Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 20 March 2007

The British oil giant, BP, is to be officially accused of "putting profits before safety" in a report from the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). This comes 2 years after the worst industrial catastrophe in the US for more than a decade - the fatal explosion at BP's Texas City refinery in March 2005 - which killed 15 workers outright and injured 500 in and around the plant.

Two US grand juries already investigated BP's operations in Alaska and Texas over the past 2 years and found it culpable of serious breaches in almost every aspect of safety. In fact BP had to shut down half its Alaskan Prudhoe Bay oilfield in March 2006 after it caused Alaska's biggest land spill of oil ever - due to severe pipe corrosion.

These grand juries and the CSB report all came to the same conclusion: that for the past 20 years BP had been cutting costs and therefore cutting maintenance and safety procedures at its plants to the point of dangerous deterioration.

Today, BP is forced to admit its management style was to "do more for less" - "get 100% of the task completed with 90% of the resources". This will sound ominously familiar to production workers the world over. Yet all along, BP was boasting of its cleanliness and environmental friendliness - while it was just getting dirtier and more dangerous to its workforce and the population!

Indeed, just prior to the Texas City explosion, it successfully lobbied Texas state officials to prevent tighter environmental regulations being brought in. This meant BP did not have to install upgrades nor new safety technology - which would have prevented the catastrophe! But it saved BP £77m and the "architect" of this policy, was nominated for a $1,000 bonus for her efforts. On the other hand, BP workers who tried to alert authorities to BP's safety breaches were systematically gagged, discredited and sacked.

The CSB says its aim is not to "fix responsibility" for the events, but to get information out to other big businesses so they will prevent such "incidences" in the future.

This is a joke in the worst taste. As if BP's UK Board was not well aware of the dangers of spending cuts or the poor maintenance history at all of its operations! It was told of the hazardous state of the Texas plant 2½ years before the accident. But it actually cut further investment there by half!

BP consciously and deliberately used every means it could to set its plants and refineries up for disaster. Prevention? It means nothing to corporate board members, who only see "£" signs. They make and break the law at will - even if it involves the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands. Was it not "Lord" Browne, BP's chairman, who went to see Blair before the invasion of Iraq to point out that BP had a "historical claim" to Iraqi oil? Oh, Lord Browne is taking the "rap" for the findings of the US grand juries and the CSB - he will step down from his chair of BP 18 months early - with a huge hand-out, still to be decided.

Last weekend, hundreds of doctors demonstrated on the streets of London against a system of job allocation which will leave 8,000 of them without a job and takes no proper account of their experience. For the past year, ordinary people have been demonstrating week in and week out in towns all over the country, over cuts in staff, closures of departments and sometimes whole hospitals.

Yet what has the Patricia Hewitt to tell us about the NHS? We are not closing hospitals, waiting lists are down and beds are only being cut because of improved techniques! She dares to boast that cancer patients are seen within 2 months of diagnosis! Shouldn't that be two weeks?

And now the latest means of dealing with the deficit in finance - due to pouring the "investment" into private pockets via PFI etc., is to ... pour more profits into these same pockets!

Yes, we are told that Boots and Tesco will be invited to "tender" to open GP surgeries in their stores. The government is advertising for "experienced healthcare providers" to apply for £30m worth of contracts which would place them in a supermarket. And who are these "providers"? "Entrepreneurial GPs, social enterprises and companies in the FTSE 100"!

Will this add to the provision of healthcare so that there is more availability? Not at all, it will just substitute private providers - who are in it for the profit - for direct provision by the NHS. It is a cynical way of using the gap in provision of GP services in deprived areas, as a "way in" for private sector providers. And how long before patient charges are allowed in, too?