Underdevelopment: Accidents and Fires

One day in November 1996. It is the first day of my professional life. I am at DuPont’s European headquarters in Geneva. I begin conducting market research into how new supply chains might be established in the new markets that opened up following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

My first day at work coincides with the marketing group’s monthly meeting. There are seventeen or eighteen people around the conference table. Not even two of them are from the same country. Everyone comes from a completely different culture. Yet they have come together around a common corporate culture.

Since it is a meeting of the marketing group, I expect the discussion to focus on marketing organizations and sales. I am totally inexperienced then.

The meeting opens with a presentation covering occupational safety. I expect these matters to be wrapped up within ten or fifteen minutes. But no. The presentation on occupational safety lasts for approximately an hour.

An accident has occurred at a factory in Ohio for the first time in twenty-seven years. I wonder whether the worker has lost a hand or an arm. His nose has bled. Everyone looks dejected because the accident has brought to an end an accident-free working record that they had expected to surpass.

An employee of the company is transferred to London. The company requires him to attend a four-month course on driving a right-hand-drive vehicle. Moreover, he has lived in London before. He already has experience driving right-hand-drive vehicles. But the institution has rules, and compliance with them is mandatory.

In 1996, mobile phones were only just beginning to be widely used. The company bans the use of mobile phones while driving. This ban applies in every country in which the company operates. At the time, using a mobile phone while driving has not yet been officially prohibited in most countries. The company, however, does not care about local legislation. It introduces the ban because it considers it necessary for occupational safety.

In the countries I visit for work, company employees comply with the decision regardless of what the law says. They explain, “The law here does not actually prohibit it, but we cannot use mobile phones while driving because the company has banned it.” For a moment, I think of Turkey. “People would say that the traffic police cannot issue a fine because the law does not prohibit it, and no one would take such a ban seriously,” I tell myself.

I visit the company’s factories. The factory I visit most frequently is in Luxembourg. There is neither noise nor dust inside it. In the production areas, one feels as though one were walking down an empty corridor. On both sides of me are rows of machines. Thick lines are marked on the floor at some distance from each machine. Crossing those lines to enter the areas where the machines are located is, naturally, prohibited.

The corridor between the machines is approximately four metres wide. When I walk midway between the lines on the right and left, there is a distance of approximately two metres in either direction. There are also wide spaces between those lines and the machines. Despite this, two buttons of my shirt are undone so that my tie can be tucked inside, after which the buttons are fastened again. I am also made to button my jacket. Over that, I am given a work coat, all of whose buttons must likewise remain fastened. While walking along the corridor between the machines, I am instructed not to extend my arms at an angle of more than forty-five degrees from my body. I am permitted to enter the areas containing the production lines only while wearing a hard hat and safety glasses.

The same safety standards apply at every factory around the world. High-technology products are manufactured. To ensure that these habits are also maintained outside factory environments, employees are required, for example, to hold the handrail when climbing stairs and to walk up on the right-hand side. If there are several of us, we walk up the stairs in single file on the right, holding the handrail. This is not in the factory but in an office environment.

Eating or drinking at one’s desk is prohibited. Sitting in an ergonomically unsuitable position in an office chair is prohibited. The computer screen must be positioned at a prescribed distance and angle from the eyes.

Everyone is monitored through inspections whose dates and times are not announced in advance. Those who fail to comply with office rules are warned. There are rules and inspections. There is also a general culture of compliance with them.

Both producing and using technology are matters of culture. Even perfect legislation is meaningless if it is not implemented. Morality and culture come first, followed by institutions and oversight mechanisms, all of which are of vital importance to social life.

On 13 February 1997, a fire breaks out in Turkey. The firefighters responding to it go into action wearing suits resistant not to fire but to water, and two firefighters die.

Fire-resistant products manufactured by DuPont had also been sold in Turkey. Having seen these products under testing conditions, I know how effectively they protect against fire. Wearing these suits, a person can enter flames higher than themselves and emerge from them without injury. Yet two people die because these suits are not used while responding to the fire.

Why were the suits not used? They had been distributed to senior officials who would not be directly involved in fighting the fire. The others remained in storage. Why? Because there is “respect for one’s superiors” (!). The best equipment had therefore been given to the highest-ranking officials. Where were the suits kept? In cupboards in their offices. Was there any possibility that these senior officials would come into physical contact with the fire? No. Function? Never mind! They are senior officials. Culture dictates that the suits be given to them. The result: two people dead.

Protecting human lives is a matter of conscience and culture as much as it is a matter of legislation and oversight.

Let us remember Kartalkaya and Soma. Let us remember the train accidents in Çorlu and Pamukova. Do you remember the twenty-five soldiers who died when an ammunition depot exploded in Afyon? What about the lift accidents in student dormitories? Shall we continue, and how many more cases must we list? None of these was a natural disaster.

Every situation in which human life is at risk requires particular care.

As someone who has spent time in dangerous working environments during my professional life, I have put into writing the experiences I considered worth sharing.

Morality, conscience, culture, legislation, institutions, oversight!