Archive

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
MICHAEL Mann, European Commission vice president Neil Kinnock’s spokesman has takes issue with the suggestion raised by former chief auditor Jules Muis in an exclusive interview with Accountancy Age that difficulties foreseen in Brussels internal controls White Paper have been underestimated by the Prodi regime.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s much-heralded financial reforms will not be fully realised for at least another five years, possibly later, according to Jules Muis, the Commission’s former chief internal auditor.

“Although progress has been made, the Commission has a long way to go before it can present an image of being a world class administrative machine,” he told Accountancy Age during a brief return to the Belgian capital.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
NEW claims for worker compensation relating to illnesses alleged to be related to the September11 attacks are continuing to be filed in New York. To date, the total numbers of claims due to World Trade Centre (WTC) attacks submitted to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board have been 10,109.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
EMPLOYEES who go to work when they are sick cost employers far more than absenteeism or disability leave according to a recent study published in the USA’s Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Researchers used estimates from a database of approximately 375,000 employees, which included information on insurance claims for medical care and short-term disability over three years and combined it with productivity surveys for 10 health conditions that most commonly affect workers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RATE of pay increases across the European Union (EU), and Norway, fell between 2002 and 2003, although Britain bucked the EU trend, said a report from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GOVERNMENTS and multilateral organisations need to work together create more jobs in countries with high unemployment, to stem a growing tide of economic migration, says a new International Labour Office (ILO) report. It says that more than half of the 175 million international migrants registered by the year 2000 are unemployed, with numbers projected to increase.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CALIFORNIA tax-payers are spending US$10.1 billion per year to subsidise the state’s growing low-wage economy, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. It claims that of the families receiving social assistance in California, 53 per cent of funds went to working families to cover health and child care costs, rather than to unemployed and retired people.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) employers and employee organisations have been given nine months by the European Commission to negotiate agreements dealing with problems arising from the standard EU working time directive, or face legally binding reforms tabled by Brussels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has codified and publicised the often complex set of rules controlling the migration of eastern and southern European workers from the 10 countries joining the EU on May 1. These transitional rules designed to ease the impact of their accession on the EU’s 15 established member states, have been posed online at the European Job Mobility Portal http://europa.eu.int/eures.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
US government figures have shown that almost two-thirds of its 1.6 million federal full-time civilian workers received merit bonuses or special time-off awards in 2002. Of those 62 per cent who received awards, half received US$811 or more.…