Irish Examiner view: Let’s take shield from corporate workers

Mick Ryan, an engineer with the United Nations’ World Food Programme, was killed in March 2019 when a Boeing 737 Max crashed.

UN worker Mick Ryan was one of 156 people killed in March 2019 when a Boeing 737 Max crashed. Months earlier, in October 2018, another 737 Max crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people. These 365 deaths were life-shattering for the victims’ loved ones but they cannot have been a surprise for Boeing as the manufacturer knew that the aircraft was dangerously defective. Yet, as today’s too-big-to-fail — or regulate — corporations often do, they carried on regardless. Passenger safety was regarded as subsidiary to profit targets.

This Thursday, the US Justice Department said Boeing had agreed to pay a €2bn fine for misleading regulators about the safety of its 737 Max. Mick Ryan’s widow, Naoise reacted strongly saying that Boeing should be charged with manslaughter rather than just fined. 

It is hard not to agree with her, especially as innocent air travellers will, one way or another, ultimately pay that fine, a tiny fraction of Boeing’s 2017 revenues of €75bn.

Just as was, and is, the case with our banks, wrongdoers can hide behind a corporate shield secure in the knowledge that they will not be held personally accountable for any misdeeds undertaken in their employer’s interests.

What a gamechanger, what a lift for societies and individuals it would be if that justice-defying protection was removed and people were held accountable for all of their actions, not just those in their personal lives.