re: #269 reine.de.tout

I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said.

No, they can’t put anything over the side of the rig, not even food scraps that the fish would eat anyhow. And hubby takes that helicopter bail-out course once a year; he was offered a job off the coast of Canada but their training is so rigorous (dumped into the water and left there for a couple of hours) that he actually is too old to go through it.

And no, they’re not prepared to deal with a situation like this, which is why most companies do everything in their power to keep their workers safe and their investment intact. It’s got nothing to do with preserving the Gulf; it has everything to do with not wanting to lose money. They know the cost of not paying attention to detail would be too big to bear, as we are seeing with BP right now.

But many of the folks there DID say “stop!”, and gave their reasons. BP refused to listen. From what my husband tells me, that refusal to pay attention to on-board experts is NOT the norm with the companies he’s worked for.

Sorry for the delay, had to head to class. Last thing I’ll say on the matter… At least in my jurisdiction, it is not only up to BP to stop work. Every worker has “the right to refuse” work for safety reasons. And they are protected. I’ve seen this work in practice as well as theory It should never, ever have been up to BP to stop work that day. If the guys on the rig knew it was unsafe, that’s the end of it.

If that’s not how the law works down south, it needs to change.

(The law in my province was changed due to this accident: en.wikipedia.org . And it was the same old story of production above safety.)