Mining giant Glencore’s operations in Peru and Colombia continue to threaten Indigenous communities and cause extensive environmental damage despite the company’s public pledges to mitigate harms, according to three new reports by advocacy organizations. European banks are also among the top investors in these mines,...
He said that they believed that more than 10,000 round or unmilled logs are currently stocked at a former slipway at Palekula.
The land owner said forestry department failed to measure the logs after they have cut down by the Chinese company for transportation to Palekula where they are stocked.
He said to know the price of a log the department has to measure it to evaluate the price but so far nothing has been done.
“Heaps of logs are currently stocked at Palekula and to remove them to take their measurement, it will take more than a month. This is the problem of the company and the department to short it out. For us the land owner we just want the payment of our trees,” said the land owner.
He said under the agreement signed between them, the Chinese company and the department, it was agreed to pay 2500 vatu per cubic metre.
With the nation's growing dependence on a Pacific Islander workforce, especially in regional areas, attention is shifting towards improving worker welfare and wellbeing.
He said Pacific Island workers often lived with strangers in sharehouse accommodation and had to navigate expense deductions as well as their obligations to send money to their families back home.
But due to the housing crisis and the need still to negotiate with the states about funding the education of the workers' children, he believes settling worker families in Australia has logistical challenges.
Labour hire companies then established links to agents to recruit workers en masse from Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Fiji and Timor-Leste.
Mr MacRaild said understanding fair work conditions and expense deductions for airfares, rent and transport, taxation and superannuation, had left many workers vulnerable to exploitation over the past decade.
Mr MacRaild said a disciplined worker working overtime could generate a life-changing $20,000 a season, which could pay for school fees, vehicles, and home renovations and repairs to cyclone-damaged homes.
He said living standards were improving beyond anything foreign aid had been able to achieve.
But Mr MacRaild said the the movement of workers to Australia had led to an exodus of young people that was creating social upheaval in participating island nations.
"Many of these people have come leaving their children at home with extended family for months, even years on end," he said.
Capitalism creates socioeconomic inequality by concentrating wealth and power among a select few, perpetuates systemic oppression, inherently exploits labor which leads to alienation and a lack of worker autonomy, prioritizes profit over social needs, and exacerbates environmental degradation and resource depletion. We aren't the problem. Capitalism is the problem. #capitalism#inequality#exploitation#anticapitalism
Today in Labor History December 20, 1790: The first American cotton mill began operation in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The mill, owned by Samuel Slater, employed children aged 4-10. Ann Arnold, aged 9, was Slater’s first employee. The children worked 12-hour days, 6 days per week in the winter. In the summer, they were forced to work 16 hours per day. They spent twice as many hours in the mill than kids spend in the classroom today. Kids were fined for not working hard enough. By 1835, 55% of all millworkers were children.
While the world’s biggest polluters dominate the headlines this week at the UN climate summit with an array of sensationalist pledges and announcements, designed mainly to distract us all from a lack of real climate action, one of the biggest scandals of all is taking place right under our noses.
Climate and biodiversity crises stem from a growth-centric economic system, fostering inequalities, injustice, and exploitation, especially in the global majority. But what do we mean when we say, change the system, not the climate?
Deliveroo verdict: company has no ‘relationship’ with it’s riders.
So presumably Deliveroo workers are free to set their own charges for the deliveries they make and are also free to pick and choose who they do or don’t deliver too and at what times of day?
The multibillion-dollar Effective Altruism movement makes rich people feel good about being rich — to hell with the bad publicity
Effective Altruists call this “longtermism,” an idea built around a vision of the future in which we reengineer humanity, colonize space, plunder the vast resources of the cosmos and ultimately maximize the total amount of “value” in the universe by creating huge numbers of “digital people”
Reports allege abuses by Glencore in Peru and Colombia, and the banks funding them (news.mongabay.com)
Mining giant Glencore’s operations in Peru and Colombia continue to threaten Indigenous communities and cause extensive environmental damage despite the company’s public pledges to mitigate harms, according to three new reports by advocacy organizations. European banks are also among the top investors in these mines,...
Wolfgang Schäuble, Architect of German Reunification and Eurozone Austerity, Dies at 81 (www.wsj.com)
The staunch adherent to fiscal restraint prioritized balanced budgets at home and helped enforce austerity on the EU’s ailing economies.
'We want payment for our trees': Landowners (www.dailypost.vu)
Five Santo land owners have asked a Chinese company of the Vanuatu Forest Industry Limited and the Department of Forestry the payment of their trees.
Seasonal workers and their Australian dollars are changing the Pacific. But at what cost? (www.abc.net.au)
With the nation's growing dependence on a Pacific Islander workforce, especially in regional areas, attention is shifting towards improving worker welfare and wellbeing.
The great global land grab (pina.com.fj)
While the world’s biggest polluters dominate the headlines this week at the UN climate summit with an array of sensationalist pledges and announcements, designed mainly to distract us all from a lack of real climate action, one of the biggest scandals of all is taking place right under our noses.
Australia-Tuvalu falepili union 'shameful' - former Tuvalu PM (www.rnz.co.nz)
Opinion - The Australia-Tuvalu 'falepili' strategy is bullish and most alarming, writes former Tuvalu prime minister Enele Sopoaga.