"The Vale Mining Company Dam Collapse In 2019, a dam built to hold waste from a nearby iron ore mine owned by the Vale Mining Company (Vale) in Brumadinho, Brazil, collapsed, killing 270 people. The tsunami of mud was so powerful that it overturned houses, mangled trucks, and ripped off the scalps of some of the people buried under the toxic mix of water and mining waste. It also caused vast environmental damage. After prosecutors investigating the disaster found evidence that safety reports were fabricated, they charged 16 officials of Vale, including Vales chief executive, Fabio Schvartsman, with homicide. Five people at TUV SUD, the German auditing company that certified the mine-waste dam as safe months before it gave way, were also charged with homicide. A report issued by an independent commission hired by Vale attested that Vale executives knew about the safety risks at the dam for over a decade and had received multiple warnings, especially in 2015 after a similar dam partly owned by Vale burst, leaving 19 dead. Investigators characterized the relationship between Vale and TUV SUD as one of pressure, collusion, compensation, and a conflict of interests. Makoto Namba, a senior engineering inspector at TUV SUD, found evidence indicating potentially risky conditions at the dam, saying, Everything suggests (the dam) wont pass a key safety test. Namba later told police that he felt pressured by a Vale official to sign a safety certificate and worried that failing to sign the certificate would jeopardize his career. Without the signed certificate, Vale would have had to halt its adjacent mining operations, which were estimated to produce more than $1 million worth of iron ore a day. Hundreds of people could have lost their jobs, and the report would have triggered a mass evacuation of local communities. TUV SUD certified the dams safety six months before the collapse and again three months later, after another auditing and certification company, fired by Vale, had warned that the dam was structurally unsound. TUV SUD employees expressed worry about losing contracts with Vale, its major client, if their reports did not verify the dams safety. Olavo Coelho, a 63-year-old long-time Vale employee, told reporters he worried about the safety of a dam and pointed out cracks, leaks, and dark stains in the structure to Vale engineers. He urged Vale executives to evacuate the suite. He was ignored, said Coelhos page 137daughter. Wilson Jose Ferreira, a 55-year-old machine operator, said he tried to warn his bosses about the growing number of leaks in the dam. They paid little attention to us, they didnt believe what we were saying. Several other mine workers warned their bosses at Vale that the dam was about to collapse. Supervisors reportedly brushed aside these concerns, citing fears about extra expenditures that could cost the company more than $1,000 to fix the foundation. A Vale spokesperson said the company allowed employees to file anonymous complaints but did not receive messages from staff warning about the dam. An internal company document showed that Vale mapped out areas that would be affected if some of its dams burst. The document estimated that the Brumadinho dam could cost the company about $1.5 billion if it burst and more than 100 people could die. Lawyers defending Vale denied the allegations that the dams managers and engineers cut back on safety measures or knew the dam could collapse, noting they would have been risking their own lives. Relatives of workers buried by the mudslide said they presumed a warning siren would go off, giving them time to escape. In the months before the collapse, Vale held a practice evacuation for mine workers and residents. Participants were told where to run if the siren went off and how many minutes they would have to get to a safety point if the dam ruptured. My friends daughter was distraught. They told her she had two minutes but she couldnt run it in less than five, said Anastacia do Carmo Silva, whose son Cleiton was working in the mines vehicle workshop when the mud hit. Cleiton was very athletic, and he easily reached the safety point in the training session. But not one siren was heard the day of the Vale dam collapse, and Cleiton was killed. His body so mangled that he could only be identified by his DNA. Like many small towns in the region, Brumadinho relied heavily on mining. This may explain why some employees were hesitant to express their concerns over the dams safety. Some community members said they might have died in the countrys poor public hospitals if not for the private health insurance offered by Vale to its employees and family members. We talked about the problems at the dam a lot among ourselves, but people were afraid of raising the issues with the bosses, said Helio Goncalves, a retired Vale worker. There is no way what happened in Brumadinho can be treated as an accident, said Marcelo Kokke, prosecutor with the Federal Attorney General Office who investigated the tragedy. If preventive measures had been taken in a consistent way, the disaster could have been avoided, or at least it wouldnt have taken on the proportions that it did. Prosecutors believed the companys profit-sharing system may have encouraged some managers to keep costs down. Under this arrangement, managers received an annual bonus of several times their monthly salary, depending on the companys performance. Prosecutors believe that this compensation system and the frequent rotation of staff were partly to blame for the sequence of events that led to the disaster. Vale denied that the profit-sharing system gave staff an incentive to reduce dam management costs, saying that the pay was dependent, among other things, on health and safety standards. One contractor at the Brumadinho mine recalled how he asked a manager for equipment to improve drainage at the dam that would cost about $1,200. The manager denied the request and said jokingly that he would be fired if he approved it. After the dam collapsed, Vale and TUV SUD said they were cooperating in the investigation and conducting their own inquiries. TUV SUD released a statement saying there was heightened uncertainty about whether the safety audits provided a reliable declaration of the stability of the dam. A Vale spokesperson said the company relied on the contractors it hired and their employees. Vale is committed to the safety of its structures and has a structured system to manage the dams that includes several technical and governance actions."

1. "Using Figure 6.1, how would you classify the ethical climate at Vale? In what way did it contribute to the mine collapse? What ethical climate might have prevented the dam collapse? 2. What ethical safeguards were present at Vale at the time of the dam collapse? Why did they not prevent the dam collapse? 3. What additional ethical safeguards were needed at Vale that could have prevented, or mitigated the harms from, the dam collapse? 4. What role did the relationship between Vale and TUV SUD play in the dam disaster? Did TUV SUD have a conflict of interest, and if so, what was the conflict? 5. Why did Vales employees and members of the community not advocate effectively for improvements in the dams safety?"