1y ago

Feds Recently Hit Cargo Giant In Baltimore Disaster For Silencing Whistleblowers

www.levernews.com

The company that chartered the cargo ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was recently sanctioned by regulators for blocking its employees from directly reporting safety concerns to the U.S. Coast Guard — in violation of a seaman whistleblower protection law, according to regulatory filings reviewed by The Lever.

Eight months before a Maersk Line Limited-chartered cargo ship crashed into the Baltimore bridge, likely killing six people and injuring others, the Labor Department sanctioned the shipping conglomerate for retaliating against an employee who reported unsafe working conditions aboard a Maersk-operated boat. In its order, the department found that Maersk had “a policy that requires employees to first report their concerns to Maersk]... prior to reporting it to the Coast Guard] or other authorities.”

113 comments

Revoke their corporate charter.
We need to start "executing" bad corporate actors, full stop.
- thank you for saying this. get rid of republicans and we're halfway there.
  
  💯
- But that’s socialism. /s
- Instead the WH has said that they're not going to be held financial responsible for any of the rebuilding and let's just check in in about five years to see that literally nothing happens to Maersk because of this.
  
  Yeah that's not what he said.
  
  Source: your ass
And racists were posting bile against the Indian/Sri Lankan crew on the ship.
As if they were responsible for disaster and not the greedy rich pricks.
- And racists were posting bile against the Indian/Sri Lankan crew on the ship.
  You'll notice they disappeared pretty quickly when it was revealed pilots from the harbor were at the helm... ah, such is the life of a racist. Quickly running from one manufactured outrage to another... don't let facts get in the way of a good rage session.
  
  Yep, it's nearly always local pilots to drive in and out of ports. They know the area best.
  
  It's almost too bad, in a way.
  Indian racists/casteists will mutter about DEI themselves. Would have been hilarious to see the cracks in that alliance start to widen.
- as long as the republican party is a force in politics, these companies will continue to get away with this shit.
- They were not even at the wheel... Local crew manoeuvres these boats out of port
  
  Is it even the local pilots job to verify the ship is, well, ship shape?
"Sanctioned" is such a weird word.
It either means "formally condemned", or "formally authorized". XD
- It's a pretty vague word in this context too. Something official was done. As you can see, the sanctions solved the issue.
  
  Going to have to sanction the use of sanction in these situations going forward.
- It’s a near auto-antonym.
- A ‘stern talking-to’
- Oh yeah some mid level manager will get thrown in gaol and life will go on as usual.
- You hear that boy, the shit winds are a blowin.
Wow too bad they aren't going to do anything about that Boeing whistleblower who "committed suicide".
- Came here to mention Boeing.
Ah I see they made the newbie mistake of not assassinating the whistleblower like Boeing.
- Boeing paid them to make a bigger mess to take some heat off.
The next article headline will be: Feds SLAM Danish company for destroying Key bridge.
- "Danish company claps back at the feds"
  I felt dirty typing that.
  
  Feds decimate Danish company with debilitating damages
One of the very few places which mentions that it was a Maersk ship
Fat lot of good that did obviously
- Well, in theory now in court there is more evidence of a pattern of behavior that can be used to justify harsher penalties.
  In theory...
Man everyone should watch that West Wing episode that was almost exactly about this: corporate lawyers for cargo ships minimum liability.
- Wasn't it oil tankers? Sam was negotiating the deal when Josh approached him about joining the Bartlett campaign. At the 11th hour he suggested they could spend a little more money and make it safer. When they refused to even consider it he quit. Then there's a callback in a later episode where the ship he negotiated the deal for has an accident and causes a big oil spill.
  Sorry. I think I've watched the entirety of west wing at least 4 times lol.
  
  Yep that's the one. I think it's Manchester Pt 1.
This will somehow be used as further evidence by conspiracy minded people that this was intentionally done by the government even though it is directly contradictory to that
A Singaporean company owns the ship, from what I've read, Maersk just "rented" the ship for this cargo load, how does this in any way make it Maersk's fault? This is a genuine question because from what I've read, Maersk would have zero to do with the upkeep or maintenence of the ship, the owners would be responsible for that, especially if they had Just chartered this ship for this most recent load. Honestly, I haven't read this full article, unless it's the same I read somewhere else, but the gist is that people should be outraged that a company not responsible for maintaining the ship was able to rent the ship and the engine/ electronics failed on their rented ship so its their fault? I'll gladly retract this if there is new evidence that Maersk was responsible for the repairs and didn't do them, but I personally don't get brakes replaced or oil changes done for enterprise when I rent their cars...
- I just deleted this whole spiel about how "in aviation there's a role we call the operator" but the general gist of it is "why is it okay to hire negligent subcontractors?"
  
  Name checks out
- but I personally don't get brakes replaced or oil changes done for enterprise when I rent their cars...
  Ok, now imagine Enterprise gave you a car with no brakes and an engine about to catch on fire.... You go out and kill a fam of 6
  Then Enterprise reveals it's not really their car, it's a sub lease form a shady third party and therefore not their responsibility at all?
  
  I'm not involved in the industry in any way so I would obviously have no access to their contract, but if the contract stated Maersk was responsible for inspecting and maintaining the ship while it was chartered by them, then I can fully understand holding them at fault. That would be similar to us leading a car, for all intents and purposes, it's our car and our responsibility to ensure it's safe to drive, if we remove the brakes and kill a family of 6, that's entirely in us. But going back to enterprise, I don't look at the maintenance records and inspect if they fully or correctly installed the brakes before driving off the lot. And this is where I go back to not knowing shit about their contract, maybe it was in there and they neglected to perform an inspection, or maybe it was in there and the documents were altered, we might or might not find out in the future. My whole comment was that this reporter wrote this article as click- bait, Maersk may have been found to be silencing whistle-blowers, but it doesn't seem to me like that has any bearing on this incident in particular.
Weren’t these the same incompetent cunts who tried drifting down the Suez Canal sideways?
- They are not, that was a Tiawanese ship, Maersk is a ~~Dutch~~ Danish company
- Nope, that was the ship Ever Given from the company Evergreen, this accident is with a ship from Maersk.
Am I the only one who also would like to look at that bridge?
If you have traffic infrastructure, you want it to be able to either resist accidents and collisions, or that there is protection that will avoid total collapse from a single impact.
Why did this bridge just tossed over like a deck of cards when a single cargo ship ran into it? How many hundreds of those ships sail under it every day? An accident was bound to happen, by sheer chance, and that bridge, any bridge, any infrastructure, should be ready to receive an impact like that, and not immediately crumble.
- I think you're vastly underestimating the size of that boat.
- A New Panamax ship (a type that can go through the new locks built at the Panama canal) has a max tonnage of 120,000. That's 121,900,000kg. If it's traveling at only 0.5 m/s, that's 15 MJ of energy. New Panamax ships aren't even the biggest types out there.
  There's no such thing as "just a soft bump" with large cargo ships. They hit something, they cause damage.
  
  Yes, and you can still build some foundation around bridge pillars to protect it by either stopping or deflecting incoming ships
- When the bridge was designed, cargo ships were much, much smaller.
  
  Even then, dump heavy concrete blocks around it, anything to protect it.
- Given the design of the bridge and the forces involved, it's reasonable to expect it would fall down. Check out this thread in the Civil Engineering subreddit.
  (Hate to link to Reddit but sometimes that's where an active community is)
- It weighs 116 million kg and can travel up to 12 meters per second. The bridge was absolutely going down. Any bridge would be going down. You say it was bound to happen by chance and yet as far as I'm aware its the first calamity of its scope and type to ever happen in our history.
- The only way they could make the bridge heavier to withstand that boat collision is if your mom was on it
Don't worry guys,
Biden said he's going to fix it with taxpayer money instead of holding the multi billion dollar global corporation accountable.
- Oh, there you go again
  
  It's givesomefucks so while they are wrong 99.999% of the time, this time, they are right.
  You realize that Maersk is one of the largest shipping companies in the world, right?

113 comments