1. International Business Machines (IBM) will establish a wide spread public awareness campaign directed at persons who have worked around industrial grade chemicals during the last 40 years. This campaign would last at least 5 years. IBM's campaign would educate and encourage those individuals to take a cancer screening blood test or equivalent medical tests, if such are accurate. In the event that the individual cannot afford the tests, IBM will offer some form of financial assistance/counseling to enable and encourage all affected individuals to take the medical tests.
This public awareness campaign could be patterned after the ongoing anti-smoking and responsible drinking campaigns of the tobacco and alcoholic beverages industries. IBM's campaign should include announcements in multiple languages, and should be disseminated in the press, over the airways, on billboards, on IBM's Internet site, and in all other places where it is likely to attract the attention of a broad spectrum of the general public and health care community.
IBM is encouraged to seek or establish the cooperation, participation, and/or some financial participation of other employers, government agencies, etc. But the primary responsibility for the coordination and fulfillment of this effort would be borne by IBM.
FYI - The late Philip J. Bailey. Jr.'s multiple myeloma was detected by a blood test a year before there were apparent physical symptoms. That gave us our last "doctor/hospital free" year. Our extended family used that "extra" time to prep ourselves, as best we could, for the glum months that awaited us. IBM’s enactment of the above recommendation would offer that same gift of time to countless others and their loved ones.
2. IBM will offer "in lieu of" settlement awards to those current and former IBM employees and their family members who qualify for such awards but for the existence of time bars or other statutes of limitation, if:
a. They worked at IBM's manufacturing sites in jobs that exposed them to industrial grade chemicals; and,
b. The IBM employee or/off-spring(s)/family member(s) suffered or experienced diseases and disabilities similar to those diseases and disabilities suffered or experienced by compensated current or former IBM employees and/or their off-spring(s)/family member(s).
IBM will make every effort to identify and contact such persons or their next of kin.
FYI - The medical bills and pain and suffering are just as real for persons who had no reason to connect their diseases, disabilities, or family members’ deaths to on-the-job chemical exposure at IBM’s manufacturing plants.