I'm not the only one down on Scotts' Miracle-Gro(ping)
Hey Folks,
Below (Dec. 9) I showed my ire for the recent Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.'s nazi brutality toward its employees (and, indirectly, toward all who work for a living).
Today Mike Harden of the Columbus Dispatch did the same:
Scotts’ policy a smoke screen for its own airborne issues
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
MIKE HARDEN
If life were a Charles Dickens Christmas allegory, a long procession of Jacob Marley wraiths — trailing a plume of lung-choking vermiculite dust — would be rapping on the bedroom door of James Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive of Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.
Hagedorn would be hypocritical not to answer the knock of those whose deaths likely were hastened by working in a Scotts Marysville operation that one former employee described as a "dust bowl." After all, Hagedorn recently declared, essentially, that what Scotts’ employees do on their own time and in the privacy of their own homes is his business.
Scotts plans to begin firing employees who smoke, even at home.
Were Scotts an untainted, environmental nonprofit agency concerned about a healthful breathing environment for all, the action might not seem such a bald-faced example of corporate amnesia.
Four years ago, an investigative series by The Dispatch revealed that vermiculite contaminated with tremolite, a rare form of asbestos, contributed to the deaths of at least five Scotts workers. They inhaled the asbestos fibers while handling the vermiculite, an ore Scotts used in the production of potting soil and fertilizer.
After the problem surfaced, Scotts urged 100 current and former employees who had worked with the substance to undergo annual lung X-rays. More than a dozen of that hundred filed asbestos-related claims for workers’ compensation.
The Dispatch also pointed out that records from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency showed that alarming levels of pesticides and herbicides had been oozing from Scotts’ landfills and waste lagoons into a creek that carried the contaminants to the Scioto River, a source of Columbus drinking water.
The Ohio EPA has a fat file on Scotts that tracks everything from DDT and chlordane allegations to contentions that one company landfill contained two weed killers that are part of the ingredients for Agent Orange, which was used to strip plants of leaves in the jungles of Vietnam and has been linked to cancer in some of the troops who fought there. DDT and chlordane, both pesticides, have been banned in the United States.
Dispatch reader Patricia Baumgardner, though a self-described nonsmoker, was sufficiently incensed about Scotts’ new policy to write Hagedorn.
"Isn’t it hypocritical," the Worthington woman asked, "for a company that produces chemicals that pollute the environment to be concerned about the fact that their employees smoke in their own homes?
"What’s next? Will you fire people that eat bacon, drink alcohol or have frequent sexual partners? After all, those behaviors can also lead to serious and expensive illnesses. What about people who eat too much? Will you send the Scotts Company police into their homes to monitor their activities?"
Baumgardner said yesterday of Hagedorn, "If he was talking about fighting for the health and well-being of his employees, I would have no problem. But he is talking about the health and wellbeing of the company’s bottom line."
She also objected to Hagedorn’s slinging of military hash in proclaiming that he would take his crusade to the "forward edge of the battle area."
It might be that Hagedorn has seen Top Gun too many times.
"It’s definitely in-your-face," he boasted of his policy.
What concerns defenders of individual freedom and personal privacy is not so much that it is in their faces as under their beds.
Mike Harden is a Dispatch Metro columnist . He can be reached at 614-461-5215 or by e - mail
mharden@dispatch.com
Below (Dec. 9) I showed my ire for the recent Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.'s nazi brutality toward its employees (and, indirectly, toward all who work for a living).
Today Mike Harden of the Columbus Dispatch did the same:
Scotts’ policy a smoke screen for its own airborne issues
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
MIKE HARDEN
If life were a Charles Dickens Christmas allegory, a long procession of Jacob Marley wraiths — trailing a plume of lung-choking vermiculite dust — would be rapping on the bedroom door of James Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive of Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.
Hagedorn would be hypocritical not to answer the knock of those whose deaths likely were hastened by working in a Scotts Marysville operation that one former employee described as a "dust bowl." After all, Hagedorn recently declared, essentially, that what Scotts’ employees do on their own time and in the privacy of their own homes is his business.
Scotts plans to begin firing employees who smoke, even at home.
Were Scotts an untainted, environmental nonprofit agency concerned about a healthful breathing environment for all, the action might not seem such a bald-faced example of corporate amnesia.
Four years ago, an investigative series by The Dispatch revealed that vermiculite contaminated with tremolite, a rare form of asbestos, contributed to the deaths of at least five Scotts workers. They inhaled the asbestos fibers while handling the vermiculite, an ore Scotts used in the production of potting soil and fertilizer.
After the problem surfaced, Scotts urged 100 current and former employees who had worked with the substance to undergo annual lung X-rays. More than a dozen of that hundred filed asbestos-related claims for workers’ compensation.
The Dispatch also pointed out that records from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency showed that alarming levels of pesticides and herbicides had been oozing from Scotts’ landfills and waste lagoons into a creek that carried the contaminants to the Scioto River, a source of Columbus drinking water.
The Ohio EPA has a fat file on Scotts that tracks everything from DDT and chlordane allegations to contentions that one company landfill contained two weed killers that are part of the ingredients for Agent Orange, which was used to strip plants of leaves in the jungles of Vietnam and has been linked to cancer in some of the troops who fought there. DDT and chlordane, both pesticides, have been banned in the United States.
Dispatch reader Patricia Baumgardner, though a self-described nonsmoker, was sufficiently incensed about Scotts’ new policy to write Hagedorn.
"Isn’t it hypocritical," the Worthington woman asked, "for a company that produces chemicals that pollute the environment to be concerned about the fact that their employees smoke in their own homes?
"What’s next? Will you fire people that eat bacon, drink alcohol or have frequent sexual partners? After all, those behaviors can also lead to serious and expensive illnesses. What about people who eat too much? Will you send the Scotts Company police into their homes to monitor their activities?"
Baumgardner said yesterday of Hagedorn, "If he was talking about fighting for the health and well-being of his employees, I would have no problem. But he is talking about the health and wellbeing of the company’s bottom line."
She also objected to Hagedorn’s slinging of military hash in proclaiming that he would take his crusade to the "forward edge of the battle area."
It might be that Hagedorn has seen Top Gun too many times.
"It’s definitely in-your-face," he boasted of his policy.
What concerns defenders of individual freedom and personal privacy is not so much that it is in their faces as under their beds.
Mike Harden is a Dispatch Metro columnist . He can be reached at 614-461-5215 or by e - mail
mharden@dispatch.com
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