggle of gas victims for compensation spawned an activist movement that lives
on after more than 25 years. The lead organization is the International Campaign for
Justice in Bhopal, a coalition of gas victim groups and charities.
Survivors complain of chronic medical conditions including headaches, joint pain,
shortness of breath, and psychiatric problems. They believe that gas exposure and toxic
wastes from the plant have caused birth defects.
New Target: Dow Chemical
After Dow Chemical absorbed Union Carbide it became the victims’ bull’s-eye. Both
victims and the Indian government now demand that Dow pay for cleaning up the
contaminated plant site and further compensate injured survivors.
In 2010 the Indian government filed a petition with the Indian Supreme Court seeking to
overturn its 1989 settlement “to cure a miscarriage of justice.” The petition, still pending,
seeks to force Dow Chemical to pay another $1.1 billion to the victims. This is justified,
argues the government, because the full extent of the disaster was unknown in 1989.
Members of the victim’s movement have repeatedly sued in U.S. courts seeking to
overturn the $470 million settlement, accusing Union Carbide of human rights violations,
and trying to hold it responsible for cleaning up groundwater pollution at the plant site.
All their efforts have so far failed, although one case still drags on.
Victims otherwise harass the company. They have joined with progressive religious
orders and pension funds in the United States to picket its shareholder’s meetings while
inside, friendly shareholders introduce resolutions asking Dow to acknowledge its
responsibilities. All such resolutions have been defeated, garnering only single-digit
percentages of the vote.
Activists tried to embarrass Dow with a brand of bottled water named B’eau Pal
containing groundwater from near the old plant. Children of gas victims once went on a
22-city U.S. tour to promote congressional hearings on Dow’s responsibilities. No
hearings were held.
Dow never wavers in denying any obligation. “While we have sympathy for this
situation,” said a company representative recently, “it is not Dow’s responsibility,
accountability or liability to bear.” But the activists are resolute. “I will fight until my last
breath against Dow,” says one gas survivor. “I will not give up.” The fight also has
ideological meaning.
One movement leader believes that “unless those responsible are punished in an
exemplary matter, the message that goes out to the corporate world is that you can kill
and maim people and carry on with business as usual.
Postscript
Despite the passage of time, Bhopal does not fade away. The library bookshelf on it
keeps growing. It has been the subject of at least seven films, including a drama that
was a box office hit in India.
A tendentious book of reality fiction based on Bhopal became a best seller in Europe.
Told as a tragedy, the story stirs basic emotions. A Canadian critic reviewing a play on
Bhopal found it badly written and acted,
but nevertheless “a touching tale of human suffering” raising “such imposing themes as
the relative worth of a human life and the intersection of greed and development in the
Third World.” Doubtless these themes will keep the story alive
Eight Steps to Sound Ethical Decision Making in Business
STEP 1: Gather the facts.
· How did the situation occur?
· Are there historical facts that I should know?
· Are there facts concerning the current situation that I should know?
STEP 2: Define the ethical issues.
· Don’t jump to a solution. Think through the ethical issues. Recognize that multiple
ethical issues may exist.
STEP 3: Identify the affected parties (the stakeholders).
· You may have to think beyond the facts of the case to identify all stakeholders.
STEP 4: Identify the consequences.
· After identifying the stakeholders, consider the potential consequences for each party
that have a relatively high probability of occurring.
· What are the long-term and the short-term consequences?
· What are the symbolic consequences?
· What are the consequences of secrecy?
STEP 5: Identify the obligations.
· Identify the obligations involved and the reasons for each one.
STEP 6: Consider your character and integrity.
· Think about yourself as a person of integrity. Ask yourself what a person of integrity
would do in this situation.
· New York Times Test
STEP 7: Think creatively about potential actions.
· Be sure that you haven’t unnecessarily forced yourself into a corner. Are you
assuming that you only have two choices, either A or B? Look for creative alternatives.
Perhaps there’s another answer: C.
STEP 8: Check your gut.
· We are all hardwired to be empathetic and to desire fairness. If your gut is sending up
red flags, give the situation more thought.
Source: Trevino, L.K, & Nelson, K.A. (2014). Managing business ethics: Straight talk
about how to do it right (6th ed). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
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