Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Greed and Abuse of Employees Do NOT pay off for Titan Corporation (now L-3 Communications)

Yesterday I asked this question, "What happens when Titan Corporation goes to war, and its Insurance Company, AIG, doesn't want to pay for injured translators?"

Today I opened the newspaper and found an answer to my question.

The army has ended L-3 Titan Group's linguist services contract, which was the company's biggest source of revenue--around $600 million in 2006.

L-3 Titan says it will lose about 15 cents a share. Wouldn't stockholders have been better off if Titan had spent more on its employees, for example, paying for medical treatment and rehabilitation when they were blinded or otherwise injured or disabled? Perhaps that would have trimmed earnings by 1 cent per share. My guess is that they'd be ahead 14 cents a share if they'd done that.

The US Department of Labor reports that 216 Titan/L-3 employees have been killed in Iraq, more than any other contractor or coalition force except the United States military. 655 contractor employees have been killed in the war.

Private companies are required to carry insurance for their workers in Iraq, and to report claims to the Labor Department. But apparently the Labor Department does not require the insurance companies to pay the claims, if Mazin Al-Nashi's experience (see prior post) is typical.

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