The protracted two-decade long lawsuit between the people of Ecuador and Chevron‘s oil drilling activities has found a new battleground – the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Canada.
Playfair, the NGO campaigning for workers’ rights for all suppliers to the London 2012 Olympics, has singled out adidas for refusing to pay $1.8 million to workers at an Indonesian factory.
In an article published on the Playfair website yesterday, the NGO dissects three arguments against worker compensation given by the sportswear manufacturer, and dismisses all three.
It’s been called the ‘Shareholder Spring’ here in Europe. A golden dawn of shareholder activism after a long, dark night of tyrannical rule by executive boards. Is coverage of 2012′s proxy season verging on hyperbole? Probably. But shareholder voting at annual general meetings (AGMs) this year look set to claim the biggest scalp yet.
There is a sort of disturbing irony in the slew of lawsuits popping up over Google and Facebook’s recent corporate activities.
BP has settled a decade-long series of complaints regarding pollution at an Indiana, US refinery, agreeing to pay $8 million in fines and install $400 million worth of pollution controls at the site.
Since at least 2001, the Whiting oil refinery in north-west Indiana has been known to emit benzene, toulene, hydrogen sulphide, soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other chemicals into the air and into wastewater.
The 2012 UK AGM season is in full swing, and many companies are seeing shareholders revolt over remuneration packages for corporate executives.
67% of Pendragon PLC‘s shareholders voted against Britain’s largest car dealer’s remuneration report, while pay packages proposed by the boards of Trinity Mirror and UBM were likewise struck down.
Other companies feeling the heat from shareholders in their respective 2012 AGMs include Mecom, Sportech, Clarkson, Petrofac and Omega Insurance Holdings.
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On May 14, 2011, Europe’s eyes absent-mindedly flickered over to the annual singing contest known as Eurovision, where each nation’s breed of bland and bawdy pop numbers were churned out, one excruciating song at a time. By the end of the night, anyone still paying attention to the show learnt where in the world Azerbaijan is as ‘Running Scared‘ was crowned best song.
Over 2,000 victims of a forced eviction by the Ugandan army will not see a corporate accessory brought to justice as the case against German coffee company Neumann Kaffee Gruppe is closed.
The evictees from the country’s western-central Mubende district have never received any compensation from the loss of land and properties in 2001, according to evictees group “Wake Up and Fight For Your Rights”, who are supported by human rights group FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN).
Two flashpoints have flared this week over the issue of indigenous peoples’ rights in South America, both championed by the excellent NGO Amazon Watch.
In Ecuador, already plagued by the disastrous pollution of its Amazon Basin by Chevron, Canadian oil firm Ivanhoe Energy is preparing to drill into a 426 square-mile stretch of land, much of which is legally-titled to the Rukullakta people.
Abbott Laboratories has agreed to pay fines totalling $1.5 billion for improperly marketing its anti-seizure drug, Depakote.
The judgement includes a $700 million criminal fine and $800 of civil settlements with the federal government and states.
The U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia claimed that Abbott’s senior executives carried out a strategy of systematically marketing Depakote for uses unapproved by the FDA from 1998 to at least 2006.