reports
USA: Goodyear strikers' picketline report
A critical, but balanced, picketline report about the current Goodyear workers' strike in Topeka, Kansas by a member of the Kansas Mutual Aid Collective.
By Dave Strano, KMA
Study on temp-work in German car industry, 2006
A recent study on temp work in the German automobile industry reveals that the companies in this sector try to hide the fact that they employ temp-workers.
Bosses' pensions boom
Company executives are receiving huge pension payouts while schemes for workers continue to be cut, states a report published today.
The Yorkshire post reported that bosses in the UK's top firms retire on at least 71 times the basic state pension for a married couple and can usually stop work at 60, researchers found.
A total of 112 company directors are currently entitled to a pension worth at least £200,000 a year, while 27 are in line for at least £500,000, said the Labour Research Department.
Persistent poverty increase
The Joseph Rowntree foundation has recently produced a study report that shows that persistent poverty (poverty is defined as a family income below 60% of the median income) in Britain is on the increase.
There are approximately 3.5 million children living in poverty in Britain today. That's more than a quarter of the total child population.
Abuse of power in the NHS - the Kerr Haslam Inquiry
Ellen Kemp looks into the sexual abuse scandal involving vulnerable people that didn’t rock the nation.
In July 2005 the Kerr Haslam Inquiry reported its findings to the Minster of Health. Unlike of the Shipman inquiry or the inquiry into the deaths of babies in Bristol, this report has not made the headlines.
DUck and cover - the continuing dangers of Depleted Uranium
Our exposure to Depleted Uranium is posing a danger that is being wilfully downplayed and ignored. John Couzin investigates
A new report has found that during the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign in Iraq, radiation levels in Britain quadrupled, leading to fears that Depleted Uranium weapons used in the desert state may have affected most of Europe.
Legitimised torture
The Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 has found the UK and US to have perpetrated several major violations of international human rights law.
The United Nations’ Convention Against Torture defines the term as 'any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.'
However, the US has defined torture as an act that caused serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulted in a loss of significant body function.
Corporate identity - new scandal over ID cards
The government could be warming up for another big scandal over ID cards, according to a new report, Corporate Identity – a critical analysis of private companies’ engagement with the identity cards scheme.
It looks at which companies are involved, their records, the government’s record in outsourcing IT projects, and what the IT industry thinks of the ID cards scheme.
The report, by Corporate Watch, can be downloaded here:
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/download.php?id=40
Mining communities, unemployment and incapacity benefits
As the government prepares to slash incapacity benefits, Rob Ray looks at a report brought out last year which is amongst the starkest examples of how incapacity has been used in recent years to hide much of the country's unemployment problems.
'20 Years on: Has the economy of the coalfields recovered?' examined communities where over 10% of the population had been employed in the mines before the mass closures.
The report, brought out by the Centre for regional and social economic research at Sheffield Hallam university, said:
5 million Britons work a day a week for free
Nearly five million employees (4,759,000) worked on average an extra day a week in unpaid overtime in 2005 (7 hours 24 minutes) according to a Trades Union Congress analysis of official figures published today.
If each employee worked all their unpaid overtime at the beginning of the year, the TUC estimates that they would have worked for free and would not start to get paid until Friday 24 February 2006. That is why the TUC has dedicated Friday 24 February as their third 'Work Your Proper Hours Day'.
