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How one word change lets Amazon pays less tax on its UK activities | Technology
Amazon.co.uk's Milton Keynes ‘fulfilment centre’, one of its vast warehouses which sends out goods to customers, whose payments go directly to Amazon EU Sarl, based in Luxembourg. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian It would have taken the most eagle-eyed reader to spot the introduction of a single, but hugely significant, word into Amazon.co.uk Limited's annual accounts in 2006. For the first time, the word "fulfilment" was introduced into the description of the company's activities.
Watch Hot Coffee, a Powerful New Film on HBO June 27
June 27th, 2011 5:09 PM By Joanne Doroshow If you know anything about the so-called "tort reform" movement in the United States, you may know that it has turned the civil jury system into an embattled and vulnerable institution. From at least the 1980s until today, this country has experienced a non-stop barrage of legislative and, in some cases, judicial attempts to significantly weaken the civil justice system and make it more difficult for everyday Americans to access the courts.
A New Hurdle for Suits Brought on Behalf of Many
The court’s decision will not just make it harder to bring big, ambitious employment class-action cases asserting discrimination based on sex, race or other factors, legal experts said. In the majority opinion, the court set higher barriers for bringing several types of nationwide class actions against a large company with many branches. In its majority opinion, the court essentially said that if lawyers brought a nationwide class action against an employer, they would have to offer strong evidence of a nationwide practice or policy that hurt the class. In the Wal-Mart case, the court wrote that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated that Wal-Mart had any nationwide policies or practices that discriminated against women. The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, noted that Wal-Mart’s official corporate policy opposed discrimination, while the company gave the managers at its more than 3,400 stores considerable discretion over pay and promotions.Apple : derrière la com’, les suicides.
Nouvelle grand messe d’Apple autour de ses futurs systèmes d'exploitation, des dizaines de papiers dithyrambiques dans la presse et un mot qui revient tout le temps : révolutionnaire. Ce qui l’est beaucoup moins, ce sont les conditions de travail que la marque impose à ses sous-traitants. Les produits phares d’Apple, l’iPhone comme l’iPad, sont assemblés par une entreprise chinoise nommée Foxconn. Et derrière ces jolis appareils high-tech vendus à prix d’or se cache une réalité bien sordide. Osons quelques chiffres, avant de rentrer dans les détails.
L’opacité Total
Total soutient officiellement les initiatives en faveur de la transparence financière. Mais en étudiant les données fournies par la major pétrolière, on découvre qu'elles sont largement insuffisantes. Quand il s’agit d’impôts, le groupe Total est plein de bonnes intentions. Quand les militants des droits de l’Homme ont demandé des comptes à la première société française pour éclaircir ses liens avec la junte birmane, bénéficiaire de l’exploitation des pétrolières, le PDG Christophe de Margerie leur a répondu ceci :L’entreprise française Sodexo, connue pour ses plats de restauration collective et ses chèques déjeuner, exploite honteusement ses salariés marocains ou guinéens. Des syndicalistes profitent du Forum social de Dakar pour donner de l’écho à une campagne dénonçant les abus de la firme transnationale. Nordine travaillait au Maroc pour Sodexo, leader mondial de la restauration collective, depuis 2002. Début février, il est licencié.
