Monday, April 4, 2011

2010- The Best Year In Safety.

"Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we
achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our
total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate... As 
measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our
Company's history."

What Transocean Ltd. is trying to say is that the year in which it annihilated the Gulf of Mexico (they owned the Deepwater Horizon rig), turning it into a black smear visible from space, was their best year in safety. Ever.  Is anyone else as confused as I am by this?  If last year was their best year, what in the hell was their worst year?
  
It's truly a company that does nothing but look on the bright side of things, isn't it?  "Well, Tim, we officially wiped out every thinking organism in a good portion of the world's ocean, of which we as humans depend on for sustenance and water, as well as killed eleven of our employees... but look at the bright side!  Fuel costs almost $4 a gallon!  Those little peons are practically throwing money at us!"

Delusions aside, what really pisses me off about this isn't that the executives seem to be living in some kind of fantasy land.  No, no.  If that's all this post was about, even I'd quit reading about now.  No, what really pisses me off is that the executives of Transocean Ltd. have declared 2010, the year of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster (you remember - the one where the hole kept throwing up oil for, oh, I don't know, three months), their safest year, and are giving themselves bonuses for it.







The president of Transocean, Steven Newman, is basically giving himself a $374,062 bonus, on top of increasing his own yearly salary by $200,000 for doing absolutely fucking nothing.  This brings his yearly salary, by the way, up to a whopping $1.1 million.  Who needs that kind of money?  Oh, wait, I know!  How about those eleven employees that died on the rig for safety oversights that you and those ass douches at BP missed?  

Clearly that's not how America works.  Over in Japan, you have company executives giving millions of dollars out of pocket to help victims of the earthquake/tsunami.  I won't get into how they have that amount of money, but still, I hardly think that any American CEO would do such a thing.  Look at how all of those millionaires and billionaires stood up to Republicans when it came to the "Bush tax cut" issue, saying they would donate half of their total assets if the Republicans got their way.  Well...?  The Rep's technically got their way!  Let's see those millions!

And just like that, every individual that had signed the contract (non-binding, true) vanished, as if they never existed.  If they did donate anything, I didn't hear about it (I'm talking to you, Zuckerberg, you anti-social robot). 

The point I'm trying to make is... why are these executives allowed to just give themselves more money for doing nothing but sitting in a board room all day?  The majority contribute nothing to society, instead holding on to millions of dollars that will never get spent, nor fall into the pockets of even the upper middle class.  How about you take that bonus, Mr. Newman, and either shove it up your ass or, preferably, give it to the families that your company stole lives from.  And while you're at it, get that crooked yellow toothed mother fucker in charge of BP to start shelling out some cash too.  Hell, the Euro is worth more than the dollar anyway.  

"Why do I need $1.1 million a year?  What, do you think
my ass wipes itself?  I'm not using 'toilet paper' like the
common folk."


UPDATE: Transocean will be giving a portion, or all (I'm not sure which), of their "safety bonuses" to the oil rig  explosion victim's families.  The sad thing is, it probably wasn't out of the good of their hearts, but because they didn't want that much negative media attention.

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