Deepwater Horizon fallout: Worker Injury Claims

From Business Insurance 14/06/10:

BP and its contractors face an array of worker injury claims as well as questions over workforce safety practices as they marshal a massive cleanup operation in the Gulf of Mexico.

The sheer volume of workers used in the onshore and offshore cleanup operations and the toxic substances involved make workers compensation claims inevitable, experts say.

A BP spokesman said the company has 22,000 “hirees” and volunteers working on oil cleanup efforts, but he could not say how many are BP employees and how many are workers for contractors, who could be responsible for worker injury claims.

“There is no doubt about it, and then when you toss into the mix the toxicity of the materials they are working with then you have additional claims beyond the normal slipping on the deck of a boat or on the dock. Absolutely, there are going to be claims and that belies the bigger picture of any type of toxic exposure.”

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. The worst oil spill in US history, an unparalleled clean-up operation, and now a bevy of compensation claims popping up.  This arguably has the potential to sink BP for good.  (If they weren’t already, of course).

But it’s important to remember that two wrongs won’t make a right and low standards of safety for workers trying to limit the scale of the catastrophe will only ever make things worse.