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Source: Albany Times-Union
Source: Puget Sound Business Journal
Source: Baltimore Sun
Source: Bloomberg
Source: Teamster Nation
Making Emma Maersk seaworthy after last week’s incident in the Suez Canal is a complicated process, and a Maersk executive admits it is probably a matter of months before she can enter service again.Palle Laursen, Head of Ship Management for Maersk Line, shares the latest update on the Emma Maersk incident that took place in the Suez Canal Friday evening. He explains that the investigation is still ongoing, and that repairs will take time.
Initial inspections by divers show that the water ingress was caused by damage to one of the stern thrusters. Thrusters are used for improving the vessels manoeuvrability and consist of a shaft tunnel fitted with a propeller delivering sideways thrust. It is now known that several propeller blades have broken off and there is severe damage to the propeller mounting, resulting in a crack in the forward stern thruster tunnel which caused the ingress of water.
The water flooded the engine room which consequently led to the loss of main engine power, and Emma Maersk was towed to the quay at Suez Canal Container Terminal.
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Foxconn’s proposal to allow workers to elect their own union representatives, writes the FT, is viewed as a ‘response to frequent worker protests, riots and strikes and soaring labor costs.’
Is China moving ahead of the United States on worker rights? According to a report on Monday’s Financial Times, it may be doing just that.
The FT reports that Foxconn, which employs 1.2 million Chinese workers who make the bulk of Apple’s products, along with those of Nokia, Dell and other tech companies, has decided to allow its workers to hold elections to select their union leaders. This is a radical departure from past practice in China, where unions are run by the government—that is, the Communist Party—which customarily selects the union leaders. Often, the leaders selected under this system are actually the plant managers.
Under Foxconn’s new plan, workers will cast secret ballots for their union leaders, and no managers will be eligible to run. The company’s proposal, writes the FT, is viewed as a “response to frequent worker protests, riots and strikes and soaring labor costs.” In other words, just as employers in Western Europe and the U.S. once came to prefer...
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