Asbestos: A Tale of Two Countries
The British multinational company Cape PLC moved to South Africa in order to mine asbestos. The reason was that labor cost in South Africa and the compensation for asbestos disease was low as compared to UK. As a result, 7500 people fell sick and many died. After a legal battle of five long years, a meager settlement was reached. Only few thousand dollars were compensated as a loss to workers ill health and for those who died. Labor has made advances in employment protections. It has also brought a new meaning to labor’s belief that “an injury to one is an injury to all.
Asbestos claims and trust fund in the United States:
The asbestos is a new scourge to the modern working place as South Africa’s story brought to the focus. In order to protect and compensate labor legal profession has been working hand in hand with labors. In the U.S., more than 600000 people have filed claim for compensation against asbestos diseases and injuries. Companies had to pay more than $54 billion as compensation to the labors because of the negligence. According to the experts, more than 2.4 million claims will be filed and $210 will be given by companies to labors as compensation for asbestos diseases.
For a long time, Congress has been working to create asbestos trust fund to pay claims to injured workers. It would ease the flood of asbestos lawsuits in the court system. It has been one of the dangerous hazards that workers have been facing. Late physician and scientist Dr. Irving Selikoff described asbestos as a hidden time bomb more than 30 years ago.
“The seeds of cancer,” he said, “are planted in the workplace … and by the time an agent is discovered and under control, millions of workers may have been exposed.” In order to minimize the risks of asbestos, Dr. Selikoff decided to take help from government agencies, unions, industry and environment groups People associated with the legal profession should be involved in it. It is only because of the legal profession’s interference that industry took the response of the injuries and compensated the victims. Now asbestos is not used in the construction and product manufacturing. Litigation has lead to a safer work place for employees who deal with asbestos.