Rational corporation meets disciplined worker: The (re)production of safety crimes as “accidents”

• In Event: White-Collar Crime at 75: Industries and Case Studies II

Abstract

This paper critically examines recent efforts to hold corporations criminally responsible for safety crimes, the negligent injuring and killing of workers and/or members of the public. Using the enforcement of Canada’s corporate criminal liability law (referred to as the Westray bill after the killing of twenty-six miners at the Westray mine in 1992) as its exemplar, and drawing theoretically from Althusser’s notion of interpellation, the paper argues that demands to hold corporations legally accountable for their harmful acts risk reproducing the limited liability corporation as a rational and moral entity with the capacity to operate in a socially responsible manner. At the same time, the state’s efforts to “improve” non-criminal regulations and introduce workplace safety awareness campaigns reinforce the dominant belief that safety crimes are “accidents” that can be avoided if employers and employees simply cooperate to educate and train workers to avoid hazards. In the process, the seriousness and underlying causes of safety crimes are downplayed and obscured, including the class-based exploitation that is fundamental to the capitalist social formation. The paper concludes by arguing for enforcement of corporate crime laws that recognizes the limits of this struggle and the necessity to stave off capitalism’s endemic harms.

Author

• Steven Bittle, University of Ottawa