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5 - Insuring Injustice

from Part II - New Machineries of Injustice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2020

Nate Holdren
Affiliation:
Drake University, Iowa
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Summary

Chapter 5 argues that employment discrimination against the disabled did in fact happen under compensation laws. Courts had hypothesized that this would take place, due to a new structure of incentives within the law introduced by the cases discussed in Chapter 4. This chapter shows that courts hypothesized correctly. The chapter explains that this incentive was particularly intense at large corporations because the political economy of those businesses made them especially risk-averse. Furthermore, the chapter argues that a cost-saving practice known as self-insurance, in which employers paid their own costs for employees’ injuries instead of purchasing an insurance policy, made employers especially likely to discriminate. The chapter shows that many of the largest and most successful businesses in the United States, including some of the largest companies in the world, practiced self-insurance. Finally, the chapter argues that ideas and terms drawn from the insurance world helped companies to defend discrimination against the disabled in impersonal, apolitical, and amoral terms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Injury Impoverished
Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era
, pp. 175 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Insuring Injustice
  • Nate Holdren, Drake University, Iowa
  • Book: Injury Impoverished
  • Online publication: 06 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657730.009
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  • Insuring Injustice
  • Nate Holdren, Drake University, Iowa
  • Book: Injury Impoverished
  • Online publication: 06 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657730.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Insuring Injustice
  • Nate Holdren, Drake University, Iowa
  • Book: Injury Impoverished
  • Online publication: 06 April 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657730.009
Available formats
×