Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Richard T. De George
BUSINESS ETHICS, 6TH edition
Pearson-Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NewJersey, 2006
Copiii străzii ar fi continuat să inhaleze vapori de lipici, produs şi distribuit de competitorii lui
Kativo.
Prin închiderea fabricii, Kativo ar fi lăsat fără slujbe sute de oameni, ceea ce ar fi sporit
numărul de copii ai străzii.
Scăderea vânzărilor ar afecta interesele acţionarilor lui H. B. Fuller.
Cauza reală a consumului de substanţe halucinogene nu este Resistol, ci nivelul extrem de
subdezvoltare economică, socială şi culturală din Honduras.
Întrebări deschise:
Decided in 1979, United Steelworkers of America v. Weber was the first case dealing with
affirmative action(positive discrimination) policies in employment to reach the Supreme Court. In
1974, in order to address decades of racial discrimination in its hiring practices and a serious under-
representation of blacks among the ranks of its skilled workers, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical
Corp. had instituted a new policy regarding the training and placement of skilled laborers. Initiated
as part of its labor agreement with the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), the policy
established an on-the-job training program through which unskilled workers could obtain
promotions. Admission to the program was based on seniority, but at least half of the available slots
were to be held for blacks.
After being passed over for the program in favor of several black employees with less seniority than
he, Brian Weber, a white Kaiser employee, brought suit, alleging that the company's affirmative
action policy violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII, which forbids
employment discrimination based on race, states in part, "It shall be an unlawful employment
practice for any employer ... to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to
provide apprenticeship or other training."
A 5-2 majority on the Court upheld Kaiser's affirmative action training policy. Writing for the
majority, Justice William Brennan emphasized that the labor agreement creating the policy had
been a private and voluntary one, expressly adopted to address the company's past discriminatory
practices. Although Title VII did not require private companies to adopt affirmative action policies,
it also did not forbid them to do so. "Title VII's prohibition against racial discrimination," Brennan
wrote, "does not condemn all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action plans." Although
the decision did not define the line between acceptable and discriminatory affirmative action
policies, Brennan did note that because Kaiser's program did not block white advancement and was
not intended to maintain a permanent racial balance, it was not discriminatory within the meaning
and purpose of Article VII.
By five to two the Supreme Court held that the affirmative action plan was lawful. The majority
(Brennan, Stewart, White, Marshall and Blackmun JJ) held that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not
prohibit all kinds of affirmative action programmes. They held that the plan of affirmative action
must first be transitional in nature and serve in fact to correct situations of imbalance by restoring
equality at the starting point and should not set out to reproduce them artificially even when the
effects of past discrimination have been wiped out. An affirmative action plan has to be (1)
necessary (2) aiming to correct a statistical imbalance (3) not result in an absolute bar to hiring non-
minority people (4) temporary, with an end date or goal (5) allow flexibility for hiring non-
minorities.
Justice William Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger, issued a sharply worded dissent.
A literal reading of the plain meaning of Title VII, he argued, clearly prohibited the affirmative
action program. "Taken in its normal meaning, and as understood by all Members of Congress who
spoke to the issue during the legislative debates," he wrote, "... [Title VII] prohibits a covered
employer from considering race when making an employment decision, whether the race be black
or white." Rehnquist compared the majority's interpretation of the law to the insidious language and
power games played by the government in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, and further
stated, "Thus, by a tour de force reminiscent ... of escape artists such as Houdini, the Court eludes
clear statutory language ... and uniform precedent in concluding that employers are, after all,
permitted to consider race in making employment decisions."
Rehnquist conceded that Congress's motivation in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been, in
part, to end the history of employment discrimination against blacks. However, he contended, if
Congress wished to make exceptions to the rule that employers could not consider race in any
employment decisions, such exceptions should and would have been stated clearly within the
statute. Finding no such language, and confirming his reading of the act with a lengthy review of
the congressional record leading up to its passage, Rehnquist concluded: "There is perhaps no
device more destructive to the notion of equality than the numerus clausus -- the quota. Whether
described as 'benign discrimination' or 'affirmative action,' the racial quota is nonetheless a creator
of castes, a two-edged sword that must demean one in order to prefer another. In passing Title VII,
Congress outlawed all racial discrimination, recognizing that no discrimination based on race is
benign, that no action disadvantaging a person because of his color is affirmative."
Although the Court has never adopted Rehnquist's position in Weber, it did move very close to it in
City of Richmond v. Corson (1989) and Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995). Today, the
issue of affirmative action remains contentious, and one that the Court is likely to deal with again in
coming years. In two 2003 cases dealing with admissions policies at the University of Michigan, the
Court voided the university's undergraduate affirmative action plan (Gratz versus Bollinger), which
used a point system partly based on race, but narrowly upheld a more individualized policy used by
Michigan's law school (Grutter versus Bollinger). Writing for the 5-4 majority in the latter case,
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that the Court would consider changing social conditions in
deciding future affirmative action cases, stating, "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of
racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [racial diversity on campus]
approved today."
10 aug 1978: tragic accident rutier pe Highway 33, lângă Goshen, Indiana. Surorile Judy şi
Lynn Ulrich (18, 16 ani) şi verişoara lor Donna Ulrich (18 ani) staţionau pe şosea în Fordul
lor Pinto, model 1973. Au fost izbite din spate de către un van, care circula cu min 50 mile
pe oră. Rezervorul de benzină, aflat în spatele maşinii, s-a spart, maşina a explodat şi cele
trei fete au ars de vii.
Pentru prima oară, compania Ford a fost acuzată de ucidere din culpă (reckless homicide).
Procesul a durat 20 de săptămâni şi judge Harold Staffeldt a explicat juriului că Ford poate
fi condamnată numai dacă se poate dovedi că Ford se face vinovată de „nesocotirea clară,
conştientă şi nejustificabilă a suferinţei ce poate să rezulte (din acţiunile sale), această
nesocotire implicând o abatere substanţială de la standardele de conduită acceptabile“.
Juriul a respins acuzaţia. Fraza cheie asupra căreia s-a purtat bătălia dintre acuzare şi
apărare a fost „standarde acceptabile“. Se poate spune că Ford a ales în mod deliberat şi
cinic profitul în dauna siguranţei în proiectarea şi plasamentul rezervorului? În timp ce
Elkhart County prosecutor Michael Cosentino şi chief Ford attorney James Neal se luptau
dramatic asupra acestei chestiuni, tot mediul american de afaceri aştepta cu sufletul la
gură verdictul, care putea să aibă urmări foarte drastice asupra corporate responsibility
and product liability.
Benefits
Economii: 180 de morţi arşi, 180 răniri prin arsuri grave, 2100 de vehicule arse
Cost/unitate: $ 200.000 pe mort, $ 67.000 pe rînit, $ 700 pe vehicul
Beneficiu total: 180 X ($200.000) + 180 X ($67.000) + 2100 X ($700) = $ 49.5 mil
Costs
Vânzări: 11 mil. maşini, 1.5 mil light trucks
Cost unitate: $11 pe maşină, $11 pe truck
Total cost: 11 mil X ($11) + 1.5 mil X ($11) = $137 mil.
1971 Costs
Componente
Future productivity losses
Direct $132.000
Indirect 41.300
Medical costs
Hospital 700
Other 425
Property damage 1500
Insurance Administration 4700
Legal and court 3000
Employer losses 1000
Victim's pain and suffering 10.000
Funeral 900
Assets (lost consumtion) 5000
Miscellaneous 200
TOTAL PER FATALITY $200.000
— Dowie: nu a reuşit să afle cum s-a stabilit suma de $10.000 pt pain and suffering. În
realitate, nu Ford, ci guvernul federal stabilise această cifră, iar analiza cost-beneficii
realizată de Ford s-a bazat pe ea.
— În plus, Dowie obiectează că nu au fost luate în calcul decât decesel, dar persoanele cu
arsuri grave, rămase în viaţă, sunt excluse din calcul, acestea fiind de 9 ori mai
numeroase decât decesele.
— Dowie pretinde că este în posesia unor informaţii confidenţiale din interiorul Ford, care
atestă că, în realitate, costurile introducerii unei cămăşi de cauciuc în rezervor ar fi fost cu
mult mai mici, de numai $5.8 pe vehicul.
— Concluzie Dowie: În loc să facă o îmbunătăţire de $11, ori să instaleze o cămaşă de
cauciuc de $5, ori să dea măcar posibilitatea cumpărătorului de a suporta costul
suplimentar în cunoştinţă de cauză, Ford a preferat să amâne reglementarea timp de 8
ani. În acest timp, mii de oameni au ars de vii, zeci de mii au suferit arsuri grave şi
milioane de vehicule nesigure, produse până la reglementare, vor continua să circule şi să
omoare oameni.
— Nu este o strategie specifică numai companiei Ford, ci tuturor producătorilor de
vehicule, inclusiv pe căile ferate sau avioane.
— Ford a plătit milioane de dolari daune în urma unor decizii judecătoreşti sau a unor
aranjamente în afara tribunalului. În cele din urmă, Ford a decis să nu mai ajungă la
tribunal cu nici un caz de incendiu, pt că juraţii sunt prea sentimentali şi se înmoaie când
văd fotografiile cu trupuri carbonizate. Ford a preferat să aranjeze lucrurile şi să plătească
sume considerabile, numai pt că acestea erau oricum mai mici decât modificarea liniei de
asamblare.
13 martie 1980: Elkhart County jury found Ford not guilty of criminal homicide in the Ulrich
case.
În pledoaria finală, Ford attorney Neal precizează:
— Ford putea să stea deoparte de piaţa automobilelor mici, obţinând profituri mai mari din
vânzarea de auto mari. Ford s-a aventurat pe piaţa auto mici pt a contracare importurile, pt
a crea locuri de muncă în America şi pt a-şi satisface acţionarii.
— Pinto corespundea tuturor standardelor federale, fiind comparabilă cu toate
subcompactele din 1973
— Inginerii Ford au considerat că este o maşină bună, sigură, cumpărând-o pt ei şi
familiile lor
— Ford a făcut tot ceea ce era posibil şi necesar pt a retrage Pinto după ce i s-a ordonat
de către NHTSA
— Highway 33 era greşit proiectată, iar fetele staţionau în momentul în care au fost lovite
din spate de către un van de peste 1 tonă, cu cel puţin 50 mph, condiţii în care orice altă
maşină ar fi păţit exact acelaşi lucru.
Prosecutor Cosentino şi-a slăbit cazul din momentul în care judge Staffeldt nu a admis ca
probe în proces o serie de documente ale Ford, anterioare anului 1873, care dovedeau că
inginerii de la Ford erau conştienţi la vremea respectivă de riscurile rezervorului adoptat pt
a câştiga spaţiu în portbagaj şi pt a economisi bani, precum şi de faptul că rezervorul Capri
era mult mai sigur.
Richard Epstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago arată că un proces penal nu
avea nici o şansă de câştig din partea acuzării, deoarece acuzarea ar fi trebuit să probeze
o intenţie criminală din partea Ford. Mai mult succes ar fi avut un proces civil. Analogie:
cineva trage cu puşca într-o căprioară, dar nimereşte un alt vânător, neintenţionat; nu
poate fi acuzat penal, dar este dator să plătească daune, stabilite de un proces civil. Or,
pe lângă faptul că e greu de atribuit o intenţionalitate unei corporaţii, în cazul de faţă nu se
poate spune că Ford a procedat cu intenţii criminale. În orice industrie se fac compromisuri
între costuri şi securitatea produsului. Ford putea să construiască un tanc, dar cine l-ar fi
cumpărat?
Iar acuzarea şi penalizarea unor oficiali de la Ford nu se putea face, din lipsă de probe.
Proiectantul şef a declarat că preocuparea sa a fost să dispună rezervorul cât mai departe
de pasageri, ceea ce a şi făcut. Pe de altă parte, mulţi dintre salariaţii de la Ford au
cumpărat şi folosit Pinto.
Nici un proces civil nu ar fi avut şanse mari de câştig, deoarece calculele făcute de Ford
erau standard şi erau aplicate aceleaşi formule în întreaga industrie.
On August 10, 1978, a tragic automobile accident occurred on U.S. Highway 33 near
Goshen, Indiana. Sisters Judy and Lynn Ulrich (ages 18 and 16, respectively) and their
cousin Donna Ulrich (age 18) were struck from the rear in their 1973 Ford Pinto by a van.
The gas tank of the Pinto ruprured, the car burst into flames and the three teen-agers were
burned to death.
Subsequently an Elkhart County grand jury returned a criminal homicide charge against
Ford, the first ever against an American corporation. During the following 20-week trial,
Judge Harold R. Staffeld advised the jury that Ford should be convicted of reckless
homicide if it were shown that the company had engaged in “plain, conscious and
unjustifiable disregard of harm that might result (from its actions) and the disregard
involves a substantial deviation from acceptable standards of conduct”. The key phrase
around which the trial hinged, of course, is “acceptable standards”. Did Ford knowingly
and recklessly choose profit over safety in the design and placement of the Pinto's gas
tank? Elkhart County prosecutor Michael A. Cosentino and chief Ford attorney James F.
Neal battled dramatically over this issue in a rural Indiana courthouse. Meanwhile,
American business anxiously awaited the verdict which could send warning ripples through
board rooms across the nation concerning corporate responsibility and product liability.
In 1977 the magazine Mother Jones broke a story by Mark Dowie, general manager of
Mother Jones business operations, accusing Ford of knowingly putting on the road an
unsafe car – the Pinto – in which hundreds of people have needlessly suffered burn
deaths and even more have been scarred and disfigured due to burns. In his article “Pinto
Madness” Dowie charges that:
Fighting strong competition from VW for the lucrative small-car market, the Ford Motor
Company rushed the Pinto into production in much less than the usual time.
Ford engineers discovered in pre-production crash tests that rear-end collisions would
rupture the Pinto's fuel system extremely easily. Because assembly-line machinery
was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to
manufacture the car anyway – exploding gas tank and all – even though Ford owned
the patent on a much safer gas tank.
For more than eight years afterwards, Ford successfully lobbied, with extraordinary
vigor and some blatant lies, against a key government safety standard that would have
forced the company to change the Pinto's fire-prone gas tank.
By conservative estimates Pinto crashes have caused 500 burn deaths to people who
would not have been seriously injured if the car had not burst into flames. The figure
could be as high as 900. Burning Pintos have become such an embarrassment to Ford
that its advertising agency, J. Walter Thomson, dropped a line from the ending of a
radio spot that read “Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling.”
Ford knows that the Pinto is a firetrap, yet it has paid out millions to settle damage
suits out of court, and it is prepared to spen millions more lobbying against safety
standards. With a half million cars rolling off the assembly lines each year, Pinto is the
biggest-selling subcompact in America, and the company's operating profit on the car
is fantastic. Finally, in 1977, new Pinto models have incorporated a few minor
alterations necessary to meet that federal standard Ford managed to hold off for eight
years. Why did the company delay so long making these minimal, inexpensive
improvements?
Ford waited eight years because its internal “cost-benefit analysis”, which places a
dollar value on human life, said it wasn't profitable to make the changes sooner.
Several weeks after Dowie's press conference, Ford issued a news release, countering
points made in the Mother Jones article.
Their statistical studies significantly conflicted with each other. For example, Dowie
states that more than 3000 people were burning to death yearly in auto fires; he claims
that, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
consultant, although Ford makes 24% of the cars on American Roads, these cars
account for 42% of the collision-ruptured fuel tanks. Ford, on the other, uses statistics
from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) maintained by the government
NHTSA to defend itself, claiming that in 1975 there were 848 deaths related to fire-
associated passenger-car accidents and only 13 of these involved Pintos; in 1976,
Pintos accounted for only 22 out of 943. These statistics imply that Pintos were
involved in only 1.9% of such accidents, and Pintos constitute about 1.9% of the total
registered passenger cars. Furthermore, fewer than half of those Pintos cited in the
FARS study were struck in the rear. Ford concludes from this and other studies that
the Pinto was never an unsafe car and has not been involved in some 70 burn deaths
annually as Mother Jones claims.
Ford admits that early model Pintos did not meet rear-impact tests at 20 mph but
denies that this implies that they were unsafe compared to other cars of that type and
era. In fact, its tests were conducted, according to Ford, some with experimental
rubber “bladders” to protect the gas tank, in order to determine how best to have their
future cars meet a 20 mph rear-collision standard which Ford itself set as an internal
performance goal. The government at that time had no such standard. Ford also points
out that in every model year Pinto met or surpassed the government's own standards,
and it simply is unreasonable and unfair to contend that a car is somehow unsafe if it
does not meet standards proposed for future years or embody the technological
improvements that are introduced in later model years.
Mother Jones, on the other hand, presents a different view of the situation. If Ford was so
concerned about rear-impact safety, why did it delay the federal government's attempts to
impose standards? Dowie gives the following answer:
The particular regulation involved here was Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard
301. Ford picked portions of Standard 201 for strong opposition way back in 1968
when the Pinto was still in the blueprint stage. The intent of 301, and the 300 series
that folloed it, was to protect drivers and passengers after a crash occurs. Without
question the worst post-crash hazard is fire. Standard 301 originally proposed that all
cars should be able to withstand a fixed barrier impact of 20 mph (that is, running into
a wall at that speed) without losing fuel.
When the standard was proposed, Ford engineers pulled their crash-test results out of
their files. The front ends of most cars were no problem – with minor alterations they
could stand the impact without losing fuel. “We were already working on the front end,”
Ford engineer Dick Kimble admitted. “We knew we could meet the test on the front
end.” But with the Pinto particularly, a 20 mph rear-end standard meant redesihning
the entire rear end of the car. With the Pinto scheduled for production in August 1970,
and with $200 million worth of tools in place, adoption of this standard would have
created a minor financial disaster. So Standard 301 was targeted for delay, and with
some assistance from its industry associates, Ford succeeded beyond its wildest
expectations: the standard was not adopted until the 1977 model year.
Ford's tactics were successful, according to Dowie, not only due to their extremely clever
lobbying, which became the envy of lobbysts all over Washington, but also because of the
pro-industry stance of NHTSA itself.
Furthermore, it is not at all clear that the Pinto was as safe as other comparable cars with
regard to the positioning of its gas tank. Unlike the gas tank in the Capri which rode over
the rear axle, a “saddle-type” fuel tank on which Ford owned the patent, the Pinto tank was
placed just behind the rear bumper.
Dr. Leslie Ball, the retired safety chief for the NASA manned space program and a
founder of the International Society of Reliability Engineers: “The release to production
of the Pinto was the most reprehensible decision in the history of American
engineering.” Ball can name more than 40 European and Japanese models in the
Pinto price and weight range with safer gas-tank positioning.
Los Angeles auto safety expert Byron Bloch: “It's a catastrophic blunder. Ford made an
extremely irresponsible decision when they placed such a weak tank in such a
ridiculous location in such a soft rear end. It's almost designed to blow up –
premeditated.
Perhaps the most intriguing and controversial is the cost-benefit analysis study that Ford
did entitled “Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires”, released
by J. C. Echlod, Director of Automotive Safety for Ford. This study apparently convinced
Ford and was intended to convince the federal government that a technical improvement
costing $11 per car which would have prevented gas tanks from rupturing so easily was
not cost-effective for society. The costs and benefits are broken down in the following way:
Benefits
Savings: 180 burn deaths, 180 serious burn injuries, 2,100
burned vehicles
Unit Cost: $200,000 per death, $67,000 per injury, $700 per
vehicle
Total Benefit: 180 X ($200,000) + 180 X ($67,000) + 2,100 X ($700)
= $49.5 million
Costs
Sales: 11 million cars, 1.5 million light trucks
Unit Cost: $11 per car, $11 per truck
Total Cost: 11,000,000 X ($11) + 1,500,000 X ($11) = $137 million
The most controversial aspect proved to be the way Ford's accountants determined the
total cost of a human life as about $200,000.
Mother Jones reports it could not find anYbody whou could explain how the $10,000 figure
for “pain and sufferin” had been arrived at.
Although Ford does not mention this point in its News Release defense, it might have
replied that it was the federal government, not Ford, that set the figure for a burn death.
Ford simply carried out a cost-benefit analysis based on that figure. Mother Jones,
however, in addition to insinuating that there was industry-agency (NHTSA) collusion,
argues taht the $200,000 figure was arrived at under intense pressure from the auto
industry to use cost-benefit analysis in determining regulations.
Mother Jones also questions Ford's estimate of burn injuries: “All independent experts
estimate that for each person who dies by an auto fire, many more are left with charred
hands, faces and limbs.” The true ratio obviously throws the company's calculations
way off.
Finally, Mother Jones claims to have obtained “confidential” Ford documents which
Ford did not send to Washington, showing that crash fires could be largely prevented
by installing a rubber bladder inside the gas tank for only $5.08 per car, considerably
less than the $11 per car Ford originally claimed was required to improve crash-
worthiness.
Ford has paid millions of dollars in Pinto jury trials and out-of-court settlements,
especially the latter. Mother Jones quotes Al Schlechter in Ford's Washington office as
saying: “ We'll never go to a jury again. Not in a fire case. Juries are just too
sentimental. They see those charred remains and forget the evidence. No sir, we'll
settle.”
Instead of making the $11 improvement, installing the $5.08 bladder, or even giving the
consumer the right to choose the additional cost for added safety, Ford continued to delay
the federal government for eight years in establishing mandatory rear-impact standards. In
the meantime thousands of people were burning to death and tens of thousands more
were being badly burned and disfigured for life, tragedies many of which could have been
prevented for only a slight cost per vehicle. Furthermore, the delay also meant that millions
of new unsafe vehicles went on the road, vehicles that will be crashing, leaking fuel and
incinerating people well into the 1980s.
Unfortunately, Dowie claims, the Pinto is not an isolated case of corporate malpractice in
the auto industry. Neither is Ford a lone sinner. There probably isn't a car on the road
without a safety hazard known to its manufacturer. Furthermore, cost-valuing human life is
not used by Ford alone. Ford was just the only company careless enough to let such an
embarrassing calculation slip into public records. The process of willfully trading lives for
profits is built into corporate capitalism.