Posted by Admin on January 12th, 2010 ~ 0 Comments
Union suggests company targeted female and non-white IT employees for dismissal
Hardware and IT services supplier Fujitsu is the subject of discrimination allegations amid industrial action by its UK employees.
The workers’ union Unite claims that it has found “major discrepancies” in redundancy selection at the company, with female, part-time and ethnic minority employees allegedly being disproportionately targeted.
Figures published by the union suggest that 6.7% of female employees were chosen for compulsory redundancy, compared to 3.7% of male workers, while 10.4% of Indian employees face dismissal in contrast to 3.9% of staff members from all other ethnic groups.
“We are disturbed to find that a disproportionate number of women, part-time and ethnic minority workers appear to have been selected for redundancy at Fujitsu, but have had no meaningful response from the company to our queries on this,” said Unite National Officer Peter Skyte.
While not directly refuting the statistics produced by Unite, Fujitsu has been quick to reject the allegations. “As an eq
Posted by Admin on January 11th, 2010 ~ 0 Comments
One beneficiary will be Kromek, which has pioneered a revolutionary X-ray technology that allows liquids to be screened quickly using special scanners.
Chief executive Arnab Basu claims Kromek is the only company to offer a foolproof way of identifying liquid explosives at check-in.
The technology would not have foiled the Detroit plot, which involved a chemical powder, but it could be vital in preventing some other types of bombs.
Set up more than five years ago with an initial value of £500,000, Kromek has raised about £10 million in financing and is expected to announce a significant investment later this month.
Its estimated value has risen to about £50 million and the workforce at its base in Sedgefield, County Durham, has grown from two to nearly 50.
Kromek’s scanners are being trialled in the UK, the Continent and the US and the company recently landed a $4 million (£2.5 million) contract with the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
But it has not all been plain sailing, says Arnab, 36, who was brought up in India and has a PhD in engineering as well as a business background.
Posted by Admin on January 11th, 2010 ~ 0 Comments
Wyclef, Jimmie Johnson, Kid Sister, Nick Lachey and DJ Paul Oakenfold are scheduled to appear at 944’s entertainment complex during Super Bowl weekend in Miami.
Scottsdale-based 944 Media LLC and Relevent inked a partnership to produce Hotel 944, which will feature an official launch party, celebrity-hosted charity events, exclusive penthouse experiences and poolside performances for four nights leading up to Super Bowl XLIV.
“Hotel 944 will be the place to be Super Bowl weekend,” said 944 Media founder and CEO Marc Lotenberg.
The media company made a splash two years ago in Arizona with its entertainment complex for Super Bowl XLII, and will look to capitalize on its recent successes and expansion.
This year’s party will be held at the recently renovated 631-room Eden Roc Renaissance Miami Beach Resort. The $200 million facelift included the addition of the 21-story Ocean Tower.
Event sponsors are Anheuser-Busch, Heineken, Diageo, Garnier, Imagination Games, Envirosax and Jose Cuervo Platino.
Last week, the company announced its Detroit publication would increase circulation from 20,000 to 30,000 copies a month, beginning with the February issue. 944
Posted by Admin on January 10th, 2010 ~ 0 Comments
My colleague Cathleen Crowley found some helpful items at the Consumer Electronics Show, where she’s visiting the various exhibits. Here’s her report:
Every New Year, I get on an anti-clutter-organize-my-life campaign, and there are some clever gadgets here at CES that may help me. Some of these, you have probably seen.
The power strip Liberator is a little extension cord that connects to an outlet and allows you to actually fit six bulky power cables onto the strip. You know what I’m talking about. We all have chargers that end with a massive plug the size of your fist. Usually you can only fit 2 or 3 on a 6-plug power pad. The Liberator let you use one strip, thought it wi
ll still take up a lot of room because the plugs will be arrayed around the power pad. It is made by eFilliate (http://www.efilliate.com)
Even better is the Powramid from Kreative Power ( http://www.kreativepower.com). Instead of the traditional power strip, envision a pyramid shaped device with plugs on six faces of the pyramid. This
City Hall to make civic data freely available online to encourage transparency and to open commercial opportunities to software developers
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced a plan to make 200 data sets owned by the Greater London Authority and relating to the administration of the capital freely available online.
The so-called ‘datastore’ is modelled on a similar initiative by the US government, named data.gov. Johnson said that it would not only stimulate greater transparency in city government, but also present commercial opportunities for software developers to build services around the data.
The plan is to be unveiled this afternoon during an event that (quite inexplicably) will be linked via satellite to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The datastore itself will be live on January 29th 2010.
In a statement prepared for the press, Johnson said that “the US has led the way on this idea of setting their data free for anyone – students, campaigners, software developers – to use. Now it’s time for Britain to get up to speed and I want London, as the greatest city in the UK, to be at the forefront of this revolution”.
The Capital District Area Labor Federation said a rally will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday in front of the Momentive Performance Materials plant in Waterford in support of employees there who had their wages cut during a restructuring a year ago.
About 400 workers saw their wages cut by an average of 25 percent – some said their wages were cut as much as 50 percent — and their union, IUE-CWA Local 81359, filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board in Albany.
While the case is officially “still under investigation,” according to the NLRB, the union says the board had found that “substantially all” its charges had merit, and that its members had been vindicated.
The company, meanwhile, said it was prepared to defend its position in the courts.
Momentive is the former GE Advanced Materials, which was purchased in December 2006 by private equity firm Apollo Management LP for $3.8 billion. The Waterfor
WCSH, a news station in Maine, recently profiled two RPI grads who turned a class project into a business in far northern Maine, an economically depressed area where new industry is rare.