IMF

Bangladesh; life's a gas! $100 a month employee grabs 'bonus' of $145 million

Gas plant

The extent of the corruption discovered within the Bangladeshi gas supply industry is astonishing even the anti-corruption investigators (see earlier story).

The head of the state-owned Titas Gas Distribution Company has estimated that 80% of his employees (including, as he was obliged to admit, himself) are corrupt - investigators are trying to trace just how many millions have been siphoned off. It is claimed that "almost everyone in the company is a millionaire".

The Korean working class: From mass strike to casualization and retreat, 1987-2007

Loren Goldner on the history of the Korean working class during the past 20 years.

The Korean Working Class: From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat, 1987-2007

Loren Goldner

ABSTRACT

1997: The Albanian insurrection

Demonstrators in 1997

A little-known uprising in Albania, triggered by International Monetary Fund measures after which the state lost complete control.

The uprising that took Albania to the brink of revolution in 1997 was not supposed to happen – the Albanians, we were told, had shaken off their Stalinist masters and were now enjoying their new found capitalist freedom.

World Bank says: work 24/7 with no rights

A new World Bank report calls for the wholesale elimination of workers' rights.

The 2007 edition of the ‘Doing Business’ report has declared the Marshall Islands to be the world’s “Best Performer” for its almost total absence of labour regulation, displacing last year’s champion, Palau.

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