I just read an article on cbc.ca about the fact that GM has agreed to a settlement where they're to pay $900 million dollars to the victims of the ignition switch problem found in some of their small cars.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/gm-agrees-to-pay-900m-us-to-settle-ignition-switch-probe-1.3231785
So much about this story frustrates me ...
"... the deal calls for two criminal charges to be dismissed if the company complies with terms of the agreement for three years."
This means they will not be held criminally responsible for the deaths of over 100 people.
"The company acknowledged that some of its employees knew about the problem for more than a decade, but no cars were recalled until early last year ... found no wrongdoing on the part of top executives ... the problem [is due to] ... bureaucratic corporate culture that hid problems and failed to take action."
Whoever these employees were, they should be criminally charged. How can you live with yourself knowing you knew about a problem that was killing people, but you did nothing about it? Even if the corporate culture was such that you couldn't convince higher-ups to do something, you could have gone to the media anonymously, or even hired a lawyer. There are ways to get this info out and there is no excuse for the people who kept it secret.
The part I really hate about this comment though is that a "report" didn't find any wrongdoing on the part of executives, but instead blames the corporate culture. Executives are what MAKES a corporate culture. They're responsible for how their employees act and react to things within the organization. In this case they obviously created a culture where killing people was okay as long as they didn't lose money. In a situation like this the executives should be held responsible for the behaviour of their employees. The buck stops at them.
Of course, there's also the problem of this so-called "report". It was written by an external person who was hired to investigate the issue inside GM. It doesn't say who paid him, but I got the impression from the article that his paycheque came from GM itself. If that's the case, the investigation and report is automatically biased. Would you write a report for GM executives that says that GM executives are responsible for something bad? I don't think so.
$900 million dollars is a LOT of money - but it doesn't replace the 100+ people who died due to such a shameful act.
