The shift to home-working triggered by the coronavirus pandemic looks set to endure long-term, making it vital to protect employees' rights and avoid blurred lines between on-the-clock hours and personal time, the United Nations says in a report. Issues facing home workers and their employers need greater attention, including better…
Last modified on Thu 11 Feb 2021 12.07 EST
Migrant workers working for the British security company G4S in the United Arab Emirates have collectively been forced to pay millions of pounds in illegal fees to recruitment agents to secure their jobs, the Guardian can reveal.
An investigation into G4S’s recruitment practices has found that workers from south Asia and east Africa have been made to pay up to £1,775 to recruitment agents working for the British company in order to get jobs as security guards for G4S in the UAE.
Some south Asian countries allow agents to charge fees, but these are capped at a level far below the rate most G4S employees have paid.
By ROBIN McDOWELL and MARGIE MASON
They are two young girls from two very different worlds, linked by a
global industry that exploits an army of children.
Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations.
Olivia, who earned a badge for selling more than
600 boxes of cookies, had spotted palm oil as an ingredient on the back of one of her packages but was relieved to see a green tree logo next to the words “certified sustainable.” She assumed that meant her
NEW YORK: The increasing number of people forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to work from home has generated a lot of attention on both the benefits and trials of working remotely.
The UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) has seized on this new awareness to highlight the predicament of what it estimates to be 260 million home-based workers worldwide 8 percent of global employment who had for decades prior to the pandemic been working under precarious conditions.
Homeworkers are a heterogeneous group. They include highly skilled teleworkers who work remotely on a continual basis, and a vast number of impoverished industrial workers who are required to produce goods that cannot be automated, such as artisanal goods like embroidery and handicrafts.