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Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (IRIN) – Naba Wangré, manager of the child labor project at the Burkina Faso Red Cross, sends bluntly worded text messages to government officials, employers, traditional leaders, teachers, business owners and housewives several times a year, trying to reduce the widespread exploitation of domestic workers by raising awareness of their rights.

“Employers: domestics have the same rights as your children. Stop under-paying them; stop subjecting them to mistreatment, sexual violence, and long hours”, said a recent SMS from Wangré, who uses lists of phone numbers provided by the local network.

Domestic workers – mostly children – have told Sister Edith a nun who runs a local NGO “Maman à L’Ecoute” (Listen to mother) in the capital, Ouagadougou, that they earn from 3,000 to 6,000 CFA (US$6-$12) per month, sometimes work up to 18 hours per day, and often experience exploitation and abuse.

No assessment of the sector has been done since a 2006 study by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, but officials estimate that thousands of children around the country are employed as domestic workers. They are often sent from rural areas where there are few work opportunities to Ouagadougou and the second-largest city, Bobo-Dioulosso.

The 2008 Labor Code makes it legal to engage in “light work” from the age of 15, but many children are put to work at much younger ages according to the Ministry of Labor. In 2009 there were only 39 labor inspectors to address violations countrywide, so their impact is limited.

A child-trafficking law was passed in 2008 to curb the practice of sending a child to a destination for the purpose of work within Burkina Faso and across the border to its six neighboring countries – Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire – but it has been hard to enforce.

With little legislation to control working conditions in the sector, Wangré said making employers more responsible was essential to changing their behavior.

Direct, personal

Sending text messages via cell phones is one of the most effective ways of passing information to a mass audience, said Ken Banks, founder of FrontlineSMS, which tries to help non-profit organizations deploy mobile technology.

An SMS message is direct and personal, and about 90 percent are read within 15 minutes of arriving, he told IRIN. Nevertheless, Banks said an SMS campaign should supplement other media channels, rather than replace them.

Project Masiluleke in South Africa was one of the most successful examples of behavior change as a result of an SMS campaign, in which text messages with HIV awareness and testing information organization were sent out, resulting in a spike in voluntary testing.

The Burkina Red Cross SMS campaign reinforces the information broadcast on radio by the Ministry of Labor to raise awareness of abuse in the six regions where most of the domestic workers come from: South-west, Cascades, Haut-Basins, Boucle du Mouhoun, Centre West and Centre East. Wangré said abuse and maltreatment of domestics could be reported on Red Cross telephone hotlines.

Behavior change must be backed up by legislation, said Stella Somé, head of child labor at the Ministry of Labour. The government is trying to set minimum wages and working conditions in line with the International Labor Organization (ILO) and hopes to have draft legislation in place by 2012.

Domestic workers also need to be empowered to earn higher wages, said Sister Edith. Maman à l’Ecoute has trained hundreds of girls as cleaners and housekeepers, allowing them to demand wages of up to 25,000 CFA (US$50) per month. Some also learn to read and write and do sewing. The Burkina Red Cross will launch its own training scheme soon.

bo/aj/he

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Employment growth in March was at its highest level in two years, according to the latest Adcorp employment index.

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The state of being unemployed turns into very distressing the time people has lost their other sources of arranging the bucks. Unemployment is such a moment of life when willing folks wish to do the work after losing their previous jobs but they fail to find job. In the course of this negative time, they are also not able to apply for loans to any leading institution because they are having no longer job to give them proof of working. Such organizations do the authorization of the loan to only those people, who are having unwavering jobs for last three months and drawing the handsome amount from there. Thus, job-seeker feel deserted as there is no guidance or suitable way for them so that they could do something for their livelihood. But when it comes to unemployed unsecured loans, the steady source of income is not its first priority in order to get the economic help to the unemployed people. The specialty of this loan is that applicants are not compelled to put any valuable asset as collateral to the lender.

In spite of having nothing for keeping as security for getting the bucks, unemployed folks can obtain the amount something like 1000 to 25000 with the repayment duration of around 1 to 10 years. In this way, frustrated and deserted jobless and penniless people can do away with their entire unseen fiscal crunches, which may crop up in the form of paying phone bills, electric bills, medical or hospital bills, laundry bills, grocery bills, home renovation, repairing of any machine made things like radio, television, your vehicle and all that, school and tuition fees of your children and the rest. Thus, you can mould the life accordingly after paying off your all debts by the assistance of unemployed unsecured loans, which are absolutely, something, destroyers of the superfluous expenditures.
The utilization of the amount reminds you of its repayment with the interest rate, which is obviously and slightly higher because applicants do not give any security of the amount repayment. In this way, doing the reimbursement on time makes your stand out in the class of good credit holders for securing unemployed unsecured loans as bad credit holders are not having any right to get the loan amount.

Manila, Philippines (AHN) – Philippine Airlines continued to face labor issues on Friday even as it assured passengers that it was ready for the worst — the first strike by the carrier’s biggest union in more than a decade.

“We apologize to our passengers for whatever anxiety and inconvenience threats of work stoppage have spawned,” president and chief operating officer Jaime Bautista said in a statement. “Rest assured we are doing everything we can to ensure that your flights will proceed as scheduled.”

PAL plans to rely on 134 partners, including 12 carriers in Southeast Asia, 11 in North America and two dozen in Europe, during the work stoppage, which would be the first since the union crippled operations in 1998.

The Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association voted last week to strike in response to the company’s refusal to include an outsourcing plan in negotiations for a new contract.

The carrier, Asia’s first airline, averted a strike by flight attendants last October with the intervention of the government. But then it announced it was seeking funds for peso 2.5 billion ($58 million) worth of severance packages to outsource three non-core units.

The union representing administrative employees says 2,600 workers would be laid off if the company’s airport services, call center and in-flight catering businesses are outsourced.

But President Noynoy Aquino last week upheld the decision of labor officials allowing the plan, which is part of PAL’s cost-cutting measures to recoup losses during the global recession and weak sales.

PALEA wanted airline officials to negotiate without preconditions but PAL demanded that any new collective bargaining agreement exclude the issue of outsourcing. The impasse dragged on for five months, even while another union representing cabin crew accused the airline of “outdated sexist policies” such as a 40-year retirement age and “discriminatory” maternity rules.

Labor officials on Friday maintained its ruling in favor of the Flight Attendants’ and Stewards’ Association of the Philippines, and for the second time rejected PAL’s arguments.

The same day, PALEA held a massive rally in the nation’s main business district along with other labor groups.

A government-mandated cooling off period has kept the union from holding a strike. Early March, it filed a notice of work stoppage, which was approved by 86 percent of participating members.

The vote was held on Mar. 25. PAL submitted its counter-proposal three days later, on Monday.

“It’s not true that management refuses to convene negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement ,” Bautista said on the day of the rally. “The union’s claim that there is no justifiable reasons for the spin-off of three units… likewise have no leg to stand on.”

The submission of the counter-proposal “is the best proof that PAL is willing to negotiate,” added Bautista.

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In order to meet the pecuniary catastrophes for instance; electric bills, medical or hospital bills, children’s school and tuition fees, car repairing, laundry bills, grocery bills and the list goes on, there are number of choices to click for the applicants, who are unemployed. Before obtaining any loan, one thing always strikes into the mind is that if loan lending company demands for any valuable materialistic thing as collateral, what would by your response at that time because you do don’t have such a thing, which must be carrying a lot of weight in the bucks. Thus, you just drop the idea of applying for getting any type of financial succor. But now, people having nothing precious can also go in for filling up the loan application form in order to do away with their entire unseen fiscal catastrophes because unemployed same day unsecured loans are there in the service of such unfortunate borrowers. These loans are absolutely unsecured in nature. That’s the reason; applicants do not have to mortgage any kind of collateral in the token of the loan repayment to the lender.

Under unemployed same day unsecured loans, there is no requirement of doing or going through a lot of paper work because these monetary backings are free from all the tedious tasks, long time taking formalities and inspection in the connection of your credit score. By the way, all these formalities take place in order to enquire of the history of the borrowers whether he or she is able to repay loan in time or not. Thus, unemployed loans are ideal option for the job-seekers as applicants are not compelled to put any collateral regarding securing the loans. So, solve your entire problems after going through all the must done formalities.

To have the loan assistance, fill out the loan application form with individual details and submit it. The rest of the left work will be accomplished by the loan institution itself. After all this, it takes barely one to three minutes to end up all the formalities. And your mandatory amount something like 100 to 15000 will be transferred into your current bank account under the supervision of unemployed same day unsecured loans. Its repayment needs to be done within 1 to 10 years by the source of depositing your signed cheques in the bank where from lender will withdraw his lent amount.

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in what could be the biggest sexual discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history.

Six women sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc., saying they were passed over for promotion in favor of men and told they should try to look attractive on the job, or to “doll up.”

They also say they were paid less than men for doing the same work.

They asked the Supreme Court to certify their claims as a class action lawsuit, meaning it could be joined by as many as 1.5 million women.

During the hearing Tuesday, the female plaintiffs seemed to draw the greatest sympathy from the Court’s three women judges.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg implied Wal-Mart could liable if its corporate directors knew sexual discrimination was widespread at its stores but did not try to stop it.

“Isn’t there some responsibility on the company to say, ‘Is gender discrimination at work?’ And if there is, isn’t there an obligation to stop it?” Ginsburg asked.

Wal-Mart’s attorney, Theodore J. Boutrous, argued that the women who sued are not representative of female employees throughout the giant corporation, which operates with 3,400 stores nationwide.

Before a lawsuit can become a class action, the people who sue must prove they are typical of a larger group.

The women plaintiffs held mostly low-level retail jobs whereas other employees hold a wide variety of positions, some of them as supervisors, Wal-Mart’s attorney said.

He also said the women failed to identify a single policy of the retailer that could be identified as discriminatory.

Instead, the claims of sexual discrimination were based on a few personal stories, unproven statistics of pay differences and personnel decisions of local managers, Boutrous said.

“They haven’t shown a pattern across the map,” Boutrous said during the hearing.

Justice Antonin Scalia appeared frustrated in trying to figure out whether individual managers should be blamed or a corporate policy.

“Which is it?” Scalia said. “It’s either individual supervisors who are left on their own or there is a strong corporate culture that tells you what to do.

“If somebody tells you how to exercise discretion, you don’t have discretion,” Scalia said.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. also questioned whether the company should be liable or a few individual managers, saying, “you’re going to have some bad apples.”

Joseph Sellers, the attorney who argued for the Wal-Mart employees, said the discrimination was part of a corporate “culture.”

“Wal-Mart provided to its managers unchecked discretion … that was used to pay men more than women,” Sellers said.

Other examples of discrimination the women sometimes cited included sexist nicknames, arranging for meetings at Hooters restaurants and criticizing female workers for lacking the ambition to seek promotions.

Sellers said a class action is the best approach to the discrimination because filing individual claims would not be worthwhile for them.

The pay difference between women and men averages only around $1,100 per year, which is too small for a major lawsuit, according to the female employees.

Only joining the efforts of all female Wal-Mart employees in what could be over a billion dollars in damages would be effective in ending the sexual discrimination, Sellers argued.

A statistician hired by the plaintiffs concluded Wal-Mart’s female workers make up two-thirds of the workforce but less than 14 percent of store managers. They also earn less money than men despite having more seniority on average, the statistician said.

However, a statistician hired by Wal-Mart said his figures show no difference in pay between men and women at 90 percent of the stores. The company also said hiring and promotion decisions are made by local managers rather than as a result of corporate policy.

The lawsuit attracted a predictable array of amicus, or friend-of-the-court, briefs.

Business groups argued that a huge class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart could increase legal expenses for corporations nationwide.

To avoid lawsuits, the corporations would feel more compelled to settle sexual discrimination allegations with cash settlements, even if the claims lacked merit, some of the 15 amicus briefs from business groups say.

The female employees won allies from 14 civil rights groups, labor organizations and consumer advocacy foundations.

Their briefs say class action status for the lawsuit could encourage effective strategies for combating workplace sexual discrimination.

The women already won their case before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last year.

However, the Supreme Court is known for being more conservative in sexual discrimination cases.

Since the 1980s, the Supreme Court has required a “rigorous analysis” before it will approve class action status for lawsuits alleging job discrimination.

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Some important expenses are left unsolved? Quick dollars are needed? We have the solution. Dollar quick payday loans are the financial schemes that provide you with full-fledged financial assistance anytime before your payday. You might need these loans in the middle of the month or just before the month ends or any other time. We are here to help whenever fast cash is the need. Our lenders are constantly working for the betterment of financial market to provide you the best always.

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (IRIN) – As the Sri Lankan government launches a cash-for-work program in areas hit by recent flooding, following similar schemes in the former conflict areas in the north, experts warn of potential pitfalls of such schemes.

The new program will be operating in 12 northern and eastern districts devastated by flooding in January and February, which affected more than two million and displaced close to 700,000, according to the government.

Regional government officials have been instructed to employ those affected by flooding to rebuild rural roads, minor irrigation tanks and channels. Participants are to be paid about US$4 daily for up to four days a week.

More than $3 million has been allocated by the Ministry of Economic Development for the scheme, launched in early March.

Model

As residents started returning in late 2009 to areas formerly controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in the north, the World Bank implemented a $7.5 million cash-for-work programme. Some 28,652 families benefited between December 2009 and July 2010, according to the bank.

The programme is the largest of about a dozen, which typically run for at most a year, that have operated in the north since the 2004 tsunami.

To limit the number of participants, the Bank set wages 15 percent below market rates and allowed one member per returning family to apply.

The work involves hand-dug construction and small-scale irrigation, and repairs to roads, health clinics, community drinking water facilities or schools.

“The cash-for-work program have been quite successful, given the lack of economic activity as the war-displaced began to move back… So far the work has been completed satisfactorily,” said G.A. Chandrasiri, the Northern Province governor.

No official unemployment figures are available for the province, but some analysts estimate half the population remains unemployed or is not working enough to support their needs; when cash-for-work programmes end, permanent jobs rarely replace them.

The program was never intended to be a long-term employment solution, stressed the World Bank office in Sri Lanka. “The priority and challenge at the end of the conflict was to create essential community infrastructure, ensure returning IDPs [internally displaced persons] have short-term income-earning opportunities… so that IDPs will resume their normal livelihood activities in agriculture, informal sector activities, etc.”

But short-term cash may actually have long-term negative consequences, said local economist and principal researcher with Point Pedro Development Institute in Jaffna province (heart of the former conflict zone), Muttukrishna Sarvananthan.

“It [cash-for-work] may distort labour market wages (i.e. after the CfW [cash-for-work] ends, the beneficiaries could expect similar or higher wages than what they received under CfW), discourage labour mobility [and] self-employment initiatives. Many CfW programmes in Jaffna and Vanni run for a long time with no meaningful work done.”

Major repairs are still handled by government agencies with heavy equipment or foreign workers rather than local manual labour, he added.

“I have seen Chinese workers employed in building of cantonment for army personnel stationed in [the northern district of] Kilinochchi. Local unskilled or semi-skilled labour could have been employed for this purpose.”

Sarvananthan estimates unemployment to be above 20 percent in the areas controlled by the LTTE until 2009, under-employment to be at least another 30 percent, and that almost half the work force in these areas survived on occasional employment, earning less than $1 per day.

“There are very limited job opportunities available in this area right now,” said Manoharan Seenathamby, the World Bank’s senior rural research specialist in Sri Lanka.

This could change if the government switched from capital-intensive to labour-intensive construction, suggested Sarvananthan.

“One way to generate meaningful employment in former conflict-affected regions is to employ labour-intensive – or what the ILO [International Labour Organization] calls labour-based – technologies in rehabilitation/reconstruction of infrastructure including roads, houses, public buildings.”

Insecurity

Kathiravel Krishna, a 31-year-old father of five from the northern village of Tharmapuram, said temporary work brought cash, but little stability. “Cash for work is available only for a limited time and in certain parts. Not all the people get it and it cannot replace the security of a job.”

He survives on the odd day job on farms and doing construction work. Some of the returnees, especially those who live alongside the main highway, have used parts of their UN-funded government cash grants of $220, given to each returnee family, to set up tea shops.

As of end 2010, 76,000 families had registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to receive these grants, intended to help in building temporary living quarters, for a total of about $7 million.

Krishna said tea-shop owners and other small business vendors near the highway were the most secure financially. “But, for those living [in the] interior, there is no such option and the cash grant is now long gone.”

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Sarasota, FL, United States (AHN Sports) – Representatives for Major League Baseball and the Players Association met in Florida Wednesday for their first formal session to discuss a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Union executive director Michael Weiner disclosed the meetings, which both sides hope lead to a new deal. The current Basic Agreement, which expires on Dec. 11, was signed in 2006.

Baseball hasn’t had a work stoppage since 1994, when a strike eliminated the last six weeks of the regular season, the postseason and the start of the ’95 season.

Both sides are looking to avoid that happening again.

“I think losing the ’94 postseason opened a lot of eyes,” said former player and manager Joe Torre, who was named MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations on Saturday.

Weiner characterized the initial session as “productive.” The owners are seeking to expand the playoffs by adding two Wild Card teams as well as adding a slotting-pay system to a possibly expanded worldwide amateur draft.

The union is trying to figure out how to compress the schedule to include another round of playoffs.

Weiner, who replaced Don Fehr two years ago and is in his first round of bargaining as head of the union, said a number of players showed up to the session.

Weiner, who is on his annual tour of the Florida Spring Training camps, said there may be further talks when he visits the Arizona camps later this month.

Commissioner Bud Selig is hopeful that an agreement will be reached before another work stoppage.

“One of the things I’m very proud of is the 16 years of labor peace and I hope we can extend that,” Selig said.

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Easy availability of unsecured loans has influenced the spending habits of people in United Kingdom. In the past, instead of spending the money under the limits, people spent their income to get more comforts in life. Even, people borrowed money at high interest rate from banks and financial institutions. As a result, people have fallen in debts pit and number of people in debts has also increased. Debt consolidation loans are very different from regular funds. The main goal of this money is to resolve the debt trouble. These finances are help to convert the many funds into a single loan which is paid by borrower every month.

These loans are available at low interest rate and APR. They have been designed by the lenders to provide financial aid to debtors. A good deal can help you a lot and can settle all your debts easily. Only a good deal is a guarantee of debt free life. There are many finance companies in United Kingdom who offer debt consolidation services. These companies have good contacts with creditors and are beneficial for debtors to arrange good deal. The most important work of broker is to provide desired deal to debtors.

Broker work is over after providing suitable to debtors. After that, lenders do verify the details and approve the loans amount. Lenders help a lot to borrowers in the settlement of debts amount. Most of the time, lenders do provide a professional advisor to debtors who contacts to creditors on behalf of borrowers and he/she start the negotiation process. These professionals are equipped with fantastic negotiation skills and can eliminate the debts easily without any obstacle. Debt consolidation loans are offered for a particular time period, usually between 2-25 years.