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(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Explosives Saved an American Company From Chinese Competition The receiver had a final condition for signing off on Cournoyer's reorganization plan: The company had to leave the old 350,000-sq.-ft. red-brick mill, expensive to heat and 90 percent unused. [Extracted from the article]

With weeks to go until Uber Technologies Inc. heads to a London court to appeal a November decision about driver benefits, the ride-hailing firm is stepping up its public relations campaign with an academic approach. The San Francisco-based company published a white paper Friday that draws from its own anonymized data, as well as a survey it commissioned from market-research firm Orb International, which concludes the majority of its drivers are happy, earning above the U.K. minimum wage, and didn't sign up to the platform as a last resort. The company will be preparing for a tough battle: Top U.K. judges ruled in June that London-based Pimlico Plumbers Ltd. should've treated one of its tradesmen as a "worker", giving him the right to vacation pay and to sue the company. [Extracted from the article]

The media industry has experienced significant layoffs in the past year, with over 3,000 editors, reporters, and journalism professionals losing their jobs. This includes well-known publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Time, and Sports Illustrated. The decline in advertising, including digital ads, has been a major factor in these layoffs. Despite hopes that digital advertising would save the industry, companies like BuzzFeed Inc. have reported a 35% decline in advertising. The pandemic has also had a negative impact, with the Los Angeles Times losing $60 million worth of ads. The situation has forced some publishers to make cuts, such as the Los Angeles Times cutting 115 people from its newsroom. [Extracted from the article]

State media report that men confessed to recording in factory The police detained the men after receiving a complaint from a Ganzhou factory, without identifying the factory, The Paper reported. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- UK lawmakers have urged regulators to take action to head off "significant risks" posed to workers by the boom of artificial intelligence programs including ChatGPT. The report from backbencher members of Parliament from the main political parties suggests that the rapid development of AI will face intense scrutiny from regulators in the coming years as technology threatens to transform work. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said he was "ready to do more and go much further" to improve social protections for so-called gig economy workers in Europe, but that new legislation was needed. The European Union also wants to improve the working conditions of platform workers, and Khosrowshahi's comments precede the European Commission publishing ideas for how this could be achieved. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Business) -- Why You Shouldn't Keep Your Pregnancy Secret at Work The research by Smith and her colleagues suggests that the way women choose to respond to - or cover up - pregnancy can have a tangible effect on their health. Research suggests that being open about pregnancy at work could be better for your career than covering it up Attribution Akane Otani: author Francesca Levy: editor. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The U.S. Pushes Thailand to Clean Up Tuna Inc. Thailand, says U.S. State Department spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala, still needs "significantly greater steps to protect the rights of migrant workers". [Extracted from the article]

London Judge proposes April or June dates for license appeal Uber Technologies Inc.'s London fate won't be decided until mid-way through 2018 after a judge said that she will schedule an appeal hearing in either April or June, meaning the company can operate in its busiest European market until then. [Extracted from the article]

"Britain's fragmented and weak system of enforcing labor market rights is costing workers billions a year and doing too little to prevent good firms being undercut." (Bloomberg) -- British companies are skimping on pay and time off for at least 1 million workers, short changing some of the poorest people in society by £255 million ($318 million), the Resolution Foundation said. [Extracted from the article]

In a statement to Bloomberg News, a Qatari government official said: "Qatar has defied the sceptics who claimed that Qatar would not be able to host a successful World Cup. (Bloomberg) -- When Qatar was drawn out of the envelope as a future host of the World Cup back in 2010, it was doubtful the majority of football fans would have been able to find it on a map. [Extracted from the article]

Around 765,000 fans visited Qatar over the first two weeks of the tournament, according the organizers, short of the 1.2 million Qatar hoped would show up. (Bloomberg) -- When Qatar was drawn out of the envelope as a future host of the World Cup back in 2010, it was doubtful the majority of football fans would have been able to find it on a map. [Extracted from the article]

Job discrimination against recovered Covid patients is mostly concentrated in Shanghai, which suffered through the country's largest outbreak, said Aidan Chau, a researcher from the worker's rights group China Labour Bulletin. Carrie Liu, a 34-year-old worker for an Internet company in Shanghai, tested positive in a quarantine hotel in April and was sent to a makeshift hospital for three days. [Extracted from the article]

Freedom House, a non-profit media monitoring group, says its annual analysis of economic, legal, and political conditions in 197 countries worldwide shows press freedom in central Europe declining. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka in April said Babis has used his media to influence government decisions on health-care funding and the expansion of a state-owned mine. Jiri Pehe, a top adviser to former president Vaclav Havel who now serves as director of New York University in Prague, said the Czech media scene remains far better off than it was under communism. [Extracted from the article]

Read More: Juul Beats Ex-Worker's Claim She Was Barred From Whistle-Blowing After the suit was filed in June 2020, Juul revised its NDAs. (Bloomberg) -- Juul Labs Inc., the E-cigarette maker, agreed to pay as much as $2.2 million to settle claims it violated the rights of employees by forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements. [Extracted from the article]

While many economists say there's a clear link between pay and productivity over the long term, there have also been decades when productivity has been strong and wages have lagged. President Joe Biden's strategy of bolstering labor unions as a way to enhance American workers' pay is running up against a half century of setbacks for organizing workers. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When small, high-growth companies - public and private - seek advice on how to handle tough situations, Adam J. Epstein is one of their go-to advisers. One small company I know has been designating every other week as either offense week or defense week for its senior team. I've also seen two companies negotiate deals to sell equity in their companies to big customers that rely on them for widgets. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- South Africa's biggest labor-union federation rejected a National Treasury plan to pull the economy out of its longest downward cycle since the Second World War and announced plans for a nationwide strike on Oct. 7 to protest against job losses. Cosatu said the government needed to refine its tax and procurement policies to encourage local production, and should consider alternatives to firing workers and privatization as it seeks to fix financially strapped state companies. [Extracted from the article]

Google Workers Share Stories of "Systemic" Retaliation (2) That's a reference to the defense company Lockheed Martin Corp. Google's work with the U.S. military was the subject of employee protests last year. Soon after, Whittaker was involved with another protest: an employee petition against the appointment of Kay Coles James to an AI ethics counsel organized by Google. [Extracted from the article]

A union organizing Amazon.com Inc. employees in New York has filed a complaint accusing the company of illegally firing one of the labor group's most prominent supporters. The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union submitted a complaint Wednesday to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the retailer violated federal law when it terminated Staten Island fulfillment center employee Rashad Long. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Koch Brothers-Linked Group Uses Court Victory for New Union War In states with "right-to-work" laws, where it's illegal to require workers to fund unions that are required to represent them, employees are already half as likely to have union representation - or less. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg View) -- Amazon's Labor-Tracking Wristband Has a History: Stephen Mihm Eager to increase efficiency, Taylor found a model worker named Henry Noll to shadow and evaluate, promising him a 60 percent wage increase if he complied with Taylor's directives. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The Graveyard Shift at American Slaughterhouses Is Grinding Up Workers Gilberto Gonzalez, a 47-year-old Guatemalan immigrant who has been cleaning poultry plants in Alabama for 11 years, says smaller plants and sanitation contractors ask few questions of undocumented hires and accept virtually any supposed proof of employment eligibility. And this fall, after the GAO reported that meat and poultry workers are suffering health problems from being denied bathroom breaks and fear punishment if they complain, OSHA rejected the GAO's recommendation that its inspectors ask about bathroom access during plant visits. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Gadfly) -- Uber Can't Be All Warm and Cuddly and Worth $70 Billion: Gadfly In another U.K. legal case, Uber's tax arrangements are being challenged, namely a structure by which it allegedly uses a Dutch entity to minimize value-added tax. [Extracted from the article]

In the weeks after Antonin Scalia's death last year, Judge Neil Gorsuch hailed the conservative icon as a "lion of the law" who transformed how judges think. A study led by Mercer University law professor Jeremy Kidd concluded that Gorsuch is the second-most similar to Scalia of the 21 prospective justices on the lists Trump released during the campaign. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg View) -- The EU Stands Up for Gig Economy Workers: Leonid Bershidsky If they are adopted, companies that are too "advanced" to recognize their workers as employees will need to become more like the new crop of companies that provide temp workers -- Swiss-based Mila or San Francisco-headquartered Wonolo, which legitimately employ the personnel they hire out. [Extracted from the article]

The U.K.'s biggest business lobbies are seeking the help of the opposition Labour Party to make a positive case for immigration as Britain prepares to pull out of the European Union. Earlier this month, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry proposed granting visas to EU nationals in the capital to prevent post-Brexit migration curbs leading to a shortage of workers. [Extracted from the article]

Government to "get on" with Brexit, May writes in Telegraph Attribution Tim Ross: by reporter Fergal O'Brien: editor responsible Nicholas Larkin: editor Steve Geimann: editor Craig Stirling: by reporter. [Extracted from the article]

In Sweden, workers can nominate directors in companies with at least 25 employees, ETUI data show. The worker index didn't fare as well in France, where employees have historically been represented only on boards of state-owned and privatized companies. [Extracted from the article]

Abercrombie refused to hire Samantha Elauf for a job at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, store in 2008, in part because the scarf she wore to her interview didn't comply with the company's dress code. Elauf, then 17, wore a black scarf, known as a hijab, when she met with an assistant manager about a job at an Abercrombie Kids store. In Elauf's case, the company said its actions were legal because it didn't have "actual knowledge" that Elauf wore a scarf for religious reasons. [Extracted from the article]

As the world of soccer is rocked by a corruption scandal, Zurich -- home to FIFA for well over half a century -- is gearing up for protests against the body's practices. Avaaz, launched in 2007 and with more than 41 million members globally, is protesting against labor laws in Qatar, host of the 2022 soccer World Cup. [Extracted from the article]

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, who declined to approve the settlement last month, cited in her ruling "substantial and compelling evidence" against Jobs as a "central figure" in the alleged conspiracy. The companies and workers told Koh on Sept. 3 that they resumed mediation through a retired judge, Layn R. Phillips, now with the law firm Irell & Manella LLP. [Extracted from the article]