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WIN Short: Product Recalls

1,575 views · Published 27 June 2016 · 2:34 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Democracy At Work · 2016 · News & Politics

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This is special feature is produced by Democracy at Work for Workers Independent News. This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, that a body is Washington, is about to announce that it is going to be doing a number of things that are supposed to help us as consumers. One of them is to be a little more careful in identifying bad products, products that need to be recalled because they endanger our health or our safety.

They are now happening at about one a day. They cover everything from food and medicine to automobiles and clothing, pretty much everything. Turns out that the corporations that produce these things are, I’ll be polite now, less than as careful as they might be to not sell us something that may be profitable for them but very bad for us.  And as this process goes forward there is more and more attention because there are all these recalls. And one story that is being told is a story that I want to argue against.

The story is, ‘well this is just human mistakes, they happen, everything can go wrong somewhere , these are honest mistakes and when the recall is announced by the government the companies generally agree and recall the product’. That is a very nice story but, it is often not true and that is what I want to get at.

We have enormous examples, from the cigarettes that we now know are cancer producing and the cigarette companies knew it years before the recalls were demanded and the end of cigarette production was required, at least to a large extent. We recently had example of the automobile companies who knew years ago that either seatbelts were not adequate or ignition systems were not safe or pollution control elements were faulty.

Yes, there are human mistakes but there are also decisions made by corporations, seeking to make money, that are holding back safety. That has to be faced. It is not just about a recall, it is about a system that puts profits ahead of people’s needs.

This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work, and a special project for Workers Independent News.

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