Labor

In the annals of perks enjoyed by American corporate executives, the founders of Google may have set a new standard: an un-crowded, federally-managed runway for their private jet that is as close as can be to being in the company's own backyard. Read More

Anger at the wide spread pain and suffering of mining communities flares with each new disaster and the recent collapse of a mine on the Chaiwen River is no exception. Read More

Wal-Mart, in a struggle to expand its global reach, is trying to enter India through the back door, but many consumers here have taken notice. Read More

President Gloria Arroyo has ordered an investigation into reports that Filipino workers were forced to go to Iraq to work on the U.S. embassy there despite a ban on them traveling there. A report from the watchdog organization CorpWatch said that "other South Asians" were indeed working for First Kuwait Trading and Contracting in Iraq. Read More

In the wake of the multiple scandals over tainted Chinese food and drug exports in recent months, Chinese goods now have an indelible image of being not just cheap, but life-threatening as well. But the fact that wrongly labelled foods, liquor and pharmaceuticals have routinely sickened and even killed people en masse in China has been largely overlooked. Read More

Gordon Brown yesterday unveiled a "moral" alliance of leaders of governments and multinationals to tackle global poverty, telling the United Nations that globalisation could be a force for justice. Read More

Wal-Mart prides itself on cutting costs at home and abroad, and its Mexican operations are no exception. Wal-Mart is Mexico's largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico-and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. Read More

Organized labor often complains of its treatment at the hands of corporate America, but its accusations pale in comparison to those made recently by the widows of Colombian mine workers in an Alabama courtroom. During a two-week trial, a Birmingham jury weighed charges that the local Drummond Coal Company bore responsibility for the murders of three union leaders who represented workers at its Colombian mine - the world's largest open pit mine. Read More

Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad told Congress yesterday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions. Read More

The union activists suing U.S. coal company Drummond Co. Inc. in Alabama in the 2001 murders of three labor leaders say deliberate foot-dragging by Colombian authorities is preventing the jury from hearing their star witness. Concerned by the delay, 12 Democrats in the U.S. Congress wrote Colombia's vice president last week asking him to intercede. Read More