There is a lot of news about Diversity and Inclusion and, at the same time, about layoffs and lawsuits. The military earplugs didn't work and permanently injured many of our veterans. The "forever chemicals" pollute drinking water and invade people's bodies. Some allege that 3M knew about these defects and pursued profit to the detriment of our communities. How can employees even focus on doing great work under such stressful circumstances?
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I believe whole heartedly, PFAs were handled appropriately. 3M notified the EPA, they didn’t wait to ‘get caught’ and the exited the business immediately.. I was at the Prom Center .. trust me..
And if with the things going on at 3M, if you truly believe the company is unethical, I feel for you, I could never work for a company who I believe would intentionally harm anyone.
3M is one of the most conservative companies out there… again if you don’t believe me, ask someone in Marketing, Lab, Regulatory and/or clinical.. we have documentation of the documentation of the test results to prove our claims.
Good point on the pfas issue and 2000. That was still the Desi era when ethics were strong. Dupont had already been corrupted by leaders who offered sacrifice to wall street and embraced the GE jack Welch way, even if they still had dupont people.
Not sure mike and certainly not woman demeaning monish are cut from the same cloth.
Desi gave a bunch of us the day off paid after the 91 Halloween blizzard (it was a Friday off too, 3 day weekend). Monish would charge us a fee for plowing and demand we all show up at the Center for mandatory DEI and stay until 5 pm on a Friday.
I worked in the fluorochemicals area starting in the late'ish 90s. Very soon after finding out that PFOA-type materials were bioaccumulating in people's bodies, 3M shut down almost everything PFOA related. This was greater than $100M+ loss in sales. 3M did the right thing even in 2000 by shutting down that business. DuPont, at that time, continued their PFOA-related business. So, how can you say that 3M is not an ethical company?
As for the CAEv2 earplug, the product was developed by Aearo. 3M had nothing to do with 80% of these earplugs that were sold. And 3M voluntarily is putting in $1B (as a starting point) to the veterens affected (all because 3M made a bad acquisition). How is 3M being unethical?
While the company is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (they laid me off last month), almost all of the people I had worked with at 3M were stand up people. And these people are 3M!!
3M may not have made all the right decisions all of the time, but unethical culture, I don't think so.
Any large enterprise, made of people, will have lapses. That said, there are two ways to look at ethics. First, is it legal? Second, is it moral? It is possible that actions that are legal, may in fact be immoral. It is also possible that some moral acts may be illegal.
3M's ethics may be defined more by what is legal, aligned to getting profits.
The bigwigs certainly knew that earplugs were faulty early on.
Same way that they knew, before anyone else, that PFAS was toxic.
In both cases instead of being proactive, they tried to manage the situation when things got out of control and that is how 3M landed up in this current situation. 3M executives over the last 15 to 20 years were COMPLICIT, and as such should be held accountable.
Do you think the big wigs knew the earplugs didn’t work but looked the other way to make as much profit as they could or is there a problem with Quality Control?
The worst feeling is that the management keep asking factories to cut costs. All these "savings" will go on the pay for the lawsuits in earplugs or PFAS... not a good time to be with 3M now