Laws and Regulations Essay

Introduction British Petroleum is the US’s largest corporation. One of the largest oil producers, BP services globally for billions of dollars each year. BP distributes oil and natural gas all over the world. British Petroleum has run into several problems with federal regulations over many years. Because of safety issues against the communities OSHA had to investigate many times for oil spills and natural gas leaks. Coca Cola is also one of the largest company beverage companies on the world. Coca Cola was used at first to cure addicts but the n it was revamped and used for making drinks for everyone. Like BP, Coca Cola had its issues with the law as well. They have been accused of violating human rights, pesticides in the groundwater, and finding cancer causing chemicals in the soft drinks. In 2008 it was concluded that Coca Cola was in direct violation FDA for health risk. We will compare and contrast the risks of safety regulations, OSHA violation, product safety and liability, workers compensation, and workplace data security and property protection from Coca Cola and British Petroleum. OSHA The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) of 1970 is a federal regulation that establishes and enforces health and safety policy in the workplace (Goetsch, 2008). It covers private sector employers and employees and encourages states to participate in health and safety programs. States that participate receive half of its funding from the federal government (OSHA.gov, 2011). In the advent of increasing awareness and training of health and safety, company safety representatives must be up-to-date on laws, regulations and liability. The OSH Act requires employers to maintain statistical health and safety records and to report occupational illnesses and injuries under certain conditions at each company location. The reporting conditions are the following: â€Å"Death of one or more workers, one or more days away from work, restricted motion or restrictions to the work that an employee can do, loss of consciousness of one or more workers, transfer of an employee to another job, medical treatment beyond in-house first aid (if it is not on the first-aid list, it is considered medical treatment), and any other condition listed in Appendix B of the rule† (Goetsch, 2008, p. 121). Employers are responsible for informing employees about health and safety practices, laws, and regulations. OSHA regulations apply to BP and Coca-Cola with some deviation because of the nature of the business. OSHA regulations include general industry standards and it provides health and safety training programs for employees and employers. In the last few years, BP has been under much scrutiny. OSHA fined BP $87.4m for safety violations that led up to the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion (Walter, 2009). In 2010, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill is still under investigation by the government. Insiders blame the spill on BP’s decision to shortcut procedures and skip a quality test (Casselman & Gold, 2010). Unlike BP, Coca-Cola received OSHA recognition in 2009 for having the highest employee safety and health standards at its Milesburg, PA site (OSHA.gov, 2009). Worker’s Compensation According to Goetsch (2008) â€Å" the concept of worker’s compensation developed as a way to allow injured employees to be compensated appropriately without having to take their employer to court† (Overview of Worker’s Compensation, p. 174). British Petroleum (BP) and Coca-Cola are large organization with locations around the world. Both organization have over 90,000 workers worldwide and have worker compensation plans to make sure injured employees are cared for. According to Ramos Law (2011), â€Å"workers at Coke suffer injuries similar to that of other factory employees. These workers suffer shoulder injuries from repetitive jobs such as mixing formula; knew injuries from loading product; or back pain from general warehouse jobs† (Hurt While Working at Coca-Cola or in the Beverage Industry?, para. 1). Coke needs to do a risk analysis and provide training to reduce the amount of workers’ compensation claims. British Petroleum (BP) had a massive oil spill in April of 2010 off the Gulf of Mexico in which BP hired over 20,000 people to help clean up the disaster. The care, training and protective gear for the cleanup crews was below safety standards. Training and protective gear could be the cause of the worker’s compensation claims that BP has will continue to receive. According to Johnston Moore & Thompson Attorneys at Law (2011), â€Å"seven oil spill workers were hospitalized on May 26 after experiencing nausea, dizziness and headaches. Four more were hospitalized on May 28, two of whom were admitted for chest pains† (First Workers’ Compensation Cases Building for Oil Spill Cleanup, para. 4). The fumes from the oil and the touching of the hazardous material to try and reduce the damage caused many to become sick. The safety standards of BP are being questioned for both the workers and the surrounding areas that were hit by this devastating oil spill. Product Safety and Liability Product safety and liability is a law that was created to hold distributors, retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers responsible for injuries caused from the product (Goetsch, 2008). This law was designed so that in the event injury occurs the consumer is protected. There are a number of different concepts that have laid the groundwork for the product liability law. The four major reasons that the laws were created were from, negligent manufacture, breach of warranty, strict liability in tort, and negligent design (Goetsch, 2008). Companies must take the time to ensure that the products that have been designed meet the safety standards to prevent potential instances from occurring. Coca Cola ensures that the product safety and liability is met by measuring the product and package requirements against the company standards. The company uses â€Å"The Coca-Cola Management Systems† which is a quality management system that maintains the company’s operations worldwide, maintain the Coca-Cola standards (thecoca-colacompany.com, 2011). BP has been under the analysis for quite some time since the oil spill occurred that caused millions of dollars in damage to the Gulf of Mexico. Since that time BP has created new ideas to monitor the waters that hold different oil rigs, these have been created to ensure quality monitoring. BP has created an observation program that will support constant monitoring. (BP.com, 2011) This will allow for the creation of quality monitoring preventing additional instances of the oil spill occurring in the future. This is important part of the product liability and safety program to ensure that the company follows the guidelines required to prevent future liability’s from occurring. This new quality monitoring will be able to â€Å"detect changes within the water quality, marine mammal vocalizations and weather and water temperature† (BP.com, 2011). Workplace Data and Property Protection In the workplace the most important option to the company is security and protection. Companies spend millions of dollars creating systems to protect all the assets and data that passed through a system. At BP, system security over their data tying global partnerships each refinery is a goal amongst the company. British Petroleum train each employee to keep information confidential and away from media if there is a minor incident. The risk of an employee breaking that code of silence about vital information is likely to happen. They have contracts to state employees cannot talk to media or there will be consequences that could ultimately lead to termination. Environmental Protection Agency protects the property and materials produced by BP. EPA keeps the regulation on what products are safe for BP to use to drill oil. Coke Cola has similar issues of security, but they are interested in keeping new products under the table so they can have the advantage over their competition once they launch a product. Their data protection requires a secure system as well. Both IT departments make sure systems do not get hacked by putting up server walls on the system. The security side of the results of companywide is an enterprise-level record of reference that becomes the official record for a given employee, customer, supplier, facility or other entity. Records of reference are the gold standard against which all other records in the system must be validated. These bind together the mass of company data and are at the core of the master data management approach to enterprise-wide integration (Goetsch, 2008). Although other large corporations are developing their own information frameworks, BP’s design is unique in that it specifically complements BP’s decentralized business structure. Casselman and Gold (2010) describes a situation in which a BP employee might have multiple records in one or more human resource databases, making it time-consuming to weed out the duplicate data. Conclusion There are many risks and contrasting information between the Coca Cola and British Petroleum. Both must follow rules and regulations of OSHA and federal laws in order to stay in business. Both companies had their share of setbacks when it came to employees and safety issues that made the public eye. Both companies continue to make billions of dollars and each year as the rules change they are learning to change with it. References BP.com. (2011) BP Deploying Advance Unmanned Water Quality Monitoring Vehicles in Gulf of Mexico. Retrieved from http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7064711 Casselman, B. and Gold, R. (2010). BP decisions set stage for disaster. Current, 524,14-16. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete. Goetsch, L. (2008). Occupational safety and health for technologists, engineers, and managers (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Johnston Moore & Thompson Attorneys at Law. (2011). Hunysvills Pearsonal Injusry Law. Retrieved from http://www.huntsvillepersonalinjurylaw.com. OSHA.gov. (2009). U.S. Department of Labor’s OSHA recognizes Coca-Cola Danone Waters LLC for workplace safety and health success. Retrieved from http://www.osha.gov/ pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=18137. OSHA.gov. (2011). United States Department of Labor. Occupational Safety & Health Administration. Retrieved from http://www.osha.gov/OSHA_FAQs.html. Ramos Law. (2011). Ramos Law Firm Workers’ Comp Blog. Retrieved from http://www.ramoslawblog.com. Thecoca-colacompany.com. (2011) Product Quality: Coca-Cola Quality. Retrieved from http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/quality.html Walter, P. (2009). BP handed 87.4m fines. Chemistry & Industry, 22, 7. Retrieved from Business Source Complete.