Global labor organizations have joined the long list of those seeking to extract what they see as their pound of flesh from miners BHP and Vale over the Fundão tailings dam disaster in Brazil. As you may recall, this was a catastrophic failure that sent millions of cubic meters of mine sludge flooding down a valley, wiping out an entire town.
I am not saying the miners did nothing wrong. After all, 19 people died and many homes and livelihoods were destroyed. It could be that the company employees cut corners during construction of the dam. Or perhaps they failed to maintain it properly. Or they may be ethically and legally responsible for the harm done in other ways. But we don’t know that yet; investigations are ongoing.
That makes this action on the part of Big Labor premature, blatantly self-serving, and… not helpful.
Now, I am not anti-labor. Big Labor is a logical market response to Big Business. I have no problem with either of them existing and negotiating with each other. I do object to either side going to Big Government to force the other side to accept its terms.
But in practice, big labor unions, like many large organizations, tend to take on lives of their own. They often act in shortsighted ways, even at the expense of their own members’ best interests.
In this case, the labor unions are claiming that Vale and BHP didn’t respect trade union rights as affected by the disaster. But if there’s already an investigation ongoing and processes in place to help those affected by the disaster, including billions of dollars in the first settlement, what makes this a labor issue?
Are the rights of union members more important than those of anyone else affected?
Clearly not. Human rights are universal. Justice requires that everyone harmed by whatever wrongdoing transpired should be able to seek and get restitution.
But kicking the evil corporations while they are so visibly looking bad is an easy way to gain points with union members. There are dues to collect and elections to be won, don’t you know. Who cares about justice? Or even how many union jobs will be lost if the pile-on gets so bad it ends up shutting the mines down?
Not the typical union boss, it seems.
