Word: ago
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...told hard-charging professionals in the City of London just a few months ago that they should take a 20% pay cut to work one day less per week, they would have likely mocked the idea as a French socialist plot to undermine the British economy. But when the U.K. arm of accounting firm KPMG recently asked its staff if they would be willing to reduce their workweek - and thereby save jobs - in the event that business dried up, an overwhelming 85% signed on. About 200 employees in the tax division have already shifted to a four-day week, says...
...subsidizes companies and idled workers for a full 18 months, up from six months, and the number signing up for the so-called short-work programs is soaring. In February, 724,000 workers were registered, more than double the number in January and 20 times the number a year ago. Most of the nation's auto makers including BMW and Porsche have adopted short-work programs in some of their factories. In Japan, too, the number of workers who have applied to the "employment-adjustment subsidy" program leaped sixfold between December 2008 and January 2009, to almost...
...some parts of Asia, palliative measures to combat a sudden surge in joblessness were first tried out a decade ago, during the region's economic crisis in the late 1990s. That doesn't mean they're always popular, especially if they involve involuntary pay cuts. Several Taiwanese high-tech companies, for example, began a forced policy of unpaid leave at the end of last year, prompting hundreds of workers to protest in front of the government's Council of Labor Affairs. The council requires that employers pay at least minimum wages and sign agreements with their employees on the terms...
...Cape Coral, Fla., in a plane, liked what they saw, paid $678,000 for the farmland and started dredging 400 miles (640 km) of canals, which is more than Venice can claim. It was a peaceful place for old people - Cape Coma, folks called it, until about five years ago, when the gold rush began. College kids were waiting tables to buy condos and flip them; speculators got into bidding wars on unbuilt houses; the price would triple just in the time it took to build. Numbers made no sense; people got drunk and reckless. And then they got crushed...
...Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who still languishes under house arrest--have been barred from running by regulations both arcane and outlandish. Five NLD members were arrested last month, joining more than 2,000 political prisoners who suffer in Burmese jails--double the number of two years ago, according to a recent U.N. report...