Executives proposed hiring only older workers for carcinogen jobs instead of cleaning them

Evidence

[U]ltimately we may find that AOL is related to a chromosomal aberration which if confirmed, may be used to select PVC and VCM workers” (Ingle, 1969). A similar suggestion was made by Exxon’s Robert Eckardt at an OSHA hearing: “If employees with low susceptibility would be selected, it would greatly enhance the value of engineering controls” (Markowitz & Rosner, 2008). Causal attribution to genetic aberration inspired Eckardt to entertain a rather macabre personnel-selection policy: “One idea would be to only hire workers over 50 years of age to work with carcinogens.” In this depersonalized view, workers are merely tools for hazardous operations. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1788

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hiring workers over 50 to absorb carcinogen exposure: was the logic that they would die of other causes first and avoid long-latency cancers — i.e. a deliberate latency-period arbitrage? Worth investigating.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the apotheosis of moral disengagement in the chapter — the human worker reduced to a disposable tool whose ‘usable lifetime’ is budgeted like capital depreciation. The corporate mind fully converted ethical questions (should we expose people to carcinogens?) into technical ones (which corpses are cheapest to use?).