"There are all these rules, but, to keep a job I have to break the rules to earn my pay."
Said differently, it looks good on paper, but, in application, the company violates human rights. If the global workforce were paid well, no country would be looking for cheap labor and human rights violations would be solved as people educated themselves and demanded a quality of life THEY COULD NOW AFFORD.
Begin by outlawing child labor and demand educations requirements globally. The one percent and 0.01 percent are NOT necessary for a world with quality of life and healthy trade.
...However, ten years after the flagship Alcoa Fjarðaál project was completed, unemployment is higher than it was in 2005, and Iceland’s economy has become dependent on an industry which is vulnerable to commodity cycle slumps and mass job losses. Worse, the price charged for Iceland’s energy is tied to the price of aluminium...
There are several aluminum plants in Iceland. The aluminum plants, if in the USA, would have to answer to OSHA. Is OSHA still funded in the USA? The plant would no doubt be fined into oblivion for the injuries and deaths affiliated with it.
People are treated as a resource and not human beings and are pushed into depression.
The industry is a human rights violation. THE INDUSTRY is a human rights violation. When is that going to show up in international reporting?
This is the problem with Wall Street. Where a country, like the USA when it is under leadership with a conscience, these industries don't survive. They don't bother to act on their pollution or the violation of their human rights. They manipulate statistics to appear to be a "good" company for any country.
The aluminum plants are just one example of slave labor. Across this world are companies, like those in China, that enslave the people to produce cheap products so The West and the wealthy of Russia and China can play.
The cheap labor, as in Mexico, is ridiculous. The USA once had a very vibrant Middle Class with well paid citizens that produced an expansive economy. Under Republican rule in the past decades American workers are told to fear a good wage because companies can go elsewhere to produce their products. So, the entire global economy is suppressed by disposable worker fears.
...“Everybody who works in Norðurál [Century] hates it. (click here) Most of the people are eating anti-depressants and everything. They hate the company, they hate the work but they are afraid to change and be without work.” He said.
He described how many accidents there were at the factory and how the company avoid paying compensation or having to report the severity of the incident;
“I got a broken finger, I burned my feet and once I had a forklift drop on my arm. I never got any compensation from the company and when I went to insurance companies I could get nothing either. The company ask you to come back to work as soon as you can move and just sit at the computer, then they count that as being ‘well’ in their records so it looks like less ‘work days lost’. The insurance companies also see it this way so it it very hard to get compensation.
One guy was doing something very risky and fell into the [molten aluminium] pot up to his knees. He was on morphine for a few weeks. I remember the health and safety guy coming out of a meeting with him smiling. He had admitted that it was all his own fault.”
Industry standards on reporting discriminate between lost time injuries and restricted work injuries, with the former being taken more seriously. Like Alcoa, Glencore claim that the ‘total recordable injury frequency rate’ (TRIFR) is being reduced annually. Nonetheless ten people died at Glencore’s global operations last year according to their 2015 Annual report, and sixteen in 2014....
Alcoa went to Iceland to produce it's aluminum because Iceland has zero GHG emissions due to it's geothermal heat. Iceland does not produce electrical power, they simply harness it. So, according to Kyoto Protocol Iceland was the one place on planet Earth that could be corrupted for aluminum smelting.
If I were Putin's Deripaska I'd pick an old, abandoned building site big enough to accommodate his huge furnace because it will be in court for a long time.
An order by the president to wave all the EPA laws will only last under Trump and even then I doubt Trump will see it built and operating.
Republican corruption is turning the USA into the level of sophistication Russia enjoys and that is of a second class country.
...There are environmental impacts (click here) associated with each stage of aluminum production, from extraction to processing. The major environmental impact of refining and smelting is greenhouse gas emissions. These gases result from both the electrical consumption of smelters and the byproducts of processing. The greenhouse gases resulting from primary production include perfluorocarbons (PFC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), fluoride, sulfur dioxide (S02), and carbon dioxide (CO2). Of these gases, PFC’s resulting from the smelting process are the most potent. Primary aluminum production is the leading source of perfluorocarbon emissions in the United States. PAH emissions result from the manufacture of anodes for smelters and during the electrolytic process. Sulfur dioxide and sodium fluoride are emitted from smelters and electrical plants. SO2 is one of the primary precursors of acid rain. CO2 emissions occur during smelting and result from the consumption of carbon anodes and from PFC emissions....
Reallizing the depth of corruption that exists with free flowing and laundered Russian money, is to realize the level Putin's Russia will go to end democracies. Suppression of the USA economy plays right into the hands of oligarchs, hence, Putin himself and his plans to maintain people as slaves.
