Union Carbide Corporation and Bhopal Case (Case Study Sample)

Union Carbide Corporation and Bhopal Case
Name
Institution
Union Carbide Corporation and Bhopal Case
Introduction
On December 3, 1984, a Bhopal Union Carbide Corporation and its partners pesticide industrial unit situated in Bhopal, India, reported a glass leak. The resulting industrial disaster was one of history’s most perilous calamities globally. Methyl isocyanides gas and other additional toxic substances leaked, exposing hordes of people to severe respiratory and other body parts harm. It also caused ecological problems, such as water and soil pollution (Diamond, 1985). The leakage resulted from derisory maintenance and the failure of security systems to detect and avert this calamity. This UCIL pesticide plant began in 1969 to help in combating pests and diseases, augmenting crop production. In the 1960s, India used pesticides prevalently; therefore, the plant played an essential role in growing India’s agriculture system by increasing food production.
Ethical Issues
The investing company put up the pesticide plant in a densely populated locality. What is more, the company produced and stored MIC in the same location; MIC is a group of highly toxic chemicals that allowed for production in scarcely populated regions. Therefore, the firm firstly contravened the principle of “hold[ing] paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” Further, the firm intentionally decided against informing residents of its production of MIC and safety practices in the event of a disaster. The company also opted against informing the public or warning them about the tragedy. Numerous employees affirmed that the alarm that sounded on the night of the misfortune was similar to those that signaled other events, such as rehearsal drills, which occurred 20 times in an average week. Therefore, the company blatantly ignored sensitizing the local community, perhaps in the form of brochures, on the dangers of the products the plant manufactured.
Secondly, local administrators also faulted the company for failing to kickstart a civics training program to train locals on what to do in a crisis. The Indian government was aware of these breaches to good industrial practices but ignored appeals to force the company to enact these checks and balances. The local media warned the residents of the danger and urged them to evacuate; nonetheless, even more, slums sprouted. Remarkably, local federal government officials failed to endorse these reports dismissing them as sensational. The tragedy affected a large number of people directly as they lost their lives and others indirectly. Animals, both on land and in the water, died as these deadly chemicals polluted both local water sources and the soil. Thousands of people went blind, while others were temporarily or permanently disabled, which led to them losing their ability to work and earn a living. Worse still, the effects of this deadly tragedy persist into the present as some newborns come out with defects associated with this intoxication.
Currently, the victims of the disastrous Bhopal gas tragedy continue to fight for some form of indemnity. Bhopal Medical Appeal – a U.K. charity that supports a health center in Bhopal that provides treatment to the fatalities - over 120,000 individuals still suffer from maladies due to the long-term effects of contamination from the plant (Chhabara, 2010). The city’s infrastructure, as well as health facilities, were underequipped for the calamity of that magnitude. The local medical experts were uninformed on how to handle the victims.
Course of Action
The company ought to have sensitized the local community on the possible dangers of contamination from the toxic chemicals it produced. The company should also have provided training to local health workers on responding to such a disaster.
The two controlling companies that run the plant - Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its Indian subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) - engaged in unethical business practices. Both companies flatly failed to adhere to moral production conventions. The American company, prompted by a yearning to derive economic benefits, tried to bucket down the plant’s unacceptable security and shoddy maintenance effort. The company also attempted to lie about inexistent disaster strategies, as well as other misconducts in the Bhopal plant.
Therefore, the decision to produce insecticides in the country rather than importing them centered on gaining a competitive advantage. Even though the state lacked sufficient expertise to manufacture such poisonous products, it still allowed UCIL to start the plant in Bhopal. In a bid to spur economic growth, the Indian government ignored forcing the company to adhere to safety and health considerations before establishing such a plant. The company made money at the cost of local people and the surrounding environment that suffered due to pollution and contamination from the plant.
Course of Action
The company should have moved the plant to an industrial zone 15 miles away from a densely populated area. Similarly, the company should have kept up with safety measures because the plant manufactured harmful chemicals – both to the environment and people. The plant had previous cases of accidents that the company should have taken as a warning sign to improve its facilities, more so to avert the tragedy that contaminated the environment and directly led to the death of numerous people.
The facility maintained weak quality standards and lacked several instruments, which led to the leak. The MIC plant design did not permit it to handle a runaway reaction. Two of the three safety systems were incapable of handling the situation that ensued. The company was fixing the flare tower, which burned off MIC byproducts, at the time of the tragedy. Likewise, there was no caustic soda in the scrubber to defuse MIC discharges. At the time of the unconstrained reaction that culminated in the tragedy, MIC was flowing through the scrubber at 200 times its intended capacity. The maximum room allowed for the MIC tank was 50%, but the tank was filled to 87% of its size. The water sprays were not working correctly. Several months before the disaster, the company closed a cooling unit for the storage of MIC and prevention of biochemical reactions as part of the company’s worldwide frugality drive. Therefore, the company was not storing MIC at zero degrees centigrade as recommended. What is more, the MIC tank’s critical gauges and displays were faulty.
UCC tried to reduce its costs by releasing half of its staff in the Bhopal factory between 1980 and 1984. Since the firm was losing money, it began cutting expenses by retrenching members of the maintenance department. The company cut down jobs to reduce expenses, which also reduced the training period for employees from the customary six months to a mere 15 days only. The leakage began with the washout of a pipeline that had not been shut correctly by an employee who was not well trained and was obeying orders from a beginner boss. It attests that the plant had a shortage of skillful workers for the company to let the skilled ones go. The parent corporation had earlier on undertaken an inspection at ignored the report and failed to make the essential repairs and enhancements identified because due to its cost-cutting drive that realigned its priorities to saving cash. Before the tragedy, the MIC department had only six employees per shift instead of twelve, as proposed by the designers. The company went against the principle of “perform[ing] services only in areas of their [employees’] competence.”
The company tactics to curtail expenditure lead to cheap quality control measures and noncompliance with staff safety rules. For instance, the company stopped the replacement of old pipes during this initiative. The company also stopped training employees, which forced them to use English instruction pamphlets despite not comprehending the language wholly. Some of the skilled workers went to look for opportunities in other companies because of unethical practices. Despite the staff complaining through their union, the company took no action. Instead, the company either penalized or sacked these employees. The government failed to act because of fear of locals losing their jobs and, ultimately, a decrease in the levy it collected.
Course of Action
The company should have followed the recommendations the parent company outlined in its post-inspection report. By ignoring these recommendations, the company put people’s lives at risk, which later transpired through the gas leak disaster. Secondly, the company should have maintained the proposed number of staff at the MIC unit and avoided understaffing the plant, which led to the errors that culminated in the disaster. As such, the company fell short of the principle of working in a just and secure office.
Once the disaster transpired, Unions Carbide blamed the tragedy on human error in the plant. The corporation claimed that a discontented worker sabotaged the facility, which caused the gas leak. The company did not provide any proof of its assertions and also failed to identify the suspect. It shows a denial of accountability by Unions Carbide along with its administration. It is also an attestation of a company lacking a clear code of actionable moral dependable, just, and legal conduct. On a few occasions, UCC has blatantly failed to recompense the fatalities claiming that the corporation did not operate under Indian legal frameworks.
Course of Action
Both companies should have agreed on how to deal with such an issu...