Declarations

Equal Pay, Equal Justice

“It’s not about the money. … It’s about equal pay, equal treatment, equal justice.”

—Sylvester McClain, 62, a former employee of Lufkin Industries Inc. in Lufkin, Texas, who initiated a class-action lawsuit against the company for unlawfully discriminating against black workers. The lawsuit alleges that the company, which started repairing sawmill equipment at the turn of the 20th century and grew to make many of the pumps dotting the world’s oil fields, for years discriminated against its black employees, assigning them to the worst jobs and repeatedly denying them promotions. Now, more than a thousand of the company’s current and former black employees stand to divvy up $5.5 million in back pay and interest as compensation for what a federal judge in June called the company’s unlawful discrimination in awarding promotions. AP

Consequences of Climate Change

“Katrina foreshadows the consequences of climate change if we do not make the necessary preparations.”

—Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives global warming panel, recalled the government failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans four years ago. Markey, a Democrat, was commenting on a new report by the Government Accountability Office that found there was no coordinated national approach for dealing with flooding and other natural disasters brought by global warming. John Stephenson, director of GAO’s natural resources and environment office, told a congressional panel that higher concentrations of greenhouse gases may have significant effects, including threats to coastal areas from rising seas. The GAO report advised federal agencies, working with Congress, state and local governments, to “develop a national strategic plan that will guide the nation’s efforts to adapt to a changing climate,” according to Reuters.

Private Equity, in Hindsight

“It’s turned out that private equity went into the insurance world as it was going down. … They seem like they went in at a high number, and they’re selling at a low number. So I don’t think private equity has really benefited by what they have been doing in the insurance world, and I would anticipate that more private equity will leave the insurance scene than stay in the insurance scene.”

—Alan Kaufman, CEO of Burns & Wilcox, commenting on the state of the market and the impact it’s had on private equity firms who had recently gotten into the insurance business in the earlier part of the decade.