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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Defense Base Act Claims: More Private Military Contractors Head for Iraq

A Shi'ite fighter walks during an intensive security deployment against Islamic State militants in Balad, north of Baghdad December 15, 2014. REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud
As the US begins to deploy military troops back to Iraq  the number of private military ccontractors will also increase. Logically the number of Defense Base Act claims will also begin to esculate as injuries and illnesses with increase   Today's post is shared from reuters.com/

The U.S. government is preparing to boost the number of private contractors in Iraq as part of President Barack Obama's growing effort to beat back Islamic State militants threatening the Baghdad government, a senior U.S. official said.

How many contractors will deploy to Iraq - beyond the roughly 1,800 now working there for the U.S. State Department - will depend in part, the official said, on how widely dispersed U.S. troops advising Iraqi security forces are, and how far they are from U.S. diplomatic facilities.

Still, the preparations to increase the number of contractors - who can be responsible for everything from security to vehicle repair and food service - underscores Obama's growing commitment in Iraq. When U.S. troops and diplomats venture into war zones, contractors tend to follow, doing jobs once handled by the military itself.

"It is certain that there will have to be some number of contractors brought in for additional support," said the senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After Islamic State seized large swaths of Iraqi territory and the major city of Mosul in June, Obama ordered U.S. troops back to Iraq. Last month, he authorized roughly...
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Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Union Leaders Attacked at Bangladesh Garment Factories, Investigations Show

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from mobile.nytimes.com

The garment factory’s closed-circuit camera captured some unusual activity: Out front a female union leader was swarmed by people, pushed to the ground and assaulted while a male union activist was chased away and punched.
Another female union leader entered the factory door and seconds later was pushed outside, then shoved out of camera range.
Two investigations of the episodes depicted in the video, one led by a Washington-based workers’ rights group and another by a prominent American apparel company, determined that the camera footage showed that factory managers directed those attacks at the Global Garments factory in Bangladesh on Nov. 10.
The attacks occurred three months after a female union president was beaten in the head with an iron rod just outside another factory owned by the same company, the Azim Group, requiring her to get more than 20 stitches, workers’ rights groups say. They maintain that company-directed thugs carried out that assault, while the Azim Group said the assault resulted from a feud involving a former husband that, the company’s law firm said, “occurred outside working hours, outside the factory grounds, outside any industrial dispute.”


The Azim Group, which says it has 24 factories and employs 27,000 workers, said it was not involved in either altercation. Mishcon de Reya, a law firm representing Azim, said the November dispute “arose between the workers and union leaders.”
These attacks occurred...
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The New Robber Barons

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Today's post is shared from Bill Moyers.com/
The Treason of the Senate
We’ve just watched the Senate and the House — aided and abetted by President Obama — pay off financial interests with provisions in the new spending bill that expand the amount of campaign cash wealthy donors can give, and let banks off the hook for gambling with customer (and taxpayer) money.
What happened in Washington over the past several days sounds strikingly familiar to the First Gilded Age more than a century ago, when senators and representatives were owned by Wall Street and big business. Then, as now, those who footed the bill for political campaigns were richly rewarded with favorable laws.
Bill’s guest this week, historian Steve Fraser, says what was different about the First Gilded Age was that people rose in rebellion against the powers that be. Today we do not see “that enormous resistance,” but he concludes, “people are increasingly fed up… their voices are not being heard. And I think that can only go on for so long without there being more and more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle, class warfare.”
Steve Fraser is a writer, editor and scholar of American history. Among his books are Every Man a Speculator, Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace and Labor Will Rule. His latest, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power, will be published early next...
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AbbVie Deal Heralds Changed Landscape for Hepatitis Drugs



Today's post is shared from NYTimes.com/
In a sign that price competition may take hold for hepatitis C drugs, the nation’s largest manager of prescriptions will require all patients to use AbbVie’s newly approved treatment rather than two widely used medicines from its rival Gilead Sciences.
The pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, said it had negotiated a significant discount from AbbVie in exchange for making the drugmaker’s treatment, Viekira Pak, the exclusive option for 25 million people. Express Scripts also said it would allow all people with hepatitis C to be treated with AbbVie’s drug, not only those with more serious liver damage.
“We really believe we want all patients treated,” Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, said in an interview Sunday. He said that AbbVie had made that affordable by offering “a significant discount.”
Gilead’s drugs have set a new standard, curing the vast majority of patients in only 12 weeks with few side effects. But their prices have ignited an outcry. One drug, Sovaldi, has a list price of $84,000 for a typical 12-week course of therapy, or $1,000 per daily pill. The newer Harvoni costs $94,500 for 12 weeks.
Gilead says the prices reflect the value the drugs bring to patients and the health care system. But some health plans, state Medicaid programs and prison systems say the drugs are busting their budgets. Many have been limiting treatment to only the sickest patients. Congress has...
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Medicare tells N.J. hospitals they must do more on patient care, safety

Please post to shared from North jersey.com/
The penalties levied by Medicare against more than one-third of the state’s hospitals over patient-safety issues make clear that New Jersey has a long way to go to make hospital stays safer, experts say.
Twenty-three hospitals statewide, including six in North Jersey, face cuts of 1 percent in their Medicare reimbursement for the year that began Oct. 1. The penalties mean millions of dollars in lost revenue because the government insurance program starting at 65 is the single largest payer for most hospitals.
But “forget about the fact that it’s costing a lot of money,” said David Knowlton, the chief executive of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, a non-profit group that promotes quality, safety, accountability and cost containment in health care. “These hospital-acquired conditions cause a lot of pain.”
Bloodstream and urinary-tract infections that develop because of unsanitary practices in the hospital, as well as collapsed lungs, bedsores, and broken hips from hospital falls contribute to the deaths of an estimated 180,000 Medicare patients nationwide each year. They extend some hospital stays, necessitating additional treatment, and increase the cost of care.
More alarming than New Jersey’s hospitals’ poor performance, compared with that of hospitals in other states, he said, was the fact that the problems cited involved care of the elderly.
The government data upon which...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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Monday, December 22, 2014

McDonald’s charged with abusing workers over wage protests

Today's post is an interview of Steven Greenhouse, retiring Labor reported for the nytimes.com/, condusted on the PBS Newshour.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Yesterday, we told you that the National Labor Relations Board filed formal complaints against McDonald’s and some of its franchisees.
To unpack this story further, we’re joined now by Steven Greenhouse. Until this past week, he was a correspondent for The New York Times who covered labor issues, among other things.
So, what does the NLRB allege that McDonald’s or its franchisees did?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE: So, the Labor Board says that McDonald’s and many of its franchisees around the country improperly retaliated against, spied on workers who participated in this Fight for 15 campaign of fast food workers, demanding a base wage of $15 an hour at fast food restaurants around the country.
HARI SREENIVASAN: OK.
So, there’s usually a distinction between McDonald’s, the owning franchise, or, I guess, the brand, and all of the franchisees. But why are they lumped together in this?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE: What’s really gotten under McDonald’s and the business community’s skin is the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board is saying McDonald’s is a joint employer with its franchisees.
So, it’s saying that a franchise that might have 30 employees and often acts as if, well, I, the franchise owner, I’m the only employer, the NLRB is saying McDonald’s exercises so much influence over the restaurants, telling them, you know — with all sorts of requirements about how to cook,...
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Workers’ Rights at McDonald’s

Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/, an editorial.

The Fight for $15 is ending the year on a high note. The protest movement, which began in New York City two years ago with fast-food workers demanding at least $15 an hour and the right to unionize without retaliation, has spread to more than 100 cities and many industries, including retail, home care, hospitality and airport services.

On Friday, the federal government validated the workers’ concerns when the general counsel’s office of the National Labor Relations Board issued 13 complaints, containing dozens of charges, against the McDonald’s Corporation and many of its franchisees for violating employees’ rights to press for better pay and working conditions. The alleged violations involve coercive conduct against workers who supported the protests, including threats, surveillance, interrogations, firings, discriminatory discipline, reduced hours and excessive restrictions on conversation about unions or work conditions. Managers were also said to have offered promotions in exchange for giving up the fight.

Memo to McDonald’s: Wouldn’t it be easier just to bargain over the terms and conditions of employment?

The N.L.R.B. complaints hold McDonald’s jointly responsible for the labor practices at its franchisees’ restaurants. The “joint employer” designation undercuts the corporation’s longstanding claim that the treatment of McDonald’s workers is not its responsibility, but the sole responsibility of...
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