Author: Brian Sanchez

Go to Source

(AP) Louisiana’s attorney general says he has canceled contracts with attorneys involved in state suits against Chinese drywall companies, and is auditing nearly $7 million worth of contracts.

Jeff Landry said he’s auditing the billing and work under five contracts to see “what if anything” they’ve done to help Louisiana’s case. His office will take over the work, he said in a news release Thursday.

“The state has spent nearly $7 million on outside legal counsel for the Chinese drywall litigation,” he said. “This use of taxpayers’ hard-earned money comes to an end under my watch.”

Landry said payments to the firms ranged from nearly $5.6 million to the Perkins Coie law firm to $101,700 to the Theriot Group.

Perkins Coie had no immediate comment Thursday.

No number could be found online for a law firm called the Theriot Group. In response to a query, Landry spokeswoman Ruth Wisher said she had asked for more information about that contract.

Shows, Cali & Walsh, which Landry said received $490,000, had no comment.

There was no immediate response to messages left at Usry, Weeks & Matthews, which received $477,000, and U.S. Health & Environmental Liability Management, which received $265,000.

Chinese drywall was used in 12,000 to 20,000 homes and businesses, mainly in the South, after Hurricane Katrina and other destructive hurricanes in 2005 and before the housing bubble burst.

Sulfur fumes from the drywall damaged houses and other buildings in Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon has ruled.

German-owned Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co. and four companies it supplied agreed in 2010 to pay for home repairs. Fallon has ruled that Taishan Gypsum Co. Ltd. must pay damages, and is considering the amount.

Go to Source

Large-scale miners on Thursday cast doubt at the fairness of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) audit of all mining companies in the country, the results of which are expected to be finally made public on Monday.

“The mines audit conducted were not totally impartial,” said Ronald Recidoro, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines’ (COMP) vice president for legal and policy matters.

The COMP lamented the inclusion of representatives from antimining civil society organizations (CSO)—such as the Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM)—in the audit teams, as ordered by Environment Secretary Gina Lopez.

The ATM is backing a proposed law that Sen. Risa Hontiveros filed last month and which antimining advocates called the Alternative Minerals Management Bill, intended to replace the Mining Act of 1995.

Recidoro said COMP members reported that CSO “did nothing but air their opposition to the mining project.”

“None of the CSO representatives included in the audit teams were expert in any field that may be relevant to the audit process,” the lawyer said.

Disproportionate

“The antimining CSOs who were disproportionately represented in the audit teams were allegedly harassing the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) representatives when they have favorable findings on the mining project,” he added.

Recidoro also said regular mine audit protocols were not observed and that there was no qualified expert to assess the social acceptability of the mine operations being audited.

“Several mining projects were even suspended prior to the start of the actual audit,” he said. “Several of our members have complained that procedures to ensure fairness and transparency in the audit were absent, including the conduct of an exit audit conference where the DENR would have informed the company about initial findings.”

“Several mining projects were even suspended prior to the start of the actual audit,” he said. “Several of our members have complained that procedures to ensure fairness and transparency in the audit were absent, including the conduct of an exit audit conference where the DENR would have informed the company about initial findings.”

Undue influence

“We are deeply concerned that the presence of the CSO representatives opposed to large-scale mining in the audit team will unduly influence results of the audit, specifically community satisfaction and social acceptability,” he added.

The COMP has earlier expressed support for the Duterte administration’s moves toward strict implementation of environmental protection laws, saying that its members follow such regulations.

In August, COMP president Benjamin Philip G. Romualdez said the group member’s “had nothing to fear” amid the ongoing audit.

Premature

On Wednesday, Lopez expressed anger over what she described as the premature disclosure of the results of the audit for the coal mine of Semirara Mining and Power Corp. (SMPC).

She called out Jonathan P. Bulos, regional director of EMB Region 6, for giving to SMPC copies of audit reports that apparently show results that are favorable to the company.

“Moving forward, we ask for future mine audits conducted by the DENR to be kept impartial, free from any bias, and involving only DENR personnel and acknowledged experts in the fields relevant in the review,” Recidoro said.

Go to Source

Two key bills, covering industrial relations and wages, would be sent to the cabinet this month, he said. (Reuters)

Government is to make a renewed drive to overhaul labour laws, hoping to create millions of new jobs by making it easier to hire and fire, the labour ministry’s top bureaucrat said on Thursday.

Modi made a shake-up of India’s labour market a part of his reform agenda after coming into office in 2014, but opposition from unions and a bruising battle to pass other crucial pieces of economic legislation have stalled those efforts.

Shankar Aggarwal, the ministry secretary, told Reuters that the government felt the time was right to prioritise labour reform again after parliament in August passed India’s biggest overhaul of indirect taxes, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a victory for Modi’s bid to boost the economy.

“We have to tweak the law. Employers want flexibility in hiring,” Aggarwal said in an interview.

Two key bills, covering industrial relations and wages, would be sent to the cabinet this month, he said. Subject to cabinet approval, the bills would be presented in parliament’s next session, beginning in November.

A rule requiring firms to seek rarely granted government permission for laying off large numbers of workers, which employers say has discouraged permanent hiring and kept factories small, are among restrictions to be loosened.

“It is a question of priority. We thought that it will be a good idea to put GST first so that we don’t fritter away our energy,” Aggarwal said.

The government says freeing up labour markets will boost employment, lure foreign investment and encourage firms to expand.

Trade unions argue that the reforms will put jobs at risk and make it tougher for employees to form unions or strike. More than a million workers went on strike on Sept. 2 to protest against the policies.

Under the reforms, 44 labour laws, some of them dating back to the end of British rule and as anachronistic as providing spittoons in the work place, will be grouped into four new labour codes.

Bills on social security and working conditions remain under discussion with states and trade unions.

India’s two-decade streak of fast economic expansion is often derided as “jobless growth” since the service sector-led model has been capital rather than labour intensive.

More than 200 million Indians will reach working age over the next two decades, and creating sufficient jobs for perhaps the largest youth bulge the world has ever seen is among the toughest challenges for the country.

In 2009, 84 percent of India’s manufacturers employed fewer than 50 workers, compared to 25 percent in China, according to a study by consultancy firm McKinsey.

Nine out of ten Indians are employed in the informal sector, where labour laws are rarely enforced.

Go to Source

First Published: Thu, Sep 22 2016. 05 25 PM IST

Go to Source

Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s government is to make a renewed drive to
overhaul labour laws, hoping to create millions of new jobs by
making it easier to hire and fire, the labour ministry’s top
bureaucrat said on Thursday.

Modi made a shake-up of India’s labour market a part of his
reform agenda after coming into office in 2014, but opposition
from unions and a bruising battle to pass other crucial pieces
of economic legislation have stalled those efforts.

Shankar Aggarwal, the ministry secretary, told Reuters that
the government felt the time was right to prioritise labour
reform again after parliament in August passed India’s biggest
overhaul of indirect taxes, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a
victory for Modi’s bid to boost the economy.

Go to Source