Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Silkwood Movie

The movie Silkwood, was inspired by the true life story of Karen Silkwood, a metallurgy worker working for Kerr-McGee.  When Karen and several workers get contaminated and she becomes active in the union lobbying for safeguards.  She decides to conduct an investigation of her own and discovers the negatives of faulty fuel rods.  It appears that she is then purposefully contaminated and Kerr offers to get her help or buy her silence.  However, when she refuses it appears that she is murdered to prevent her from exposing the blatant worker safety violations at the plant.


I think its sad that reputation becomes so important to companies that they are willing to put people's lives in jeopardy.  Ethical standards fall by the wayside and without some brave soul to play the role of whistle blower who knows how long the company will go, keeping their potentially harmful practices under wraps.