1. Workmen's compensation schedule
2. Workers in Iraq
3. Diagram for why employers don't like unsafe workplaces. Competition and
Monopsony.
4. Few inspections by OSHA. Pp. 782-784.
5. Figure 23.4. -- when OSHA has no effect.
Powell v. State, 510 S.E.2d 18 (Ga. 1998) at 25 (citing Commonwealth v.
Bonadio, 415 A.2d 47, 49-50 (Pa. 1980)).
In Samuel Williston's classic formulation, the police power may be used
for "safety, health, morals and the general welfare of the public."
Samuel Williston, Freedom of Contract, 6 Cornell L. Q. 365, 375- 76
(1921).
"An interesting policy question is how the government should respond, if at
all, to public misperceptions.
Suppose, for example, that the public greatly overestimates the risks
associated with hazardous waste sites.
Should the government respond to these fears because, presumably, in a
democratic society the government action should reflect the interest of the
citizenry?
p. 646
Urn 2 contains a unknown mixture of red and white balls.
You win $10 if you guess which ball will be drawn out.
What should you do?
Now you must bet on white.
Urn 10 contains 51 red balls and 49 white balls.
Urn 11 contains a unknown mixture of red and white balls.
What should you do?
Again you must bet on white.
Urn 10 contains 51 red balls and 49 white balls.
Urn 11 will be randomly drawn to be either Urn 11a, which contains 80% red
balls, or Urn 11b, which contains 80% white balls.
What should you do?
A little-noticed provision in the $820 billion government spending bill that
cleared Congress last week prohibits federal highway-safety regulators from
enforcing new truck-safety regulations on commercial drivers who work in the
film and television industry.
The so-called hours-of-service regulations, ... are intended
to reduce highway accidents involving tired truckers by extending the length
of
time truck drivers must rest between shifts to 10 hours, from eight.
The
Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration estimates the rules will save 75 lives a
year, prevent 1,326 fatigue-related injuries, and prevent 6,900 property damage-
only crashes, resulting in annual savings of some $628 million.
Critics said the provision was crafted in secrecy and would encourage
other
industries to seek similar exemptions.
A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said the senator
sponsored
the provision and that the TV and film industry's drivers typically drive less
than 100 miles a day, often resting at the production sites. "We do not feel
this would compromise safety," the spokesman said.
On November 10, the governing
board of the South Florida Water Management District ($792 million budget)
recommended ending its two-decade-old contracting preference program, even
though there was no pending litigation. Board members had become worried about
being held personally liable for implementing the program.
The case that got the board's attention is Hershell Gill Consulting Engineers v.
Miami-Dade County.
Gill is a small firm with fewer than a dozen employees
earning about $1 million annually. While most of its work is in the private
sector, the company wanted the opportunity to contract with Dade County.
However, Gill Engineering is owned by a white male, and the county required that
at least 42 percent of the dollars awarded in architecture and engineering
contracts go to blacks, Hispanics, and women.
Because of Florida's sunshine laws this recommendation was broadcast on cable
television.
The county commissioners, however, twice rejected the recommendation
and refused to modify the program.
The county commissioners, however, twice rejected the recommendation
and refused to modify the program.
The commissioners then decided they needed a new consultant's study to justify
the policy they wanted to preserve. ... So a new
study was churned out .... This
study was so badly flawed that its author admitted at trial, "We do have some
problems in the data." As Judge Adalberto Jordan wryly concluded, that
admission, "in my view, is a vast understatement."
Worse than the data deficiencies, the court concluded, was the fact that the
study "fails to identify who is engaging in the discrimination, what form the
discrimination might take, at what stage in the process it is taking place, or
how the discrimination is accomplished."
Consequently the court issued an order
in 2000 ending the county's racial and gender preferences in architecture and
engineering contracts.
But other county preferences remained, and the plaintiffs asked the court to
hold the commissioners personally liable for their persistent willingness to
discriminate against white-owned firms.
At key moments
during the civil rights movement, the threat of personal liability was used to
force school boards and voting registrars to quit discriminating. Now a court
was being asked to use the same tool when the victims were white.
...
Judge Jordan ... finding that the commissioners could not be
held liable for enacting an unconstitutional program, but that in their role as
approvers of individual contracts the commissioners were taking on an
administrative role.
"The Commissioners are not entitled to qualified
immunity and are liable for any compensatory and punitive damages in their
individual capacities," the judge held.
The court was no doubt influenced by the undisguised spoils system it found in
Dade County.
A majority of the commissioners are Hispanic.
"It is probably not
happenstance," the court concluded, "that Hispanics receive the highest" set-
aside: 25 percent. Women are a majority of the county's population and come
close to forming a majority on the commission. "Again, not surprisingly," the
judge declared, "women have the second-highest" goal. Blacks represent a
minority on the commission; "not coincidentally, they get the lowest" goal, 12
percent. Only one member of the county commission was a white male and, of
course, no goals were established for the benefit of companies owned by white
males.
Judge Jordan warned that in the future, if preferences were used and the
record were as deficient as it was in Gill, the "consequences will be severe"
and "punitive damages will be a virtual certainty."
DONNA CHAN IS 23 years old and has been out of college since May 2002, when she
graduated from Wagner College on New York's Staten Island. So should anyone care
how she did way back in high school on her SATs?
Since Ms. Chan started looking for an entry-level job
in financial services more than a year ago, she has repeatedly stumbled over a
common requirement for many of these positions: a combined SAT score of at least
1300 out of a maximum 1600. Ms. Chan's combined score on the math and verbal
tests fell "somewhere in the 1200s," even though she earned a 3.9 grade-point
average in college while getting a degree in computer science with a minor in
math.
A number of ads placed by recruiters and staffing firms set clear SAT goals.
Consider this recent ad on HotJobs.com for an entry-level, investment-banking
position: "Minimum expectations include an overall score of 1350 on the SATs. .
. . You will be required to provide official scores and transcripts, so please
do not respond if you do not meet the aforementioned requirements."
Alan Sage, a vice president at Configuresoft Inc., a Woodland Park, Colo.,
systems-management software company, says he routinely asks applicants to submit
their SAT scores when they apply for sales jobs. He says he picked up the
practice from a former employer of his who wanted applicants to have no less
than a combined SAT score of 1400.
Mr. Sage sets his bar somewhat lower, at 1200,
While Mr. Sage says he has always asked to see SAT scores, he admits that he was
far more flexible when Configuresoft was first launched in the boom days of
1999. With his sales team experiencing lots of turnover, he says, he had to "beg
marginal people" to come work for the company.
Mr. Sage says he also places the SAT requirement in ads to see whether
applicants are paying attention to details. When he placed an ad for an account-
manager position on an online job board earlier this month, he received hundreds
of resumes. But fewer than 10% of respondents bothered to include their scores.
Those who did, he adds, scored at least a 1200.