RCA Taiwan and the Valuation of a Toxic Crime

• In Event: Governing Toxic Waste 2

Abstract

Some STS authors have studied the different forms of valuating an environmental disaster based on the cultural and legal context. But there is next to no study about how, within a given legal and cultural context, a collective mobilization might come to revaluate its own conception of labor, environment and human life. Collective litigation dealing with industrial pollution or occupational hazards—in the US, toxic-torts class action suits—presents fascinating cases of such revaluation. By the length of the litigation, the number of plaintiffs involved, the complexity of the toxic causation, and the transboundary character of the defendants, the long struggle for justice of RCA Taiwan’s former workers--and the groundbreaking verdict that they obtained in 2017--certainly offer one of the most striking precedents ever attained. Through a long and extremely complex legal, medical, and technical confrontation of expertise and experience, the plaintiffs and the defendants have been compelled to bring evidence that would confirm or refute the former’s right to compensation for physical and moral damage. The plaintiffs/victims, i.e., the “polluted”, have faced their defendants and former employers, the “polluters.” Through that process, both sides have had to reconsider or reinforce their own moral “values”: for the defendants, a temporary exposure to some toxicants worth just a few pennies; for the plaintiffs, an odious crime worthy of jail time. Both also have very different perceptions of the labor-value involved. Some comparisons will be made with other collective lawsuits in Taiwan and in other countries, like France and Japan.

Author

• Paul Jobin