Shrader-Frechette Kristin
Department of Philosophy, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, 100 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2002 Apr;8(2):139-54. doi: 10.1007/s11948-002-0015-4.
Blue-collar workers throughout the world generally face higher levels of pollution than the public and are unable to control many health risks that employers impose on them. Economists tend to justify these risky workplaces on the grounds of the compensating wage differential (CWD). The CWD, or hazard-pay premium, is the alleged increment in wages, all things being equal, that workers in hazardous environments receive. According to this theory, employees trade safety for money on the job market, even though they realize some of them will bear the health consequences of their employment in a risky occupational environment. To determine whether the CWD or hazard-pay premium succeeds in justifying alleged environmental injustices in the workplace, this essay (1) surveys the general theory behind the "compensating wage differential"; (2) presents and evaluates the "welfare argument" for the CWD; (3) offers several reasons for rejecting the CWD, as a proposed rationale for allowing apparent environmental injustice in the workplace; and (4) applies the welfare argument to an empirical case, that of US nuclear workers. The essay concludes that this argument fails to provide a justification for the apparent environmental injustice faced by the 600,000 US workers who have labored in government nuclear-weapons plants and laboratories.
世界各地的蓝领工人通常比普通大众面临更高程度的污染，并且无法控制雇主强加给他们的许多健康风险。经济学家倾向于以补偿性工资差异（CWD）为由为这些危险的工作场所进行辩护。CWD，即危险津贴，是指在其他条件相同的情况下，处于危险环境中的工人所获得的所谓工资增量。根据这一理论，员工在就业市场上用安全换取金钱，尽管他们意识到其中一些人将承担在危险职业环境中工作所带来的健康后果。为了确定CWD或危险津贴是否成功地为工作场所中所谓的环境不公正现象提供了正当理由，本文（1）考察了“补偿性工资差异”背后的一般理论；（2）提出并评估了支持CWD的“福利论点”；（3）给出了几个拒绝将CWD作为允许工作场所明显环境不公正现象的理由；（4）将福利论点应用于一个实证案例，即美国核工业工人的案例。本文的结论是，这一论点未能为在美国政府核武器工厂和实验室工作的60万工人所面临的明显环境不公正现象提供正当理由。
