News
Computer firm workers to strike
Workers at Japanese giant Fujitsu are to stage a three-day strike in a row over pay, jobs and pensions, it was announced today.
Unite said its members will walk out on 12, 13 and 16 November following an overwhelming vote in favour of industrial action. It will be the first national strike at a UK computer company, according to the union.
The union is protesting over proposals for 1,200 redundancies, a pay freeze and plans to close the final-salary pension scheme to new staff.
Postal workers begin two-day national strike
Up to 42,000 mail centre staff and network drivers launched a 24-hour strike, while 78,000 delivery and collection workers will walk out tomorrow.
CWU members voted by 3-1 in favour of a national strike in a ballot complaining that jobs were being axed, pay cut and working conditions made worse.
Union shows its true colours
People are saying we are against modernisation as a union but we are not," he said. "Sixty-thousand jobs have gone from this business in the last five years in agreement with the union. That's not a union against modernisation. What we want to do is get Royal Mail fit for the 21st century, but it's got to be through agreement, not dictatorship or imposition.
History of conflict
Shortly after the union announced that the strikes would go ahead, the government published figures showing that almost 1m working days have been lost due to industrial action at Royal Mail since 2000
Blair, clear winner of hypocritical RICH SCUMBAG award.
They have already amassed a collection of homes to rival even the most brazen of Russian oligarchs.
Now Tony Blair and his wife Cherie have bought yet another - bringing their total property portfolio to six homes worth a total of £11.94million.
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
World bank - dollar to be "eclipsed"
America must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world's reserve currency as US dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, World Bank president Robert Zoellick warns today.
Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, Zoellick said that it was time for a "responsible globalisation", in which decision-making is more fairly shared between the old economic powers and fast-growing developing countries such as China and India.
Ever since the post-war Bretton Woods agreement, which cemented the dollar's ascendancy over sterling, Americans have been able to rely on borrowing cheaply from the rest of the world as governments banked on the dollar as a safe bet. But Zoellick said the greenback's status could now be under threat from the growing strength of the Chinese renminbi and the euro.
UK - Last ever Labour government? It should be.
Alistair Darling has revealed his frustration at the collapse in Labour morale under Gordon Brown, accusing his party - from the prime minister down - of handing power to the Tories without a fight.
On the eve of what many MPs believe could be Labour's final conference as a governing party for a decade, the normally restrained chancellor delivers a stinging rebuke to the entire Labour hierarchy, which he says appears to have lost "the will to live", and warns that a Conservative government would "crash the economy"
In another sign of the party's woes, a leading Labour thinktank warns today that Brown could be running the "last ever Labour government".
Compass argues that unless the prime minister offers a referendum on electoral reform, Labour will suffer defeat followed by the loss of dozens more seats soon after, as Scotland opts for independence and David Cameron reduces the size of the Commons. The result could be a party with 130 seats incapable of mounting a challenge for power
The new holocaust - the crisis is killing the poor
Mexico and Central America are said to be one of the regions most affeted by the crisis. The often illegal economic migration to the USA was traditionally a mitigating factor. A study prepared for the BBC by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that in the past three years the number of new migrants from Mexico to the United States fell considerably, dropping from 653,000 between March 2004 and March 2005 to only 175,000 in the same period in 2008 and 2009.
the following statistics are from BBC mundo
Mexico - 12.5 million work in informal sector.
ILO say 500 000 workers sacked in Central America.
5 .1 million people in food poverty in Mexico.
50% suffer chronic nutrition in Guatemala.
Half of population of El Salvador, Honduras y Nicaragua suffer malnutrition.
“When there is no money, the first who stop eating are the under threes, there is not a family that does not take this decision....according to the specialist the real impact of the crisis in infant nutrition will start to be apparent in 5 years”
UK unemployment
Union leaders have warned that cutting public spending would provoke a "double dip" recession, raise unemployment to over four million and spark the threat of mass industrial action.
One senior official also reminded politicians that the last time the UK suffered "slash and burn" economics, there were riots on the streets.
The TUC has published a new report, analysing the effects of possible public spending cuts on the 25 local authorities with the highest levels of unemployment. The study found that areas such as Liverpool, Leicester and Middlesbrough would suffer 40 per cent increases in unemployment.
It also warned that a ten per cent cut in public sector staff would lead to 700,000 workers being laid off.
Chinese rich scumbags beware
Not content with murdering miners, the chinese rich scum just have to rub it in....
A millionaire in northern China paid four million yuan (600,000 dollars) for a dog and ordered 30 luxury cars to come to the airport to greet her and the animal, local media reported.
The woman and her new pet -- a black Tibetan Mastiff -- flew into Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, a report on popular news portal sohu.com said.
A convoy of 30 black Mercedes-Benz cars, led by two sports utility vehicles, drove to the airport Wednesday to pick up the pair, who had arrived from the Tibetan-populated province of Qinghai in China's northwest.
Photos of the event posted with the report showed a committee of dog-lovers holding up a long red banner welcoming the mastiff to Xi'an.
Research by the Hurun Report, a magazine that tracks China's wealthiest, revealed in April that 825,000 people had personal wealth of over 10 million yuan (1.5 million dollars), or 0.06 percent of the population.
The vast majority of these millionaires have said the global financial crisis has not had any impact on their lifestyle, the research said.
Deadly Chinese mining industry - more dead.
The death toll from a gas explosion at a coal mine in central China has risen to 42, with 37 workers still trapped underground, state media reported Wednesday, citing local officials. The deadly blast, the latest to rock the notoriously dangerous coal mining industry here, took place early Tuesday in a small mine in Pingdingshan city in Henan province, officials said.
Two city officials were sacked and all of the city's 157 mines temporarily shut down following the accident, which the official Xinhua news agency said was believed to have been the result of illegal mining.
China's coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, with safety standards often ignored in the quest for profits and the drive to meet surging demand for coal -- the source of about 70 percent of China's energy.
Official figures show that more than 3,200 workers died in collieries last year, but independent labour groups say the actual figure could be much higher, as many accidents are covered up in order to avoid costly mine shutdowns.
Elsewhere in Henan, Xinhua reported that 13 people were trapped Wednesday in a gold mine in the city of Lingbao after a fire broke out.
Unemployment in Japan
The total number of unemployed people rose by about one million from a year earlier to 3.59 million as companies slashed costs to cope with the worst recession in decades.
Official figures last week showed the world's second largest economy grew in April-June for the first time in five quarters, limping out of recession, but many ordinary people say they are not feeling the recovery.
Japanese companies are also struggling. Toyota Motor said Friday it was abandoning a plant in California that it jointly owned with General Motors -- the first time the Japanese firm has ever pulled the plug on a factory.
The overall economic picture in Japan remains weak," Societe Generale analysts wrote in a research note. "We expect unemployment to continue rising through the third quarter of this year before any real recovery occurs.
There are also fears that the economy could stumble again as the effects of the government's massive economic stimulus packages fade.
Consumer spending remains weak in Japan, leaving the economy highly dependent on exports. Household spending fell 2.0 percent in July from a year earlier, sharply reversing a 0.2 percent rise in June, data showed.
"The recent growth was mainly due to government spending and was not a self-sustaining recovery in the Japanese economy," said Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research.
We're unlikely to see a swift recovery for the time being.
UK unemployment
The number of people out of work increased by 220,000 in the three months to June. It means 2.435 million are now unemployed .
The three months to May saw unemployment rise by 281,000 to 2.38 million.
It is predicted dole queues will stretch past the three million mark next year - but an even gloomier forecast from the Centre for Economics and Business Research says it could approach four million.
This would be far worse than the 1980s peak under Margaret Thatcher.
Race barriers flourishing in rotten UK
Alongside class division, racial discrimination grows like a weed on the capitalist manure heap.
Recent news is that institutionalised racism within the police force is worsening.
The Home Affairs Committee said in the ten years since the Macpherson Report aspects of police race relations, such as stop and search, had got worse.
In a context of generalised exclusion of "coloured people" from the upper echelons
"To become a member of this elite club of senior managers and directors, it isn't simply a question of whether you are able to do the job - other things come into play: social background, how you spend your leisure time, whether other members of that club would like to spend social time with you. All too often, people of colour fail these tests."
"Taking trend rates of the last seven years and projecting them forward shows that, if anything, the gap will widen," the report says. "The depressing implication is that there may still be a colour bar to management jobs 33 years after the passing of the Race Relations Act."
Class barriers flourishing in Rotten UK
The rich /poor divide made the headlines again due to the publication of "Unleashing Aspiration; The final Report of The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions"
From the Guardian
Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Britain is an unequal society. The elite look after their own. Poverty traps people from one generation to another. Government action and huge expenditure have at best stopped social division worsening. Encouraging aspiration is hard. And these conclusions, from yesterday's excellent report on access to the professions, sit alongside some startling individual facts.
There are, it reveals, more students of black Caribbean origin at London Metropolitan University than in all the 20 Russell Group universities put together. Only 60 of the 250 schools that run cadet forces, feeding leaders into the army, are in the state sector. The vast majority of graduate recruiters target 20 or fewer university campuses, although there are 109 universities in Britain. While only 7% of pupils are educated privately, 75% of judges went to independent schools, 70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants, 32% of MPs - and many journalists, too.
It is uncomfortable to be told such truths; behind its modern veneer, British society is determined by who you know, and who your parents are.
UK economy shrinks
The economy shrank at its fastest rate for more than 50 years in the first quarter of 2009, with output down 2.4 per cent - much worse than estimated. Output had been estimated to fall to 1.9 per cent, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
The decline in the first three months of the year equals a 2.4 per cent slump seen in 1974 and is the worst since a 2.6 per cent fall seen in 1958.
The recession also began earlier than expected, with a 0.1 per cent decline seen between April and June last year compared with previous estimates of zero growth.
Following the revision - which also saw a deeper 1.8 per cent decline in the final quarter of 2008 - the UK's output is now 4.9 per cent below the level seen before the recession.
UK: Striking oil workers burn dismissal letters
Thousands of workers across England and Wales have walked out in support of 647 Lindsey oil refinery construction staff sacked for staging unofficial strikes. It comes as Lindsey workers burned dozens of dismissal letters in protest.
Wildcat strikes spread across UK
Contract workers across Britain are being urged to continue taking wildcat strike action as efforts to resolve a bitter jobs row continue.
Talks aimed at resolving the dispute following the sacking of almost 650 workers at Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire have been adjourned and will resume on Thursday.
Sources said some progress was made during the talks but there are still "significant barriers".
Unions are demanding the reinstatement of the sacked workers and guarantees of no victimisation of activists involved in sympathy strikes, as well as jobs for 51 employees laid off at Lindsey earlier this month.
Text messages have been sent to workers urging them to continue taking industrial action, adding: "More is needed to finish this dispute to show we will not take this abuse any longer. All sites must show their support. This fight is far from over, brothers."
Up to 4,000 workers at power stations and oil and gas terminals across Britain have taken unofficial action.
Public sector jobs "bloodbath"
The public sector is poised to make 350,000 job cuts in the next five years, sparking a “guerrilla war” with unions, the CIPD has predicted.
Speaking ahead of the publication of the Office for National Statistics job figures, which are due out on Wednesday, John Philpott, chief economist and director of public policy at the CIPD, said that the current mood of optimism over the upturn was not yet justified. The main reason is that the burden of public debt means that large-scale public-sector job cuts are inevitable, which will have a knock-on effect throughout the economy, he said.
Unofficial strike at Lindsey Oil Refinery
French oil company Total said on Friday that 1,200 contractors have walked out on unofficial strike over planned redundancies at its British Lindsey refinery.
BNP boss 'to attend Queen's party'
The British National Party's leader is set to attend a garden party hosted by the Queen, according to a colleague.
Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, said Nick Griffin will accompany him as his guest at the event at Buckingham Palace on July 21.
All members of the Assembly have been invited to the event.
Mr Barnbrook said: "I imagine there will be a to-do and a hoot. These things are going to happen more and more as the party goes forward."
UK unemployment
The number of people out of work soared by almost a quarter of a million in the first three months of this year, figures show.
The rise of 244,000 is the biggest quarterly increase in the jobless total since 1981 and was larger than many analysts had predicted.
It takes the number of people in the UK now looking for work to just over 2.2 million, the worst figure since 1996.
Plan to monitor all internet use
Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.
The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.
The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites........
Spanish unemployment
The number of unemployed in spain has surpassed 4 million in the first quarter of 2009, a negative record in 30 years. As for the preceding quarter, the increase was 802 000 in total. The unemployment rate has reached 17.36%, the highest rate since 1998.
Translated from this site - Il numero dei disoccupati in Spagna ha superato i 4 milioni nel primo trimestre del 2009, un record negativo da 30 anni. Rispetto al trimestre precedente l’aumento è stato di 802mila unità. Il tasso di disoccupazione ha raggiunto il 17,36%, il livello più alto dal 1998.
UK unemployment
New figures show that unemployment has soared to its highest level since Labour came to power in 1997.
The number of people looking for work jumped by 177,000 in the three months to February to reach 2.1 million - the biggest quarterly rise since 1991.
The worst total since February 1997, months before Labour won the general election.
The number claiming jobseeker's allowance increased for the 13th month in a row in March, up by 73,700 to 1.46 million, highest total since September 1997.
Meanwhile economic inactivity, including people on long-term sick leave, those taking early retirement or who have given up looking for work, remained at more than 20% of the workforce at 7.85 million.
Average earnings increased by just 0.1% in the year to February, down by 1.6% from the previous month, while the figure excluding bonuses was down by 0.3% to 3.2%. Both figures were record lows.
The UK now has an unemployment rate of 6.7%, the highest since the summer of 1997.
The number of manufacturing jobs fell by 139,000 in the quarter to February, compared to the previous year, to a record low of 2.75 million.
Job vacancies fell by 68,000 in the quarter to March to a record low of 462,000, while a record 270,000 people were made redundant in the three months to February.
British children "among the unhappiest"
British children are among the unhappiest in Europe, according to a new wellbeing study
High numbers of youngsters in workless families and poor local environments coupled with low numbers in education or training left the UK trailing 24th out of 29 nations. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta fared worse.
It was well below the performance of countries such as Germany (8th) and France (15th) and a very long way behind the continent's best-off children, the Dutch and Scandinavians.
Among other factors which resulted in a low score for the UK were poor immunisation rates, children more likely to report poor or fair health and a relatively poor ability to communicate with parents.
G20 Police violence
Police tactics at the G20 protests have sparked almost 200 complaints from the public.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission revealed the figure as it launched a third investigation after a 23-year-old London man alleged he was assaulted by a Met Police officer.
The man claimed he was assaulted at a police cordon on Cornhill in the City of London some time between 6pm and 7pm on April 1.
The IPCC is already investigating events leading up the death of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, who collapsed and died close to the protests on April 1, and an allegation of an assault on Nicola Fisher at a vigil for him on April 2.
An IPCC spokesman said more than 185 complaints have been received relating to G20 of which almost 90 are from alleged victims of - or witnesses to - excessive police force.
A Met Police spokesman said the force is taking steps to identify the officer involved in the latest allegation of assault.
A suspended police officer - a member of the Territorial Support Group - was interviewed under caution for manslaughter on Friday after a second post-mortem examination found Mr Tomlinson died from internal bleeding and not a heart attack as previously thought.
The IPCC has also spoken to Fisher, who is shown in video footage appearing to be struck across the face by an officer and hit with a baton.
A Metropolitan Police sergeant has been suspended from duty while the April 2 incident is investigated.
Car factory occupations spread across the UK
Sacked workers from the car parts firm Visteon have been occupying three factories across the UK since Wednesday. The action began with an overnight sit-in at the Visteon plant in Belfast and employees are continuing their protest at the factory. More than 100 workers have staged a sit-in, the Unite trade union has said. Earlier, it was announced that 565 staff would go at Visteon car components plants across the UK.
Dollar under fire
The reciprocal facilities agreement between Argentina and China which enables them to skip the dollar in their commercial exchanges has arrived in a context of growing questioning of the U.S. Dollar as an international currency.
The agreement announced yesterday allows Argentina to buy Chinese goods with a credit line of 70,000 million yuan (about U.S. $ 10,000 million), while Argentina offers China an equivalent amount in pesos.
China has signed similar agreements with South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Belarus, while Argentina has signed with Brazil.
Last week the Chinese central bank president, Zhou Xiaochuan, surprised many by stating that the current crisis required the creation of a new world currency to replace the dollar.
Speaking to the BBC, the president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev said that the G-20 summit this week must address this issue.
"It is clear that the current monetary system has not helped to deal with the challenges of this," said Medvedev.
One question unthinkable until a few months ago is beginning to become part of the debate triggered by the global economic crisis: Are we at the beginning of the end of the dollar as an international currency? The reign of the dollar, unquestionable since the war, is under the microscope as never before. translation from news.bbc.co.uk
Anger as rich-poor health gap grows
Attempts to narrow the gap between the health of the rich and the poor are failing, MPs have warned.
The Commons Treasury Committee said Government policy amounted to "wanton, large-scale experimentation" on the public with potentially damaging consequences.
The cross-party committee denounced the Government's approach as "unethical" and dismissed claims that it was tackling health inequalities in deprived areas as "hype".
Committee chairman, Labour MP Kevin Barron, said members were "shocked" at what they had discovered, saying: "How can those involved in addressing health inequalities know for certain what works when proper evaluation has not taken place?"
The taxpayer must be reassured that money invested in policy initiatives is making a difference.
The report said that while overall health levels in England had improved over the past ten years, the gap between the social classes had widened - by 4 per cent among men and 11 per cent among women - as the health of the rich improved more quickly than the poor.
Despite the Government's commitment in the 2000 NHS plan to reduce health inequalities by 10 per cent by 2010, ministers and officials had not made even "basic calculations" about how much was being spent on the issue, the report found.
California's shanty towns
A century and a half ago it was at the centre of the Californian gold rush, today, tents are once again springing up in the city of Sacramento. As many as 50 people with no hope and no prospects a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people. Conditions are primitive, with no water supply or proper sanitation. Many residents have to walk up to three miles to buy bottled water. [...]
Construction workers illegally blacklisted
More than 40 construction companies could face legal action over claims that they bought confidential information about their workers.
The Information Commissioner said building firms covertly bought details of employees' trade union activities and conduct at work "over many years" from a private investigator.
The information was then allegedly used to create a "blacklist" and stop some people from getting work.
Deputy information commissioner David Smith said: "This is a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. Not only was personal information held on individuals without their knowledge or consent, but the very existence of the database was repeatedly denied.
Trading people's personal details in this way is unlawful and we are determined to stamp out this type of activity.
Construction workers have repeatedly claimed that they have been stopped from getting work after being blacklisted for suspected union activities. The industry has always denied the claims.
A list of major companies alleged to have broken data protection laws by paying for information on their employees is expected to be published later
On BBC news, 6th March 09, it was revealed the 40 firms including some of the UKs largest construction companies, paid £3 000 per year for the information. Further investigations are ongoing regarding the true size of the crime and whether other sectors of the workforce are b...
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