Corporate spokesmen blamed workers’ own lifestyle choices for occupational disease

Evidence

Just attributed the cause of workers’ health problems to poor living conditions rather than to unhealthy working conditions. Many of the miners lived in shabby shacks amid piles of dust. Just criticized them for making bad lifestyle choices: “[T]he wages paid in our industry are certainly adequate to support decent living. That many people who can afford better homes, prefer to live in small, unpainted two or three room shacks and spend their surplus funds on automobiles and radios cannot be charged against the mining industry” (Just, 1940). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1794

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the victim-blaming/displacement-of-responsibility mechanism Bandura describes; connects to the vault’s existing claims about how ordinary people rationalize harmful policy (Cooper’s social-conservatism, authoritarianism). — connects to: Employers blamed silicosis on workers’ home lifestyles, not dust exposure; Long-latency diseases let industry avoid compensating retired workers
• ADDENDUM: Reinforces the mechanism in the sacrifice article: dominant groups moralize victims’ choices to justify systemic harm and stabilize hierarchy.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1794