The use of national demographics to determine if a company is complying with employment equity requirements will probably be removed from proposed amendments to legislation.
View full post on Finance Stories
Miami, FL, United States (AHN) – Hundreds of Burger King Corp. employees were blind sided with layoff notices on Monday. The company reduced its personnel by 413 positions in North America and Latin America.
Many of the laid-off employees came from its South Florida headquarters, where 261 people were released.
Police and medical personnel were on hand Monday should the news be too much for any of the terminated employees.
The number two fast food giant was recently sold to 3G Capital of Brazil in a $3.25 billion deal. The layoffs are being touted as part of the company’s organizational restructuring.
Burger King has more than 12,200 restaurants in more than 73 countries. Nearly 90 percent are privately owned and operated franchises.
The layoffs represent a nearly 9 percent reduction of the company’s South Florida employee base. Despite the cuts, the company will maintain its headquarters in Miami.
The company famously known for its Whopper sandwich was started in Florida 50 years ago.
View full post on Labor Stories
Lumberton, NC, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has filed an administrative complaint against a North Carolina company, Nash Finch Co., with systematic job discrimination against 80 women.
Minneapolis, MN-based Nash Finch is the second-largest publicly traded wholesale food distributor in the U.S. It has contracts with the federal government to provide goods and services to more than 200 military bases in the U.S. and overseas.
OFCCP charges that Nash Finch discriminated against 80 qualified women who had applied for positions as order selectors at the Lumberton, NC, plant. Order selectors pull stock from warehouse shelves to fill orders.
In monitoring files, the OFCCP found that the company hired 6 percent of qualified female applicants versus 26 percent of qualified male applicants.
Moreover, this was not the first instance of discrimination that the OFCCP found at a Nash Finch facility, according to the complaint.
Previous investigations at Nash Finch facilities in Norfolk, VA, St. Cloud, MN, and Omaha, NE, have found violations of the law and discrimination in the company’s policies and procedures that “created an uneven playing field for women, minorities and veterans seeking employment with the company,” according to an OFCCP statement.
“It is unacceptable that a company which profits from lucrative federal contracts would repeatedly violate the law in this manner,” said OFCCP Director Patricia A. Shiu. “Nash Finch has demonstrated an unfortunate pattern and practice of hiring discrimination, and the American taxpayers should not have to bankroll this company’s bad behavior anymore.”
View full post on Labor Stories
Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) – Nearly half of Israel’s population was left without cellphone service today when one of the country’s three carrier services collapsed. An estimated three million or 44 percent of the country’s population are unable to use their mobile phones.
A statement on Cellcom’s website, signed by company CEO Amos Shapira, apologized for the “serious fault.”
Shapira is calling the incident “the worst technical problem since the founding of the company”in 1994.
The repair time to fix the problem could take hours or as long as days to fix.
“Hundreds of our company’s engineers and employees are working to put an end to this outage as soon as possible,” he said.
He added that Cellcom’s Vice President of Technology was one of the employees working with Nokia engineers in Finland looking into the problem and trying to resolve the network issues.
According to reports angry and irate customers lined up at Cellcom service centers throughout the country. At one service center extra security guards to protect employees from disgruntled customers.
Many of the company’s customers took to the social networking site Twitter to voice their anger or humor over the situation.
When asked if the company would bereimbursing customers, Shapira said he was “focused only on fixing the technical problem, and then we’ll look at other problems.”
It currently remains unclear what caused the crash.
View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories
Naspers, Africa’s biggest media company, has seen strong growth in its internet and pay television businesses, pushing its profit up by a third.
View full post on Finance Stories
Los Angeles, CA, United States (CNS) – Paris Hilton is fighting back in the $35 million lawsuit filed against her by a hair extension company by suing them, too. The hotel heiress claims Hairtech International is exploiting her celebrity status with their “born of pure fiction” story.
Back in August, Hairtech filed a complaint against Paris for allegedly wearing a competitor’s hair extensions when she bound by contract with them. The company also claims that she breached her contract by skipping promotional appearances, though she had a good excuse: she had been in jail.
Paris is now lashing back, filing a suit on her own. She alleges that contrary to Hairtech’s claims, she was “professional and honorable” in promoting the product.
She said that plaintiff Chris Volek even called her in various emails “truly amazing,” “sensational” and “freaking Stunning [sic],” according to the cross-complaint papers obtained by eonline.com.
She included a letter from a colleague, that states Volek and others at Hairtech have “left a trail of complaints and defrauded victims in their wake.”
She claims that the company “sought to capitalize on Ms. Hilton’s brand and fame by offering to pay substantial ‘guaranteed’ royalties in exchange for the right to associate Ms. Hilton’s brand with their line of hair products.”
Paris also said that Hairtech failed to pay “in excess of $1.7 million” by committing “fraud by secretly altering documents presented to Ms. Hilton’s company for signature.”
She is seeking $3 million for breach of contract, misappropriation of name and likeness, fraud, and accounting.
View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories
Baseball agent Scott Boras says loans by his company totaling about $70,000 to a Dominican prospect complied with players’ association rules. Boras’ company made the loans to shortstop Edward Salcedo in stages from late…
View full post on All Stories
Caracas, Venezuela (AHN) – In what could be the largest joint investment between Italy and Venezuela, energy giants of both countries have signed an agreement to develop crude oil fields and to construct a refinery.
The $17 billion deal was signed between Italian energy company ENI and Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
ENI has pledged to develop a major oil field in the eastern Orinoco river basin while working with the PDVSA. ENI will have 40% stake in the development work in which both the companies are planning to spend $8 billion. The remaining $9 billion will be spent on the refinery construction, which is likely to be completed in 2016.
ENI Chief Executive Paolo Scaroni said that Venezuela would become the second most important country within next four-to-five years for them.
Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, after signing the deal, said that the Junin 5 oil field would produce 70,000 barrels of oil every day by 2012 and would further rise to a peak of 240,000 barrels during the 25-year deal.
Besides, ENI has also vowed to fund a new electrical plant in Venezuela and also engaged in developing new offshore gas fields in which Spain’s Repsol is the other partner.
View full post on Politics Stories
Camden, NJ, United States (AHN) – Campbell Soup’s earnings for the first quarter of 2011 slid 8 percent but the company maintained its full fiscal year outlook.
Net income for the period ended Oct. 31 was $279 million, or 82 cents per share, down from $304 million, or 87 cents a share, in the previous year.
Revenues dropped 1 percent to $2.1 billion, including the effects of currency.
Soup sales in the United States declined 5 percent, with revenues from ready-to-serve soups plummeting 13 percent despite increased spending to promote the products. Sales for Campbell’s condensed soups were down 1 percent.
Beverage sales jumped 10 percent largely because of increased marketing and product launches under the V8 V-Fusion brand. The double-digit growth, however, was not enough to boost the soups, sauce and beverage segment, which delivered revenues of $1.1 billion, or 3 percent less than last year.
The segment performed well in the Asia Pacific and Europe, but posted weak sales in Latin America.
Baking and snacking was the only segment to post positive growth. It brought in $544 million in revenues, 3 percent higher than a year ago, with the strong performance of Pepperidge Farm products.
Campbell Soup, based in New Jersey, kept its previous forecast for the full year. It projected revenues would rise 1 to 3 percent while earnings per share would grow between 2 to 4 percent.
The 141-year-old company launched a $100 million ad campaign in September to boost sales of its soup brands. The nationwide, multi-media campaign sought to shift focus on the iconic Campbell Soup can to versatility of soups as a snack or ingredient.
“We intend to remain competitive in U.S. soup through the height of the soup season, and it’s likely that margin pressures will persist through the second quarter,” chief executive Douglas Conant said in a statement. “In the second half, we plan to place greater focus on advertising and brand-building initiatives in our marketing efforts.”
View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories
Packaging company Nampak says it has achieved a major turnaround and improved diluted earnings per share by 73%.
View full post on Finance Stories
