#also the legal sector has money to put into training new employees

[hemaris]

soooooo annoying how a year ago i was like hahaaaa leaving the legal sector FOREVER & now i'm like being a public prosecutor would pay really well though 🥺🥺🥺

[mostlysignssomeportents]

VICTORY! New Free File rules ban tax-prep firms from hiding their offerings, allow IRS to compete with them (a love-letter to Propublica)

Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest people in America millions and millions of dollars, every single year.

The scam is one of those baroque, ultimately boring and complex stories that generally dies in the public imagination despite its urgency, because "boring and urgent" is the place where the worst people can do the worst things with the least consequences.

With that warning, here's a short summary: in most wealthy countries, the tax authority fills out your tax return for you, using the information your employer already has to file every time it pays your wages. If all the numbers look right to you, you just sign the bottom of the form and send it back, without paying a tax preparer. If, on the other hand, you want to claim extra deductions, or if something complicated is going on with your finances, you can throw away that free tax return and fill in a form from scratch, either on your own or with the help of a professional.

When Americans asked to have the same courtesy extended to them -- a move that would save the vast majority of Americans millions and millions of dollars they were currently paying to the likes of HR Block and Intuit/Turbotax, every single year of their entire working lives -- the tax-prep industry mobilized to kill the proposal. The industry (which is highly concentrated and dominated by a small handful of firms whose top execs have mostly done time in all their competitors' board rooms, making them into essentially one giant company whose different divisions have different shareholders) lobbied the IRS very hard, and won a resounding victory.

That victory is called "Free File." Under Free File, each tax prep company is required to serve a slice of working Americans with free, online tax-preparation. The arrangement was hailed as a victory for public-private partnerships, harnessing the efficiency of the private sector to perform this public duty of the state. Importantly, it meant that the IRS would not expand its headcount or budget, both of which had been slashed by successive right-wing presidents and their legislative enablers. The move was cheered by anti-tax extremists like Grover Nordquist, who was delighted by the "efficiency" of you saving a bunch of pieces of paper the government already had, typing them into an online form, and hoping that a company's website came up with the same calculations that the government had already made about your tax-bill.

Part of the Free File deal banned the IRS from creating a competing offer and it banned the IRS from advertising the existence of the program or telling people where to find the free offering.

As soon as the ink was dry on Free File, the tax-prep companies set about to sabotage it. Intuit -- a massive company led by a bizarre cult figure -- and its competitors hid their Free File offerings deep in their sites, and used the "robots.txt" system to instruct search engines to hide them. They took out search ads for the phrase "Free File" that directed users to paid offerings with the word "free" in their names. They created "Free File" systems that would make you go through hours of work entering your data before surprising you with a notice that you didn't qualify for Free File because you'd paid interest on a student loan (or some other normal thing) and then ask you if you wanted to pay to keep your work and finish your tax-return in the non-free system.

There's a simple name for this kind of activity: fraud.

But it was a fraud in plain sight, one that went on for years and years, and which created a stealth tax on the majority of Americans, which they had to remit not to the IRS, but to the tax-prep companies, which used the money to lobby to make it even harder to get away from handing them your money every year.

Enter Propublica, whose relentless reporting did the seemingly impossible: it made a complicated, boring important thing into something that millions of Americans cared about. Something they cared about so deeply that they actually managed to shame the IRS into taking action.

Remember, the IRS is an administrative agency, under the direct control of the Trump administration. That means its commander-in-chief is a guy who said dodging his taxes means that he's "smart." While the IRS has many good, hardworking staffers, it has also been demoralized and gutted by the right, who have convinced millions of poor people that it's somehow in their interests if it's easier for rich people to duck their taxes.

Despite all this, the IRS has enacted new Free File rules: first, these rules ban tax-prep companies from hiding their Free File offerings, and it bans them from using deceptive names for non-Free File offerings (Turbotax will no longer be allowed to confuse Americans by offering "Turbotax Free" -- which is not free -- as a competitor to "Turbotax Free File," which is).

Second, the rule allows the IRS to develop its own competing Free File product, which means that the government agency that already knows how much tax you owe will allow you to review its findings each year and then either challenge them, or simply click OK, without paying a single cent of tax to Intuit or HR Block, and free you from filling in lengthy, bureaucratic forms.

This outcome is nothing short of miraculous: it did not come as the result of Congressional action. It did not come as the result of the Trump administration's inattention (the release came out the same day that the Trump administration revised its tax rules to allow money launderers to retain billions in the loot they've stashed offshore).

It came about as the result of fucking journalism. Propublica wrote its way into a better world, with relentless, deep, accessible reporting that made this boring, important thing come to life.

I am sympathetic to the idea that talking about politics isn't doing politics, but that's not entirely true. Learning about what's going on and telling the people you know about it and getting them to tell others is part of how we make change. Propublica's excellent reporting wouldn't have mattered if people hadn't read it -- and talked about it.

And Propublica has done this repeatedly over the past year, deeply reporting on naked, grotesque corruption in ways so vivid and undeniable that they actually changed things, and not in some abstract, boring way, but in ways that matter to the immediate, lived experience of real people who had been brutalized and poisoned and jailed and mistreated with impunity, for years, until Propublica wrote about it.

Here are some examples, just from the stories I paid attention to this year (Propublica does so much good work that I can't manage to cover all of it):

* Reformed South Carolina's "magistrate judge" system that let "judges" with no legal background and less training than barbers sentence poor people (most of them Black) to prison in defiance of their constitutional rights;

* Dismantled Illinois's system of Quiet Rooms where special ed kids were put into solitary confinement, sometimes for days at a time;

* Shamed a "Christian" hospital into ending its practice of suing thousands of patients, many of them its own employees, for inability to pay their medical debts, and forcing it to jettison the private army of debt collectors it kept on its payroll.

* Killed an Illinois scam whereby affluent parents temporarily gave up custody of their own children so they could steal college grants earmarked for poor children;

* Got two Louisiana cops fired for encouraging people to murder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez;

In addition, Propublica has done lots of reporting that hasn't yet created political transformations, but has changed our debate and laid the groundwork for change to come: called attention to the penniless hero of the ransomware epidemic; discredited a "walking polygraph" system used by police forces to frame their preferred suspects with sheer junk science; documented the link between pharma company bribes and doctors' prescribing; named every former lobbyist in the Trump administration; tracked every penny of the 2008 bailout money; documented Wayne LaPierre's self-dealing from the NRA's war-chests; documented the grifty conservative PACs that scammed millions out of scared old white people with racist Obama conspiracies and then kept the money for themselves; published a blockbuster story on the theft of southern Black families' ancestral lands through a legal grift called "heirs' property"; debunked the "aggression detection" mics being installed in America's classrooms; outed a "ransomware consultant" that was working with ransomware crooks to simply pay the ransom, while pretending that they were able to get you your files back without enriching the crooks who locked them up; named and shamed Alabama sheriffs who lost their re-election bids and then spent thousands of public dollars on frisbees or stole discretionary funds, or destroyed food earmarked for prisoners, or drilled holes in all the department computers' hard-drives in a form of "vindictive hazing"; followed the payday lender industry to a Trump hotel where it staged an annual conference, funneling millions to the president's personal accounts shortly before Trump reversed Obama's curbs on predatory lending; documented how TSA body-scanners single out Black women for humiliating, discriminatory hair-searches; revealed the secret history of wealthy people destroying the IRS's Global High Wealth Unit; and did outstanding work on the Sackler family, a group of billionaire opioid barons whose products kickstarted the opioid epidemic that has now claimed more American lives than the Vietnam war.

2019 was a dumpster-fire of a year and 2020 could be worse -- or it could be the dawn that breaks after our darkest hour. Finding Propublica's victory lap on Free File on New Year's Day was just the sunrise I needed to give me hope for the year to come. Sometimes, simply finding the truth and telling it to the people can make a change.

I'm a Propublica donor, and an avid reader. I admit that sometimes when I see that PP has published another 15,000-word expose, I am slightly dismayed at the thought that I'm about to lose 1-2 hours of my life to digesting and writing up the new story, but that dismay is always overcome by excitement at the thought that they have turned over a new rock and found something genuinely awful beneath it, and that, with all our help, we can sterilize that foetid sludge with blazing sunshine.

https://boingboing.net/2019/12/31/go-propublica-go.html

[coochiequeens]

Armchair investigators are using Freedom of Information rights to shine a light on how transgender lobby group Stonewall is influencing the policy of public bodies, putting them at risk of legal challenges. An army of citizen sleuths have taken their lead from the Legal Feminist collective of lawyers, which has published a detailed analysis of the actions taken by Edinburgh University following its participation in Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme.

The report reveals how the investment of time and resources in the scheme leads organisations to give Stonewall’s trans agenda disproportionately greater priority than the needs of other discriminated groups, such as women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. And it demonstrates how membership of the scheme affects not just an organisation’s treatment of employees, but also the services it provides to the public. The authors argue this is putting public bodies at risk of legal challenge by Judicial Review and under equalities law.

Meanwhile, lesbian lawyer Allison Bailey, who is suing Stonewall, has relaunched her crowdfunder, raising nearly half her target in one day. Ms Bailey claims Stonewall attempted to deprive her of a livelihood after she launched a rival campaigning group LGB Alliance and, she says, it is “policing free speech” through its diversity champions scheme. Ms Bailey was forced to build a new crowdfunding platform after CrowdJustice took her original appeal down just a day after it was launched last June. An employment tribunal is due to hold preliminary hearings in the case on 11 and 12 February.

More than 850 organisations, including big corporates such as Amazon, Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s UK, as well as 250 public sector bodies, pay a minimum of £2,500 per year to be members of Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme. According to Stonewall’s most recent published accounts, £3.2 million of its £8.3 million income came from “fees” for its membership schemes, the largest of which is diversity champions. A further £634,000 came from “programme income”, such as professional and leadership training.

According to calculations in The Telegraph last year, taxpayers contribute around £600,000 a year to Stonewall through the diversity champions subscriptions of local and national government bodies. Far more valuable than the financial contributions are the policy decisions Stonewall affects through the programme. Investigators are this month submitting Freedom of Information requests to all public bodies to uncover the full extent of the influence.

Amazon puts money towards this but couldn't extend extra pay for its workers during a pandemic?

[newstfionline]

Sunday, April 25, 2021

San Francisco Contends With a Different Sort of Epidemic: Drug Deaths (NYT) The drugs killed them in plain view—in front of the public library, at the spot on Powell Street where the cable car used to turn around. Others died alone in single-room apartments or in camping tents pitched on the pavement, each death adding to an overdose crisis that is one of the worst in the nation. Drug overdoses rose across the country during the coronavirus pandemic. But in San Francisco, they skyrocketed, claiming 713 lives last year, more than double the 257 people here who died of the virus in 2020. For officials in San Francisco, the epidemic of overdose deaths has been both humbling and alarming. Many believe that the city’s preoccupation with the pandemic has eclipsed concern over the drug deaths and blunted the urgency of the moment. “I can say for sure that what we are doing is not working and that it’s getting worse every single day,” said Matt Haney, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors who represents the Tenderloin, a district of low-income housing in the heart of the city that has seen the most overdoses. “I get offered drugs every time I step outside. It’s overwhelming.”

In historic move, Biden says 1915 massacres of Armenians constitute genocide (Reuters) U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday said the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, a historic declaration that infuriated Turkey and is set to further strain already frayed ties between the two NATO allies. The largely symbolic move, breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House, will likely to be celebrated by the Armenian diaspora in the United States, but comes at a time when Ankara and Washington have deep policy disagreements over a host of issues. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey “entirely rejects” the U.S. decision which he said was based “solely on populism”. Ties between Ankara and Washington have been strained over issues ranging from Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 defense systems—over which it was the target of U.S. sanctions—to policy differences in Syria, human rights and legal matters.

Ravaged by Covid, Brazil Faces a Hunger Epidemic (NYT) Rail-thin teenagers hold placards at traffic stops with the word for hunger—fome—in large print. Children, many of whom have been out of school for over a year, beg for food outside supermarkets and restaurants. Entire families huddle in flimsy encampments on sidewalks, asking for baby formula, crackers, anything. A year into the pandemic, millions of Brazilians are going hungry. The virus is ripping through Brazil’s social fabric, setting wrenching records, while the worsening health crisis pushes businesses into bankruptcy, killing jobs and further hampering an economy that has grown little or not at all for more than six years.

Baltic states join NATO allies in kicking out Russians for spying (Reuters) Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on Friday joined a fast-growing list of NATO and EU members demanding the removal of Russian diplomats for alleged spying, in actions that have infuriated Moscow and look certain to provoke further retaliation. A spate of tit-for-tat expulsions has plunged ties between Russia and countries of the former Soviet bloc to their lowest point since the fall of Communism, prompting Moscow to accuse at least two of them of deliberately wrecking relations. Lithuania said it was sending two diplomats home and Latvia and Estonia one each. “The EU should have less undercover Russian spies,” Lithuanian foreign affairs minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters.

Cashlessness may have gone foo far in Norway, government warns (Bloomberg) Norway’s government wants to make sure banks don’t stop providing cash, as the country becomes the world leader in abandoning physical notes and coins. The Finance Ministry has told the Financial Supervisory Authority in Oslo to put together a plan that will ensure banks continue offering cash services, according to a statement on Friday. That’s after the FSA’s own survey found that a number of Norwegian banks “claim that they are not responsible for offering cash services.” Banknotes and coins are used in only 3-4 per cent of all transactions in Norway, the lowest level of cash usage in world, according to calculations by Norges Bank. Neighbouring Sweden, another nearly cashless society, has also sounded the alarm amid concerns that the complete disappearance of paper money would pose a number of risks.

Italian Police Accuse Man of Getting Paid for 15 Years While Skipping Work (NYT) A hospital in Italy’s southern region of Calabria fired Salvatore Scumace for not showing up to work. For 15 years. Mr. Scumace, 67, was fired last year from the Pugliese Ciaccio Hospital in the city of Catanzaro, but the news made headlines in Italy this week when Italy’s financial police announced their investigation into his remarkable record of absenteeism. His case was uncovered as part of a wider investigation into absenteeism by public workers. Mr. Scumace is accused of earning an estimated 538,000 euros, or more than $645,000, for a job the police say he never performed over the course of his long and less-than-productive career as a hospital fire-safety employee. A chronic problem in some public sector jobs, the Italian police have cracked down in recent years on no-show employees, investigating dozens of cases around the country.

Coronavirus: India’s daily cases climb to new world record as hospitals overwhelmed (NBC News) India’s coronavirus infections set a new world record for the third consecutive day rising by 346,786 overnight, the health ministry said on Saturday, as overwhelmed hospitals in the densely-populated country begged for oxygen supplies. India is in the grip of a rampaging second wave of the pandemic, hitting a rate of one Covid-19 death just under every four minutes in Delhi, as the capital’s underfunded health system buckles. The government has deployed military planes and trains to get oxygen from the far corners of the country to Delhi. Television images showed an oxygen truck arriving at Delhi’s Batra hospital after it issued an SOS call saying it had 90 minutes of oxygen left for its 260 patients. India surpassed the U.S. record of 297,430 single-day infections anywhere in the world on Thursday, making it the global epicenter of a pandemic that is waning in many other countries. The Indian government had itself declared it had beaten back the coronavirus in February when new cases fell to all-time lows.

Debris From Indonesian Submarine Is Found, Ending Hopes of Rescue (NYT) Debris from an Indonesian Navy submarine that disappeared this past week with 53 people aboard has been found deep in the Bali Sea, confirming fears that the vessel sank and cracked, the navy’s chief of staff said on Saturday. The submarine, the KRI Nanggala-402, disappeared early Wednesday off the Indonesian island of Bali while conducting torpedo drills. Emergency signals to the vessel after it failed to make contact went unanswered. The Nanggala was built to withstand pressure of up to 500 meters deep, but sonar seemed to indicate that the submarine sank to a depth of about 850 meters, well below what is referred to as “crush depth.” At that depth, even the steel hull of a submarine would almost certainly fracture from the pressure.

Jerusalem tension triggers Gaza-Israel fire exchange (AP) Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired some three dozen rockets into Israel overnight Saturday, while the Israeli military struck back at targets operated by the ruling Hamas group. The exchange came as tensions in Jerusalem spilled over into the worst round of cross-border violence in months. The barrage of rocket fire came as hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli police in east Jerusalem. The clashes, in which at least four police and six protesters were injured, have become a nightly occurrence throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and show no signs of stopping. Jerusalem, home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2014, similar tensions erupted into a 50-day war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group.

60% of the world is online (TNW) The new Digital 2021 April Global Statshot Report—published in partnership between Hootsuite and We Are Social—reveals that more than 6 in 10 people on Earth now use the internet. Internet users have grown by more than 330 million over the past year, reaching a total of more than 4.7 billion at the start of April 2021. There are 5.27 billion unique mobile users around the world, which means that more than two-thirds of all the people on Earth now have a mobile phone.

Can We Learn to Live With Germs Again? (NYT) For more than a century—since scientists first learned that unseen germs cause infection and illness—we’ve tended to think of sterile environments as the safe ones. And at the start of the outbreak, when we didn’t know any better, it was sensible to disinfect as much as possible, including our groceries, clothing and personal spaces. It took time for coronavirus researchers to figure out that the risk of surface transmission is low—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only recently pegged it at generally less than one in 10,000. Despite the now consensus recognition that air transmission, not surface spread, is more important, most pandemic sanitation practices have continued. We continue to annihilate every microbe in our midst, even though most are harmless. The New York City subway, for example, has been undergoing a 24-hour cleaning protocol that includes ultraviolet light and a variety of disinfecting solutions.      But some health experts are watching this ongoing onslaught with a mounting sense of dread. They fear that many of the measures we’ve employed to stop the virus may pose a threat to human health in the long run if they continue. Their worries center on the human microbiome—the trillions of bacteria that live on and inside our bodies. They say that excessive hygiene practices, inappropriate antibiotic use and lifestyle changes such as distancing may weaken those communities going forward in ways that promote sickness and imperil our immune systems. By sterilizing our bodies and spaces, they argue, we may be doing more harm than good. “We’re starting to realize that there’s collateral damage when we get rid of good microbes, and that has major consequences for our health,” says B. Brett Finlay, a professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of British Columbia.

[froggrecruitsa]

Exactly How To Choose A Recruitment Agency - For Companies

An employment agency serves as an intermediary that fosters a really vital relationship between you and the candidate (or the work seeker). So choosing the best recruitment company is an extremely important problem for you as a client. Since you'll be paying them a great deal of money for their services you would not wish to fail. Recruitment firms are not just the same. They differ in the sorts of tasks they provide, the field they have experience in, their area and the kind of services they supply.

 An agency which deserves your money is a firm that will certainly make the recruiting process less complicated as well as faster, understand your needs and give you accessibility to relevant prospects.

 Exactly how do you ensure that you'll select the right employment agency? Here are some ideas:

 Make a checklist and also gather info about companies available in the task market. You can find these lists on task boards as well as searching through LinkedIn.

 Examine the employment agency personally by seeing them or speaking with the owner on the phone.

 Discover which recruitment agencies are used by your competitors given that these agencies will possibly have suitable candidates. You can additionally request referrals Recruitment Agency Bellville

 Make sure to search for local recruitment agencies because individuals that are seeking work in your location are more than likely signed up with these firms.

 Don't be reluctant to evaluate the employment specialists who execute the analysis or selection of the prospects. Make sure they are certified and also have the essential proficiency in your sector and also experience in targeting individuals with the skills you're trying to find. When you talk with them you have to be clear regarding your needs as well as requirements. See to it that they comprehend your organization, your firm's culture and what you're searching for in a candidate.

 Ask the agency to define what is associated with the procedure of selection of the prospects and look for a long, detailed process. Learn which hiring software or ATS they are making use of. Also search for agencies that carry out background checks, that offer detailed information and also firms that execute meetings with the candidates prior to they send you CVs.

 Learn the ordinary variety of CVs you will certainly obtain however be careful of companies that guarantee a great deal of Curricula vitae in a short time. It is very important that you look for high quality not amount. Likewise beware of firms that promise team at a really affordable price because they may not be offering top notch candidates.

 The leading employment companies would certainly supply substitute guarantees in the contract in situation the candidate does not do well. You need to also be clear on just how to deal with replicate prospects.

 Know that a respectable employment firm would have a certificate and also be a member of an employment market body and also follow the typical practices and also codes.

 Just How An Employment Agency Functions

 Recruitment firms are an usual way for companies to outsource the process of locating short-term team, or the filtering of applicants for full time settings to a manageable few prospects. From the outdoors, whether you require a staff member or require a job, it can seem like you speak to only a bachelor in the business and they handle the entire procedure of matching openings with employee. Actually, recruitment is teamwork, both within the agency, and with the clients with uninhabited placements as well as the prospects searching for work. Right here we check out just how a typical employment firm functions, and just how a job is filled up by the Recruitment Agency Cape Town.

 Standard practices within employment firms

 Usually, recruitment firms larger than a few people will split their staff in to two roles. The 'Professional' will certainly talk to the firm's clients and also gather demands. The 'Resourcers' will discover the right prospects for the vacancies the Expert as well as customer have defined.

 This division of roles allows each participant of staff to concentrate on the different tasks a firm must be proficient at. The Professional can build up a connection with the customer and expand to recognize their company, the troubles they have, and also the working environment they require contractors and full time team to fit within.

 A Resourcer requires to be good at connecting with people looking for a job, analyzing which groups they would certainly function well with, just how reputable they are, what skills they have, and also exactly how a person's abilities can alter gradually. As they progress with their working life, a candidate's experience and also skills will change, and their needs and wants might alter too. A more youthful person might be fairly inexperienced, yet be willing to commute fars away to a function that will certainly accept them, or remain in economical fit near a the office for an agreement. Conversely, the exact same individual a couple of years later may have much more experience, however additionally a family and will certainly not be willing to spend time away from house. However, their knowledge might indicate a client will accept them functioning from house if the best equilibrium in between that and an existence in the workplace is negotiated.

 Within many agencies occupation development involves starting as a Resourcer as well as going on to ending up being an Expert after some experience and also training, yet this is not constantly the case, some people stay as extremely successful, demanded Resourcers for their entire profession.

 Exactly how a job is dealt with by a recruitment firm

 When the client of the agency has a vacancy, regardless if full-time or short term, they will review their demands with a Consultant from the agency. The Specialist and also Resourcer after that review this within the company and also will check their interior data source of signed up prospects to see if it contains any person ideal for the role.

 If suitable candidates are registered with the firm and also have actually just recently been in touch either due to the fact that they called the firm or the other way around, the Resourcer will either call or e-mail them to examine their schedule and also interest in the position. If the prospect is readily available as well as interested, the Resourcer as well as Expert will certainly start the procedure to verify their viability for the setting. Depending upon the customer's requirements, this may consist of a phone interview or technological examination before the details of the prospect are sent to the client.

 Candidates that have been in touch recently are called first because the firm recognizes their schedule, it's a route to contact them rather than calling everyone that has the appropriate abilities as lots of that haven't been in touch lately will enjoy in their full time tasks, or part way with a contract as well as not trying to find brand-new work. Prior to CVs were all dealt with digitally, it used to be a habit of recruiters to pick somebody out of the recently gotten here heap of Curricula vitae remaining on their workdesk. Now e-mail and digital records are prevalent, this is not so typical, however prioritising people who have actually recently communicated makes sense for swiftly loading a placement as the recruiter can be certain the candidate is presently looking.

 If few or none of the prospects that have actually recently communicated in the company's data source are suitable, two activities are taken: candidates with the right skills who have not communicated lately are contacted, and an advert for the setting is developed, normally on the company's website and other big job websites such as Jobserve.com. The large job internet sites bill for adverts being put on them, so smaller recruitment firms will certainly stay clear of advertising and marketing everywhere if they have actually appropriate prospects registered with them and also will certainly spend longer looking into candidates they learn about previously marketing for brand-new ones Recruitment Agency CBD.

 Applications from prospects new to the agency will be registered in to their data source of Curricula vitae or disregarded, depending upon their suitability. Candidates not right for the position but that fit various other requirements the agency like will certainly also be signed up, however not place forwards for the position being advertised.

 As soon as the company has some prospects they declare are best for the placement, they will pass a copy of their information on the client, commonly with the call details for the candidate got rid of, although that depends upon the connection in between the agency and also the client. The customer after that makes a decision, often in partnership with the Consultant, who to interview, or who to work with - for short-term contract job, an interview is not always a need.

 The company will send out an agreement to the effective candidate, which establishes the partnership between the prospect as well as the firm. This lays out repayment terms, what legal civil liberties the candidate as well as firm have in relationship to the job, and other issues connected to employment law. If the prospect is being put in a full time task at the customer company, they will additionally have an agreement to sign with the client. When the prospect fills up the vacancy at the customer, the firm receives their cost, either as a percent of the hourly rate of the candidate when it comes to contract job, or as a level charge which might be based upon a portion of the yearly pay the position for a full time participant of personnel.

 During the agreement phase, the Expert will maintain the customer appraised of development, as well as the agency might keep various other candidates prepared to step in must get arrangements fail for any kind of factor.

 Once the candidate is subscribed, they will be marked as in work within the agency's database, as well as if the work is a limited term contract their anticipated finish day will certainly be signed up, as the company will certainly be looking to position them in one more agreement when they become available. If one more candidate that has good skills has actually emerged throughout this procedure, the firm may attempt to position them with other existing clients, or use them as a method to get a brand-new customer if they see a company promoting a pertinent openings. If a candidate has great skills, an agency would certainly much instead place them in a setting as opposed to shed touch with them, also if they missed out on the original job that was marketed.

 Six Things To Search For Making Use Of An Online Employment Company

 Recruitment requires the act of using, employing or contracting employees and in addition contains interviewing, appealing and even posting a work advertisement for that matter. Companies generally engaged the solutions of agencies to do all the advertising and marketing, testing and talking to of qualified applicants. Considering that the very early 90s, employment has actually advanced to established online recruitment agency as a far better option than the on-site recruitment agency. With internet recruitment, the candidate can simply browse for task opening within the employment website's board published by companies and also publish his curriculum vitae which will allow member businesses to search.

 However, with the threat of identification scams and human trafficking which is rampant and invading the protection of any country, a jobseeker has the corresponding task to shield himself against fraudulent employment and also deceptive agencies. Below are 6 things a jobseeker requires to think about in looking for the proper online employment company:

 Reputation. Preliminary variable to consider is the name as well as online reputation of the potential recruitment company. Does it have any type of pending unlawful employment document? Was it correctly listed and licensed to transact business of recruitment? You are able to also look the internet for blog sites relating to comments concerning the stated firm.

 Profile. If your potential firm does not run a fly-by-night activity, it will certainly not think twice to put as component of their website their firm account. Having the stated account posted will permit the jobseekers to validate the credibility of the firm's procedure. If it has nothing to conceal with respect to its procedure and individuals comprising the team, it will certainly allow both businesses as well as task candidates to have its profile double checked.

 Sort of firm. You need to also consider what area and also work postings are being used by a specific online employment company. You can't go to 1 that employs knowledgeable employees whenever you are seeking for a clerical task placement. The tendency is that you just will arrive at an inappropriate placement.

 Encounter. The longer the stated firm is within the business, the better. It just reveals that it has actually gained track record for many years and kept good line of business participants satisfied with its task. Besides, being within the business for difficult years will certainly guaranty that the stated company is well versed with technical expertise.

 Professionalism and count on. You must additionally think about whether the recruitment agency techniques what they preach. It could be seen with how its staff replies to your application along with to your question.

 Dedication. Committed people anticipate finest outcomes. If the company gives you this sort of outlook, it necessarily follows that you simply remain in good hands.

 Valuing a Recruitment Company Service - 10 Tough Employer Concerns

 Small and large organizations alike look on their workers as terrific motive powers for a business success over lengthy years of company exposure. Handling a recruitment company and also recruitment firm policies can be a nice move for your organization and also development.

 Just how can you be sure you have top quality employees? Is your firm large sufficient to obtain the very best for the human resource division and then let them employ the very best individuals for the different devices and placements in your business? Or you might be a dedicated manager that makes sure that you have the quality labor force that the employing process primarily depends upon you? Or maybe you are an owner/manager who intends to focus extra on running and also expanding service borders that you rely on employment firms to get the whole system in a much faster as well as a lot more effective function?

 Right here are the 10 difficult employer issues you need to consider in handling employment company services for service advancement features:

 - Solution Cost - Reaching prices is the leading concern people ask in taking care of every business issue. Knowing every employment firm's service fee can be a tough crucial aspect. A recruitment company's modes of billing every included service when as well as how to get the very best recruitment firm for your company. The popular trend below is the "no placement/fee policy" where you only have to pay the recruitment company when they place a staff member to your firm.

 - Billing Fees - Ask every employment firm for their price of charges to offer you some choices before limiting your search. Charging a percent of the staff member's wage throughout his very first year is the common agency's billing procedure. To offer you a glance of it, costs are often billed in between the rates of 105 to 30%. You may think this is somewhat expensive yet simply think about getting even more productivity and rewarding arise from a particular worker from a respectable recruitment company.

 - Rebate Structure - An employment company's handsome method to attract clients is to provide them a rebate structure. This is made use of a safety and security step in cases where a worker leaves a company earlier than anticipated. As an instance, an employer might be provided an 80% refund if the hired worker leaves the firm in 2-3 weeks.

 - CV Policy - Companies ought to inquire about really firm's plan on Curriculum Vitae entries so they will certainly know what to anticipate and how to shortlist workers based upon high quality.

 - Customer Endorsements - if you are new in seeking for recruitment company solutions, make certain to look for customer testimonials. Reviews are your warranty that the company is an established, trusted very valuable in offering business, especially firms connected to your market.

 - Agency Volume - Considering some companies for your human resource needs depend upon just how large your company is and the number of companies you require to employ in the process. As a smart action, begin with around 3-5 agencies and see if they fulfill your hiring criteria actually well. You can include more or replace some based on your requirements as well as preferences.

 - Specialist Company - These are some certain companies in every industry to fill up every employer's demands. These agencies are a lot more pricey than normal agencies. Nevertheless, these are expert carriers and use you much more experienced guidance in obtaining the best staff members for your business.

 - Trade Bodies - Try to find firm or affiliations or main memberships to obtain one of the most worth for your cash and for more protection functions.

 - Check Referrals - Verify with the firm regarding each prospect references or if they could cross-check references for you.

 - Facilities - Employment tools/facilities such as the meeting area, salary survey details as well as psychometric testing are very necessary collaboration devices for a company in getting a wonderful employment firm solution.

 Obtaining aid from employment company services is a company's wise way to work with superb top quality workers that ideal fit every company's demands and also criteria. This way even conserves you more of your time and money rather than do the employing procedure on your own.

 Just how to Select the Best Online Recruitment Agency?

 Finding a great candidate for your firm is one of the most difficult task. You have to review thousands of Curricula vitae daily, check their certifications, inspect their experience and then finally interview them. If you want to hire numerous individuals for your business after that the CVs approach is undoubtedly not the very best for you. You need to discover an on-line employment UK firm which will certainly help you in finding candidates. The on-line employment method is not only very easy but it is likewise an extremely affordable recruitment approach. Prior to picking an on the internet employment UK firm, make certain the company has the following features:

 Must provide level cost recruitment

 The majority of the employment firms charge you on the CV basis. Like if you desire 100 CVs after that you have to pay the 100 x per CV charges. This is undoubtedly never inexpensive recruitment. Just choose the company which is offering level fee recruitment which indicates your ad will be offered on all significant job boards at a fixed price of cost-free hundred bucks. Flat cost recruitment agencies are extremely few in UK however still you can discover them.

 Need to contain big database of CVs and also must not bill you a lot

 If the online recruitment company is offering you inexpensive recruitment then it does not mean it must have just couple of CVs of the task applicants. The recruitment firm you are going to join must include the data source of hundreds of job hunters so you can easily select the ones which you believe are the very best. There are several on the internet recruitment companies providing economical employment.

 Should not conflict between you and the Task Candidate

 The affordable recruitment company which you are going to utilize should not interfere in between you and also the task candidate. The agency's work is done once you have actually paid them to obtain the database of Curricula vitae. Typically you will be straight contacted by the job candidates as they will certainly have the ability to see your business's advertisement on their account page at work looking for web site. It is far better to offer your business number in the ad instead of the email, such as this it will be simple for the person who is finding a job to call you.

 Have to offer you some other standard centers

 Besides giving you the inexpensive recruitment service, the employment firm should also give you with some other fundamental facilities. For example you need to have the ability to talk to the task candidate online. The interview time in between the job seeker and also firm must be chosen by the on the internet recruitment company. Adhere to those pointers as well as definitely you will be able to locate the best online recruitment UK agency in no time at all. Make use of the various online search engine as well as discussion forums to check out the individual assesses about different employment companies.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Oh for fuck's sake, not this fucking bullshit again (cryptography edition)

America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their illegally harvested surveillance data.

In a recently released Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption, the Five Eyes powers have demanded, again, that strong cryptography be abolished and replaced with defective cryptography so that they can spy on bad guys.

They defend this by saying "Privacy is not absolute."

But of course, working crypto isn't just how we stay private from governments (though god knows all five of the Five Eyes have, in very recent times, proven themselves to be catastrophically unsuited to collect, analyze and act on all of our private and most intimate conversations). It's how we make sure that no one can break into the data from our voting machines, or push lethal fake firmware updates to our pacemakers, or steal all the money from all of the banks, or steal all of the kompromat on all 22,000,000 US military and government employees and contractors who've sought security clearance.

Also, this is bullshit.

Because it won't work.

Here's the text of my go-to post about why this is so fucking stupid. I just can't be bothered anymore. Jesus fucking christ. Seriously? Are we still fucking talking about this? Seriously? Come on, SERIOUSLY?

It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want them to be is impossible.

What these leaders thinks they're saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of their jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Australian governments have already shown that they believes they can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5 Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other states are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what the Five Eyes are proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

The Five Eyes officials will say that they doesn't want to do any of this. They'll say that they can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though “aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online; and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words: “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in “golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html

[textiletoday]

Introduction Ready-made-garment export is the lifeline of the Bangladesh economy. According to the last report Bangladesh has earned more than 83 percent of its export earnings from this sector (Nikkei Asian Review, 2018) where the total RMG export in the last fiscal year 2017-18 was US$33.93 billion (BGMEA, 2019). How much of this huge export is accounted for our own benefit? Is the textile and garment industry safe and sustainable for the local professionals? The industry has its own way to find solutions through different stakeholders- buyers, factory owners, governments, NGOs, buying offices, human right activists, local government, etc. Let us see the types of workforce we have in the garment industry, the evolution of the availability of skilled workforce, building capacity for the future workforce, expats working in Bangladesh, and our responsibility to leverage own hard work and intelligence to retain our hard-earned foreign currency in our own country. Workforce in Bangladesh garment industry If we divide the workforce in the garment industry then there are broadly four categories: Garment workers including supervisors, line-chiefs, QCs, helpers, etc. Sub-sector workers Support staffs, including clerks, peons, chefs, guards, etc. and Professionals- CEO, Executive Directors, GMs, Managers, Merchandisers, QA, and Inspectors, The latter workforce is the intelligence of our garment industry. They are the brains for the industry who really run the show by means of managing, operating, giving technical support, and marketing the factory products. There is a government concern about increasing the wages of workers, government employees etc. but this group is the most hard-working people in the country for them there is no wage board, no government intervention on illegal employment of foreign expats, no legal retirement benefits, no medical benefit, etc. Self-reliance in the technical and managerial workforce When the textile and garments industry started in the late ‘70s, it was the Japanese and Koreans who brought those orders and tried to find local partners to make the shipment. In the ’80s, quota benefit attracted investors from all around the world and they hired professionals from their own country as well as from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. The ’90s was the era for mushrooming of knit composite factories because of comparatively lower initial investment cost and a handful of local textile engineers dared to run them. This industry showed us that we could run the factories with our own capabilities. After 2000, it is probably the golden decade for Bangladesh textile and garments industry amid negative speculations of post MFA era, when local professionals started to replace those foreign nationals in managerial positions, maintaining the export growth, graduates from local textile and fashion universities take up the communications quite strongly, worked out the chemical threats and child labor issues. Just when it looked like Bangladesh is all set to become next RMG sourcing hotspot by securing 2nd largest apparel exporter ‘Tazreen Fashions Fire’ and Rana Plaza Collapse’ brought a big question mark on country’s safe handling of the work environment. In the last 5 years, Bangladesh textile and garments industry has done well with Accord and Alliance for a rapid improvement in that area. Building capacity in the workforce Bangladesh has signed the MDG and SDG where it will give a mammoth growth in our economy by achieving those targets by 2030 (SDG, 2017). This target was set mainly based on our ability to achieve US$50 billion export target from RMG by 2021 (Textile Today, 2018). To maintain this growth, we need to increase our export quantity by increasing productivity or doing more value-added products or increasing the number of factories as well as a number of workers and professionals in textile and garments industry. Recently, the government has taken steps to enhance the quality of our professionals by arranging free training for them (Islam and Islam, 2018). We also need lots of vocational, TVET institutes for technical professionals, and make as much space in the industry for managerial professionals. It is obvious that the local professionals alone are capable of running the whole textile and apparel industry. It is a matter of sorrow that there are still many factories who hire foreign nationals in key positions. What is the number of expats? According to The Daily Star dated December 31, 2016, the number of foreign employees working in the RGM sector is about 200,000 (Two Lakhs). In the year 2014, they draw nearly US$5 billion as salary and allowances. From September 2009 to September 2019, a total of 7,030 work permits were issued. In 2014, The Board of Investment (BOI) issued 3,511 extensions and in 2013, it was 2,907. From this data, it is quite evident that most of the foreign nationals working in this country are under illegal contract and residing without valid documents violating the immigration rule of an independent country. New Age (2018) in one of their recent issues has claimed that more than 5 lakh foreign nationals are working in Bangladesh and the same amount as reported by The Daly Star in 2015 is draining the hard earned foreign currency out of the Country. The sectors include apparel, textile, buying house, telecommunication, information technology, poultry, and poultry feed sector. Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer Association (BGMEA) after enquired 5,000 of its member factories to submit a report of a number of foreign employees they have. Only 233 of those member factories replied out of those 5,000 factories. As a matter of fact, most of those expats do not have a legal work permit and this is the reason factories cannot report them to BGMEA. Foreigners and expats mainly come from India, Sri Lanka, China, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, and some European and African Countries as per security and immigration sources. Indian publication, Daily Industry (2018), in their report showed that Bangladesh has become 4th largest remittance source for India with US$10 billion in 2017. They also reported that about 1 million Indian workers working in Bangladesh, mostly, through illegal channels. As per Reserve Bank of India, this amount is deposited in different Indian banks with the declaration. The actual value through non-declaration could be even higher. Though Bangladeshi E-paper, Daily Sun (2018), has claimed it to be false news and further claimed that Bangladesh earns 35 times that of India earns from us. Such contradictory reports reflect our level of patriotism towards solving the drainage from remittance outflow. Threat from foreign professionals A Study carried out by Islam et. Al (2017) for Center of Excellence for Bangladesh Apparel Industry (CEBAI) revealed that expats have specialized skills in communication, negotiation, leadership, decision-making, and operational skill and are reported to be paid two to five times higher than the local professionals. Categorically, we cannot say that professionals working in our textile and RMG industry are facing tough competition from foreign nationals. It is because most of our local professionals are nowadays highly educated, experienced, and gained industry exposure to run by themselves. Then why are we nourishing such highly paid foreign nationals against our national interest? For decades, our textile and RMG factory owners believed that foreign experts are more skilled and there are a few still believe the same way. Firstly, it is not uncommon not to get the best result with some specific local professional but from here making a generalization would be a fallacy. Read More: Is the foreign expert more capable than locals? Secondly, it is also a part of some bad politics. There are lots of liaison offices working in Bangladesh. Many of those offices, mostly US-based, controlled by their regional office located in our neighboring country. In those offices, the decision-making employees are foreign national from a neighboring country. The factory people doing marketing is also from that country. Even many professionals and technicians of that factory are also from that foreign country. It is like making of a little cantonment or a gang of foreigners in those buying office and factories whereas the same responsibilities (may not be the purpose) can be served by local professionals at a low cost. The reason I mentioned purpose because social and cultural aspects should not be a bar in international business which is greatly driven by technical knowledge and most of the people nowadays understand the English language. The possibility of unethical trading as a team cannot be denied too. Lastly, many of the owners are accused of money laundering by using their highly paid foreign employees as a medium for transferring money to other countries. Most of these foreign professionals working in this textile and RMG industries do not have a valid work permit. Most of those come to Bangladesh in tourist visas and extend their visa by liaising with immigration officials. There are lots of talk about this but no action had been taken about this very simple legal matter. Bangladesh has been a target of terrorist attacks and it is not unlikely that there are foreign agents dwelling in Bangladesh in the guise of a garment expert. Most of the foreign offices employ Country Managers preferred to be non-Bangladeshi. The government must check their skill, experience and managerial capacity in order to give them work permit with a valid reason for working in Bangladesh. One of the reasons buyers need them is to screw prices, put penalties and recover claims. Whereas, in such position, a local national would perform much better at a reasonable price to get the right quality for on-time shipment. Understanding the local culture is very important for the Country Managers. If you talk to any of them working here for more than 10 years will speak very badly about our working condition, delivery, on the other hand, push us to be 10 cents cheaper than last season. This whole thing is not only relegating our good name in the international market but also the country is renounced from foreign currency. Most ridiculous thing is that you got to ask this question when, why and where we do need a foreign expert. It is not only the case that they are working as Country Managers or General Managers. They are working massively in woven mills and we should admit that we might still have some lacking in that area, especially in dyeing and finishing. But you will find them working in laboratories, R&D, warping, sizing, and looming, etc. areas too. Though Bangladesh is a forerunner in knit composite but yet you will find foreign professionals in knitting, dyeing, finishing and even in cutting, pattern making, sample making, quality control, fashion design, washing plants, accessories factories, fabric marketing, yarn marketing, etc. However, I must not admit that there are a few advantages of hiring foreign professionals. They work hard because they do not have any social works here. They do not leave the job in short notice. An office with foreign staffs gives customers the feeling of visiting in a multi-national corporation. And of course, individuals have their own personal charisma which makes them different from others. Recommendations It is very easy to leave some recommendations to improve the present scenario. Ironically, everybody understands the fact but do not take any actions about it. Firstly, we have the correct data. The Ministry of Labor and Employment does not have any data related to the actual number of foreign employees working in our country. According to various reports, it could be higher than a staggering 1 million foreign workers and from valid sources, it is half a million workers. We need the actual count in order to control it. Secondly, MNCs often assign expatriate to facilitate knowledge transfer and enhance foreign direct investment purpose. Here is this case, we need to check the capability of the foreign expats working here to teach our technicians, managers. In case, they are here only to learn we are making big accounting mistake by assuming them as FDI. Thirdly, according to the Income Tax Ordinance 1984, tax officials can impose a penalty on companies up to 50 percent of their total payable income tax, or BDT 5 lakh, and deny all other tax benefits as a fine for hiring unauthorized foreigners. It is now up to the integrity of the tax department to investigate those or they keep quiet of being allured with greater personal benefits. There are also a few other recommendations which are the key topic for today’s discussion. That is, how to make our textile and RMG industry safe and sustainable for Bangladeshi professionals. Many of our textile and garment owners complain about the poor knowledge and English literacy of our local professionals. It is very common that academic knowledge, experience, and English as communication will not be the same for everybody. In general, the expats working in our industry has on an average better English. This does not mean that there is no local professional who speaks better English than expats. Nowadays, there are young breeds from public and private universities educated in textile engineering, fashion design, business administration, physical science, applied arts, and many of them having a foreign degree from renowned universities. They could be a much better worker for now and for the future who can work for the company for the rest of his/ her life. There must be some professional institutes like there is for Doctors, Engineers, or even Lawyers where the professional institutes will be able to certify the employability, and also conduct technical and management workshop, a symposium to improve the skills and knowledge of local professionals. It is natural, in Bangladesh, to have good demand for technicians, managers, merchandisers, marketers, etc. However, we have complaints about them that they leave the job even with a small raise from other companies. One of the most popular theories on motivation was given by Frederick Herzberg (1959) which sets forth management theories for workers. He believed that workers are motivated anything other than money. Those are praise, responsibility, achievement, and advancement. Our industry owners are in fact lagging behind in their knowledge in management theories by believing in Taylor (1900) theory where money is the only motivator. Many of the factory owners are applying Herzberg theory in practices, and there are a lot of examples where the best performers in the industry are management hires young managers, gives them the responsibility, praise them while performing, rewards when achieves and promote them as advancement. In today’s world, everybody wants to have a young worker who is keen to learn. It is because of the change in technology, work processes, motivational factors, etc. As the phrase says, “unlearning is difficult than learning”, it is wise to recruit young staff who later is trained with various on the job training so as to capable of giving new knowledge for improving the work process. If we compare the compensation package between the expat and local professionals then there is a big difference. If the local professional is more qualified we still do not want to offer the same package that we offer to a foreign professional with more than US$10,000 as salary plus house rent US$2,000 plus airfare twice a year with family and profit bonus. How could we expect the same dedication from a local professional giving only a part of it and expecting he would sacrifice all his social and personal life? For real professional, they deliver results not his working hours like foreign professional work in Bangladesh. Next thing is that the factory owners must introduce pension and gratuity like other countries which are used as an effective tool against employee’s turnover. Richard Branson, one of today’s most illustrious and successful entrepreneur, quoted about employees, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. You take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients”. References: BGMEA, 2019. “Total Export of Bangladesh”. Available At: http://www.bgmea.com.bd/home/pages/tradeinformation BIDA, 2019. Available At: https://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/Changes%20of%20FDI%20policy%20in%20BD%20ESCAP%2717V2.pdf CIA, 2019. “South Asia: Bangladesh”. Available At: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_bg.html CPD, 2015. “CPD Study on Bangladesh as Indian Remittance Source”. Published on January 7, 2015. Available at: https://cpd.org.bd/cpd-study-bangladesh-indian-remittance-source/ Daily Industry, 2018. “Bangladesh Becomes 4th Largest Remittance[1] Source for India”. Published on July 02, 2018. Available at: http://www.dailyindustry.news/bangladesh-becomes-4th-largest-remittance-source-india/ Daily Sun, 2018. “False Propaganda about India’s Remittance from Bangladesh by Enamul Hassan”. Published in August 2018. Available at:  https://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/331504/2018/08/26/False-Propaganda-about-India%E2%80%99s-Remittance-from-Bangladesh Dhaka Tribune, 2018. “Apparel workers in Bangladesh still the lowest paid by global standards”. Business. Available at: https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2018/11/12/apparel-workers-in-bangladesh-still-the-lowest-paid-by-global-standards Islam, S. and Islam T. N., 2018. “Insight into the Skill Development Issues of Management Jobs: A Study on RMG and Textile Sectors of Bangladesh.” Canadian Center of Science and Education. November 29, 2018. Available At: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329279167_Insights_into_the_Skill_Development_Issues_of_Management_Jobs_A_Study_on_RMG_and_Textile_Sectors_of_Bangladesh Islam, S. R., Hossain, M. I., Islam, M. T., & Tareq, M. (2017). Employment of Expatriates and its Alternatives in the RMG sector of Bangladesh. Report of Centre of Excellence for Bangladesh Apparel Industry. Retrieved from https://cebai.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Research-Report-on-Employment-of-Expatriates-and-its-Alternatives-in-the-RMG-Sector-of-Bangladesh.pdf Islam, S. R., Hossain, M. I., Islam, M. T., & Tareq, M. (2017). Employment of Expatriates and its Alternatives in the RMG sector of Bangladesh. Report of Centre of Excellence for Bangladesh Apparel Industry. Retrieved from https://cebai.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Research-Report-on-Employment-of-Expatriates-and-its-Alternatives-in-the-RMG-Sector-of-Bangladesh.pdf Islam, S. R., Hossain, M. I., Islam, M. T., and Tareq, M., 2017. “Employment of Expatriates and Alternatives in the RMG Sector of Bangladesh”. Report of CEBAI. Available At: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329279167_Insights_into_the_Skill_Development_Issues_of_Management_Jobs_A_Study_on_RMG_and_Textile_Sectors_of_Bangladesh Leon, T., 2018. “Herzberg and Taylor’s Theories of Motivation”. October 15, 2018. Available At: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/herzberg-taylors-theories-motivation-704.html Netherlands Bangladesh Business Forum, 2007. “Economic Outlook”. Available at: http://www.nbbp.org/EconomicOutlook New Age, 2018. “Foreign Nationals Working Illegally Go Unchecked by Moinul Haque”. Published on May 10, 2018. Available at: http://www.newagebd.net/article/36422/foreign-nationals-working-illegally-go-unchecked Nikkei Asian Review, 2018. “Bangladesh Fights for Future of its Garment Industry by Mitsuru OBE”. Business Trend. Published on November 4, 2018. Available At: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Bangladesh-fights-for-future-of-its-garment-industry SDG, 2017. “Bangladesh’s Broad Journey: From the MDGs to the SDGs by Karolina Mzyk”. October 20, 2017. Available At: https://www.sdgphilanthropy.org/from-the-mdgs-to-the-sdgs-in-bangladesh Textile Today, 2018. “By the End of The Current Fiscal Year in June 2018, Bangladesh will have three Financial Years Remaining to take its Apparel Export to USD 50 Billion by Tareq Amin”. July 1, 2018. Available At: https://www.textiletoday.com.bd/10-reasons-bangladesh-will-not-able-achieve-50-billion-apparel-export-2021/ The Daily Star, 2015. “Foreign Employees on the Rise in Bangladesh”. Business. December 31, 2015. Available at: https://www.thedailystar.net/business/foreign-employees-the-rise-bangladesh-194584 The Daily Star, 2012. “Bangladesh - - A Part of the Next 11 by A. R. Chowdhury”. Published on May 15, 2012. Available at: https://www.thedailystar.net/news-detail-234135

[bestoutdoorsystemsoc]

Top Services Offered by Landscape Lighting Contractors

Landscape Lighting Contractors

Do-it-yourself projects may be costly and time-consuming; they also carry the risk of damage from potentially vital construction equipment and the possibility of legal issues. In contrast, hiring professional landscape lighting contractors can leave the work to their well-trained personnel. After selecting a business-like Outdoor system, you won’t have to go near the project site again for any updates or choices throughout the installation. Your home will appear completely different when the renovation is done. Feel free to experiment with different color schemes and aesthetics until you find one you like. Choosing these contractors will be a good decision for you. You don’t have to worry about the most challenging components of this field of work since they handle them properly and effectively. It’ll be a game-changer! You won’t regret this decision in any way! Lighting Design Your landscape lighting contractors understand that lighting design is just as essential as lighting installation for outdoor lighting. Your landscaping will be appropriately illuminated if you have a well-thought-out landscape lighting strategy. Whether it’s for a home or a business, Outdoor Systems is proud to provide custom luminaire solutions. We can install maintenance-free LED landscape lighting systems thanks to our breakthrough integrated light string technology. You can count on the expertise of our employees and contractors to change your outside area into a comfortable setting that is ideal for hosting family and friends or just relaxing alone according to nces.ed.gov. Outdoor lighting systems provide the appropriate product for you to brighten your patio, garden, gazebo, pool area, or pathway leading to your front door! Plus, you won’t have to worry about anything but paying the rent each month. To save you time and effort, we’ve taken care of everything. Landscape Lighting Installation The number of customers who want permanent outside lighting is continuing to increase. As a direct consequence of this, landscape lighting contractors put in a lot of effort to ensure that they are one step ahead of what homeowners want for their properties. Outdoor Systems has been a company increasing quickly during this period. The firm already has thousands of clients throughout more than 20 states, and it is well-known for its extensive expertise working in the sector of landscape lighting. Installation of landscape lighting and individualized design are two of the services that are provided by it. Our Landscape Lighting Services will guarantee that you develop the ideal lighting configuration for your property, taking into account the effects of various types of lights and the preferences of your customers. This will allow you to serve your customers better. Landscape Lighting Contractors Offers Lighting System Repair In addition to installing new lighting, Outdoor Systems can also repair your existing lighting system. Yes, you read that correctly! If you don’t maintain your landscape lighting equipment properly, you could make a costly mistake. The vast majority of your problems can be solved and repaired by Outdoor Systems because they have the expertise and equipment necessary. There is no need to spend thousands of dollars on a new system when you may only need a few minor repairs. There may be problems with your current landscape lighting system that we can fix or warn you about, such as a faulty transformer. We’ll install new junction boxes and switches if they need to e upgraded so that you can control them from inside your home. Forget about squandering your money on electricity! There is nothing worse than a light that stays on all night for far longer than it needs to be. We can save you money and reduce your energy consumption by installing new bulbs in your existing lighting fixtures with LED retrofitting. Free Design Consultation When planning the layout of a landscape lighting system, there are many different things to consider. Before having a professional come out for a consultation, the homeowner should decide on some parts of a design, like the type of landscape lighting. Suppose you do not have sufficient knowledge about the products available for outdoor lighting. In that case, there are specific questions that you can ask the professional who installs your outdoor system to guarantee that you will receive the desired level of illumination at a cost that is as low as possible. At Outdoor Systems, we think that providing free design consultation is the best way to ensure that you have access to all of the information necessary to make the best choices for your house. Installing landscape lighting is a fantastic way to improve the aesthetics of your outside area while simultaneously increasing both safety and comfort. We are always prepared to assist you in making your property seem more like a home by providing landscape lighting solutions tailored to meet your specific requirements. Call Outdoor Systems at the number (949) 625-0310 right now to get a free quote and find out more information about our services.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Oh for fuck's sake, not this fucking bullshit again (cryptography edition)

America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their illegally harvested surveillance data.

In a recently released Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption, the Five Eyes powers have demanded, again, that strong cryptography be abolished and replaced with defective cryptography so that they can spy on bad guys.

They defend this by saying "Privacy is not absolute."

But of course, working crypto isn't just how we stay private from governments (though god knows all five of the Five Eyes have, in very recent times, proven themselves to be catastrophically unsuited to collect, analyze and act on all of our private and most intimate conversations). It's how we make sure that no one can break into the data from our voting machines, or push lethal fake firmware updates to our pacemakers, or steal all the money from all of the banks, or steal all of the kompromat on all 22,000,000 US military and government employees and contractors who've sought security clearance.

Also, this is bullshit.

Because it won't work.

Here's the text of my go-to post about why this is so fucking stupid. I just can't be bothered anymore. Jesus fucking christ. Seriously? Are we still fucking talking about this? Seriously? Come on, SERIOUSLY?

It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want them to be is impossible.

What these leaders thinks they're saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of their jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Australian governments have already shown that they believes they can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5 Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other states are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what the Five Eyes are proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

The Five Eyes officials will say that they doesn't want to do any of this. They'll say that they can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though “aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online; and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words: “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in “golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html

[hudsonmckenzie]

Understand the trends that are influencing the legal profession and law firms in London

Brexit could or will put influence on the legal mentions leading numbers of regions from environment and immigration to intellectual property and finance. Law firms in London are found to be in huge demand to describe to clients in all these areas what’s going on; indeed some have said wryly that the only people who will benefit from Brexit are lawyers and consultants.

At the moment there is one overriding theme to the guidance lawyers are preaching – “the real challenge Brexit presents is simply uncertainty.” The training partner of a national firm included: “Brexit is fuelling opportunities for lawyers in the short term because businesses are seeking advice on what it will look like.” This demand for advice will soar as Brexit negotiations continue and the shape of Britain’s future relationship with the EU forms.

A key domain of the economy – and legal practice – influenced by Brexit is financial services. The topmost issue is whether UK-based firms will retain their passport; rights to trade in the EU post-Brexit. At the time of writing in summer 2017, the reply to this question is no precise than a year ago, but a pattern has already started for banks moving jobs abroad to cities like Dublin and Paris.

So has the Brexit vote been bad news for the economy as foretold? The signs are varied. One managing partner told us of “a primary decrease in work after the referendum results when businesses and  investors rested on their hands for a long time and thought I have to process this and work out what it means.” The training partner of a City firm was more upbeat: “After the result, lots of people had prophesied doom and gloom, but the markets and our clients adjusted very quickly to the reality that we are going to leave the EU and want to focus on making sure there are no major hitches in deal activity.” The economic indicators are assorted too: GDP was up 0.2% in the first quarter of 2017 and 0.3% in the second, but growth is slower than envisaged, slower than in 2016, and slower than in the rest of the EU. The construction and manufacturing sectors are predominantly jittery while services and tech are doing better.

Some law firms in London have hopefulness emerging from a rising presence overseas which they feel will help coast up any blunders in the UK – that’s awesome for the firms, but not much ease to trainees and other employees in Britain if jobs are moved abroad. National firm Pin sent Masons have already setup shop in Dublin explicitly because of Brexit, and notoriously conservative US firm Sullivan & Cromwell has opened an office in Brussels to complement its London presence.

Since the recession law firms in London have learned to do more with less. With tighter budgets, clients are demanding better value for money. They are no longer willing to pay for a junior lawyer to sit in a room photocopying if a low-cost alternative can do the same for peanuts. New technology and outsourcing are also hitting demand for trainees, with roles outsourced abroad or to low-cost parts of the UK and AI being used to do ordinary tasks. Expect to hear more about the role of AI in the profession: the prognosis is that the lawyer’s role will be less about drafting and more about their judgment, experience and business advice.

[froggrecruitsa]

Exactly How To Select An Employment Company - For Companies

An employment company functions as an intermediary that fosters a really vital relationship in between you and the prospect (or the job hunter). So selecting the best recruitment company is an extremely crucial concern for you as a customer. Given that you'll be paying them a lot of cash for their services you would not intend to fail. Recruitment companies are not just the same. They differ in the kinds of work they offer, the sector they have experience in, their place and the sort of solutions they use.

 An agency which deserves your money is a firm that will make the recruiting procedure much easier as well as quicker, understand your demands as well as give you access to relevant candidates.

 Just how do you ensure that you'll choose the appropriate employment firm? Right here are some pointers:

 Make a checklist and also collect information regarding agencies available in the job market. You can locate these lists on task boards and searching through LinkedIn.

 Inspect the recruitment company personally by seeing them or talking with the proprietor on the phone.

 Learn which employment agencies are used by your competitors given that these firms will most likely have suitable prospects. You can also request for referrals Staffing Solutions Century City.

 Make sure to try to find local employment companies because individuals who are trying to find work in your location are more than likely signed up with these companies.

 Don't think twice to analyze the employment consultants that carry out the evaluation or selection of the candidates. Make sure they are qualified and have the needed knowledge in your sector and experience in targeting people with the abilities you're trying to find. When you talk with them you have to be clear regarding your requirements and needs. Ensure that they recognize your company, your company's culture and what you're trying to find in a prospect.

 Ask the firm to describe what is associated with the procedure of choice of the candidates and also seek a long, complete procedure. Learn which recruiting software or ATS they are using. Also look for companies that carry out background checks, that provide comprehensive information and also firms that execute meetings with the candidates prior to they send you CVs.

 Find out the ordinary variety of CVs you will certainly get yet beware of companies that guarantee a great deal of CVs quickly. It is important that you seek high quality not amount. Likewise beware of firms that guarantee personnel at an extremely affordable price considering that they might not be using top notch candidates.

 The leading recruitment agencies would certainly provide substitute warranties in the agreement in case the prospect doesn't execute well. You need to likewise be clear on how to take care of duplicate prospects Staffing Solutions Claremont.

 Know that a respectable employment agency would certainly have a permit and be a member of an employment sector body and also comply with the conventional methods and also codes.

 Just How An Employment Firm Works

 Employment companies are a common method for business to outsource the procedure of locating short-term team, or the filtering system of applicants for full-time positions down to a workable few prospects. From the outdoors, whether you need a personnel or require a task, it can feel like you talk with just a bachelor in the company and also they handle the whole process of matching vacancy with employee. In reality, recruitment is synergy, both within the firm, and with the clients with uninhabited positions as well as the prospects seeking job. Below we consider how a basic recruitment company functions, as well as exactly how an openings is filled by the recruiters.

 Standard practices within recruitment firms

 Generally, employment companies larger than a couple of people will split their staff in to two functions. The 'Consultants' will certainly speak to the company's clients and gather requirements. The 'Resourcers' will find the best prospects for the vacancies the Consultant as well as customer have specified.

 This division of duties enables each member of team to focus on the various jobs a firm need to be efficient. The Specialist can accumulate a partnership with the customer and also grow to understand their organization, the problems they have, as well as the workplace they need specialists and also full time team to fit within.

 A Resourcer needs to be efficient connecting with individuals trying to find a job, evaluating which groups they would work well with, how reliable they are, what skills they have, as well as exactly how someone's abilities can transform gradually. As they proceed with their working life, a candidate's experience and abilities will transform, and also their wants and needs may alter too. A younger person may be relatively inexperienced, however want to commute long distances to a function that will certainly approve them, or stay in cheap accommodate near a the workplace for an agreement. On the other hand, the very same person a couple of years later on may have much more experience, however also a family as well as will not want to spend time far from residence. However, their know-how may suggest a client will certainly approve them working from home if the appropriate balance between that and a presence in the workplace is worked out.

 Within many agencies profession development includes beginning as a Resourcer and also carrying on to coming to be a Consultant after some experience and also training, yet this is not always the instance, some people remain as extremely successful, searched for Resourcers for their entire career Staffing Solutions Epping.

 How an openings is dealt with by an employment agency

 When the customer of the company has a vacancy, regardless if full time or short term, they will discuss their requirements with an Expert from the company. The Expert as well as Resourcer then review this within the agency and also will certainly inspect their inner database of signed up prospects to see if it includes any individual suitable for the function.

 If suitable prospects are registered with the agency and also have actually just recently been in touch either because they spoke to the agency or the other way around, the Resourcer will certainly either call or e-mail them to examine their availability and rate of interest in the placement. If the prospect is readily available and also interested, the Resourcer as well as Professional will start the process to verify their suitability for the position. Depending upon the client's requirements, this might include a phone interview or technical test before the details of the prospect are forwarded to the customer.

 Candidates who have actually communicated lately are gotten in touch with first due to the fact that the firm recognizes their availability, it's a short cut to contact them rather than calling everyone that has the appropriate skills as several that have not communicated lately will enjoy in their full time jobs, or component means via an agreement and also not trying to find brand-new work. Before Curricula vitae were all took care of digitally, it made use of to be a practice of employers to choose a person out of the recently gotten here pile of CVs remaining on their desk. Now e-mail as well as electronic records prevail, this is not so usual, however prioritising people who have lately communicated makes sense for quickly filling a placement as the recruiter can be certain the candidate is currently looking.

 If few or none of the candidates that have lately been in touch in the agency's database are suitable, two activities are taken: prospects with the right skills that have not been in touch just recently are called, and also an advert for the position is created, normally on the agency's internet site and various other huge job internet sites such as Jobserve.com. The huge task websites bill for adverts being put on them, so smaller recruitment firms will prevent advertising and marketing far and wide if they have actually suitable prospects signed up with them and also will spend longer investigating candidates they find out about in the past marketing for brand-new ones.

 Applications from candidates new to the agency will be signed up in to their data source of Curricula vitae or disregarded, depending upon their suitability. Candidates wrong for the setting yet that fit various other standards the company like will also be registered, yet not place forwards for the placement being marketed.

 As soon as the company has some candidates they are positive are right for the placement, they will certainly pass a copy of their information on to the customer, typically with the contact information for the candidate got rid of, although that depends upon the partnership between the agency as well as the customer. The client after that makes a decision, sometimes in cooperation with the Consultant, who to meeting, or that to hire - for short-term agreement job, an interview is not constantly a need.

 The agency will send an agreement to the successful candidate, which sets up the relationship between the prospect and also the firm. This outlines settlement terms, what legal civil liberties the prospect and also firm have in relationship to the work, and also various other problems associated with employment regulation. If the prospect is being positioned in a full-time work at the customer company, they will certainly likewise have a contract to sign with the client. When the prospect fills the job at the client, the agency obtains their fee, either as a portion of the per hour price of the prospect when it comes to agreement work, or as a flat charge which can be based on a portion of the yearly pay the placement for a full-time participant of personnel.

 Throughout the contract phase, the Consultant will maintain the customer evaluated of progression, and also the agency might maintain other prospects prepared to step in need to get settlements fail for any factor.

 As soon as the prospect is registered, they will be noted as in job within the company's database, and if the job is a limited term contract their anticipated surface date will be registered, as the company will be wanting to put them in another agreement when they become available. If another prospect that has great skills has come to light throughout this procedure, the firm might attempt to put them with other existing clients, or use them as a means to gain a brand-new customer if they see a business advertising an appropriate openings. If a prospect has good skills, a firm would certainly a lot instead put them in a position rather than shed touch with them, even if they lost out on the initial openings that was promoted.

 Six Points To Seek Making Use Of An Online Employment Firm

 Employment involves the act of employing, enlisting or contracting employees and also in addition contains interviewing, promising or perhaps uploading a task promotion for that issue. Employers normally involved the services of companies to do all the advertising, screening as well as interviewing of qualified applicants. Given that the very early 90s, recruitment has advanced to created online recruitment agency as a much better choice than the on-site recruitment firm. With internet employment, the applicant can merely browse for task opening within the recruitment website's board uploaded by employers as well as post his educational program vitae which will certainly allow participant organizations to search.

 Nevertheless, with the danger of identification scams as well as human trafficking which is rampant and attacking the security of any type of country, a jobseeker has the equivalent obligation to protect himself against phony recruitment and illegal companies. Here are 6 points a jobseeker requires to think about in looking for the appropriate on-line recruitment firm:

 Credibility. Preliminary variable to take into consideration is the name and reputation of the potential employment company. Does it have any type of pending illegal employment document? Was it correctly listed and accredited to transact business of employment? You are able to likewise look the internet for blog sites pertaining to feedbacks about the said company.

 Account. If your prospective firm does not operate an unreliable activity, it will certainly not hesitate to put as component of their website their company account. Having the said account uploaded will enable the jobseekers to validate the credibility of the agency's procedure. If it has nothing to hide relative to its procedure and also people consisting of the team, it will certainly permit both companies as well as work candidates to have its account checked.

 Sort of company. You should furthermore consider what area and task posts are being used by a certain online recruitment firm. You can't go to 1 that enlists skilled workers whenever you are seeking for a clerical job placement. The tendency is that you just will come down on an unacceptable placement.

 Encounter. The longer the said agency is within the business, the far better. It only reveals that it has obtained reputation for many years and also maintained great line of firm participants satisfied with its task. Besides, being within the firm for difficult years will certainly guaranty that the claimed firm is well versed with technological know-how.

 Professionalism and trust as well as trust. You must likewise consider whether the recruitment company methods what they teach. Maybe seen with how its staff replies to your application along with to your query.

 Commitment. Dedicated individuals anticipate finest outcomes. If the agency offers you this kind of outlook, it necessarily complies with that you simply are in excellent hands.

 Valuing an Employment Company Service - 10 Challenging Company Issues

 Tiny and large companies alike look on their staff members as excellent driving forces for an organization success over long years of organization exposure. Handling a recruitment firm and also recruitment agency policies can be a nice move for your service as well as growth.

 Just how can you make certain you have top quality workers? Is your firm big enough to get the very best for the personnel division and after that allow them work with the best people for the different devices and positions in your company? Or you might be a diligent employer that sees to it that you have the quality labor force that the employing procedure primarily relies on you? Or possibly you are an owner/manager who wants to focus much more on running and broadening company limits that you depend on recruitment companies to obtain the whole system in a faster and extra efficient feature?

 Right here are the 10 hard employer worries you need to consider in handling employment company services for organization advancement functions:

 - Solution Expense - Reaching expenses is the top inquiry individuals ask in managing every company issue. Knowing every recruitment agency's service charges can be a hard crucial element. An employment agency's modes of charging every included solution when as well as exactly how to get the most effective employment agency for your business. The well-known fad here is the "no placement/fee policy" where you only have to pay the employment agency when they position a staff member to your business.

 - Charging Fees - Ask every employment firm for their price of charges to offer you some choices before limiting your search. Billing a percentage of the worker's wage during his very first year is the common agency's charging procedure. To offer you a glance of it, charges are typically charged in between the rates of 105 to 30%. You may think this is rather costly yet just think about getting more efficiency and also profitable results from a particular worker from a respectable employment company.

 - Refund Framework - A recruitment company's good-looking means to bring in clients is to provide them a rebate framework. This is made use of a protection step in instances where a staff member leaves a firm earlier than anticipated. As an instance, an employer may be offered an 80% refund if the employed employee leaves the firm in 2-3 weeks.

 - Curriculum Vitae Plan - Companies need to ask about really agency's policy on CV submissions so they will know what to anticipate and how to shortlist staff members based on top quality.

 - Client Endorsements - if you are brand-new in seeking for recruitment firm services, make certain to look for client testimonials. Endorsements are your assurance that the company is a well-known, trusted highly useful in offering firms, especially companies connected to your market.

 - Firm Volume - Thinking About some firms for your personnel needs depend on how huge your firm is and how many companies you require to employ in the process. As a smart action, begin with around 3-5 agencies as well as see if they meet your hiring requirements truly well. You can add even more or replace some based on your demands as well as preferences.

 - Expert Company - These are some specific companies in every sector to load every employer's demands. These companies are more expensive than regular agencies. Nevertheless, these are professional providers and also supply you much more experienced recommendations in obtaining the best workers for your company.

 - Trade Bodies - Seek agency or associations or main subscriptions to get the most worth for your money as well as for more protection purposes.

 - Inspect Referrals - Confirm with the agency about each prospect referrals or if they could cross-check referrals for you.

 - Facilities - Recruitment tools/facilities such as the interview area, income study information and psychometric screening are extremely crucial collaboration devices for a company in getting a great employment agency solution.

 Getting assistance from recruitment company services is an employer's clever means to work with outstanding quality staff members that ideal suit every company's needs and requirements. This way even conserves you even more of your time and money rather than do the employing procedure on your own.

 How to Select the most effective Online Recruitment Firm?

 Discovering a great candidate for your business is one of the most uphill struggle. You have to read numerous Curricula vitae daily, inspect their credentials, check their experience and after that ultimately interview them. If you want to hire numerous people for your company after that the CVs technique is definitely not the best for you. You need to locate an on-line recruitment UK business which will certainly help you in discovering candidates. The on-line employment technique is not just easy yet it is additionally a very economical recruitment approach. Before choosing an online recruitment UK company, ensure the company includes the following features:

 Must provide flat cost employment

 The majority of the recruitment agencies charge you on the Curriculum Vitae basis. Like if you want 100 Curricula vitae after that you need to pay the 100 x per CV fees. This is certainly not affordable employment. Just go with the agency which is providing level cost recruitment which implies your advertisement will certainly be available on all major work boards at a set price of complimentary hundred bucks. Flat cost employment agencies are really few in UK yet still you can find them.

 Have to include large data source of CVs and need to not charge you a great deal

 If the on-line employment company is providing you inexpensive employment then it does not indicate it should contain only few Curricula vitae of the task seekers. The recruitment firm you are going to sign up with should have the database of thousands of job seekers so you can conveniently choose the ones which you believe are the most effective. There are lots of online recruitment agencies offering economical recruitment.

 Need to not interfere between you as well as the Work Applicant

 The low cost recruitment firm which you are going to utilize have to not interfere between you and the job hunter. The firm's job is done when you have actually paid them to get the database of CVs. Usually you will certainly be straight contacted by the job seekers as they will be able to see your company's ad on their account web page at work looking for website. It is better to give your company number in the ad instead of the e-mail, like this it will be simple for the person who is finding a job to contact you.

 Should give you a few other fundamental facilities

 Besides offering you the inexpensive employment solution, the employment agency need to additionally offer you with a few other basic centers. For example you ought to have the ability to speak with the task candidate online. The meeting time in between the job hunter as well as company need to be made a decision by the on-line employment agency. Comply with those tips and surely you will certainly have the ability to find the very best online recruitment UK firm in a snap. Make use of the different internet search engine and forums to read the user examines concerning various recruitment companies.

[go-redgirl]

Pinkerton: ‘Essential Workers’ Point the Way to a Republican Workers Party

On April 12, tornadoes tore across eight Southern states, killing 33. Chattanooga, Tennessee, was especially hard hit. An EF-3 twister killed nine, injuring dozens, and destroying or damaging 150 buildings.

Yet within minutes, there was hope. First responders were soon on the scene, and at 6 a.m. the following day, 500 workers began conducting a “grid search”; as Hamilton County Emergency Management Communications Director Amy Maxwell explained to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, “We’re still in the rescue mode and that’s pretty much going through the area which was affected, going door to door to make sure that we got everyone accounted for.”

At the same time, emergency rooms at local hospitals were receiving new patients, such as four-year-old Grayson Meadows, who suffered a grave brain injury when the storm ripped through his home.

Given the size of the response, one might almost forget that at the same time, the nation is in the grip of the coronavirus epidemic—although, of course, nobody is forgetting. As of April 15, Hamilton County has had 110 Covid-19 infections, and 11 deaths; nationwide, more than 26,000 have died.

So we can see: Many public servants are putting their lives on the line on a routine basis. Some are on duty when the storm breaks, others work their way through the wreckage—risking hazards as they search for victims—and some treat patients afterward. In the meantime, of course, all know that a highly contagious virus lurks.

It’s hard to think of any job categories more essential than these; this isn’t just essential work, it’s the Lord’s work.  

We might note that the median salary for an emergency medical technician (EMT) in Chattanooga is $33,000; for a police officer, the median is a bit more than $50,000, and for a registered nurse, the average salary is a little over $60,000.  

The pay scales for these workers seem low, especially in relation to the personal risk to them and the social value for the rest of us. Sometimes these incomes are beefed up by overtime, and yet even so, they seem meager next to many white-collar jobs that now seem, well, un-essential.

The New Meaning of Work

As we think about the first responders and frontline health workers in Chattanooga, and across the nation, we might wonder whether perhaps the pay-system itself is out of whack. Why do those who work so hard, at such risk, and do so much good get paid so little, especially relative to those who contribute little or nothing to society?  

Moreover, we might also give some thought to all the other workers who are keeping our society going these days. We might ask ourselves: Why is the power still on? Why do the police still patrol the streets? Why do firefighters still come when called? Why do the traffic lights still work? Why do our phones still work? And the Internet?  

And let’s not stop there: Let’s also ask: Why are many stores still open? Who’s stocking the shelves? Who’s working the cash registers? Who’s making deliveries? And behind those workers, who’s driving the trucks, operating the trains, and flying the airplanes? We could go on and on, listing all the many millions of workers, in the public and private sectors, who are proving themselves essential, helping us to get through this virus crisis.

A Better Deal for Workers

For decades, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has been charting wages and wealth in this country. For example, here are nine charts EPI released about American wages and income inequality back in 2015, well before Donald Trump’s election; as we can see, they make two key points about conditions under Trump’s predecessors:

First, productivity has soared much faster than median wages, which is to say, American workers are no longer gaining the benefit of their own hard work as a factor in rising productivity and wealth; the benefits are being captured by others. And that leads us to …

Second, the income of the top one percent has risen nine times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent. And much of the reason, of course, is that the one percent typically gets its income from capital and investments, and so one percenters make their money from the stock market. And big corporations have found it easy, and profitable, to outsource production overseas, especially after China opened up in the ’90s.  

We might add that EPI admits there’s been some improvement in the years since 2015, which is to say, Trump’s policies have made a positive difference. And yet still, it’s obvious that the gap between labor and capital has widened vastly.  

So let’s think about what the nation owes working Americans. And then let’s think about narrowing the gap.

In the short term, the key issue is protecting worker health, as well as, of course, the health of all Americans. And that entails everything from face masks now to a cure or vaccine tomorrow. In other words, we need the full mobilization of the United States for the sake of working people, for the economy they have built—and for everyone else.  

In the longer term, we should be thinking about raising wages for those at the low end of the scale, and also about guaranteeing them the basics of dignity and safety on the job. This author, as well as others here at Breitbart News, having taken note of hazardous working conditions at Amazon facilities, as well as of rising protests among the e-commerce giant’s employees.  

Then, on April 14, came the news that Amazon had fired three more workers for their activism. On April 21 came more protests; as one worker in Michigan told New Yorkmagazine, “We are essential workers, but we’re not receiving essential protection.” Admittedly, the protests reportedly amounted to only 300 workers out of some 250,000 at Amazon nationwide, and yet it’s a safe bet that there will be many more protests. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before labor inspectors—and tort lawyers—take a good long look at Amazon’s facilities. So while Amazon can claim success in the short run, the long run prospects for the company’s defiant stance are cloudier.

Yes, it’s an easy prediction that such corporate high-handedness will be met, soon, with a stern legal and political response. And that’s as it should be. After all, as Abraham Lincoln declared in 1859, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital … capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed … labor is the superior—greatly the superior—of capital.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is not the first American tycoon to think that he can run roughshod over his workers. And yet most likely, soon enough, he will be reminded of what happened to those earlier tycoons; they were brought to heel by a popular upswell of congressional oversight, regulation, unionization, and anti-trust action. In our republic, the people rule.  

Yet there’s no need to worry about Bezos; during the current crisis, his fortune has actually increased by $24 billion, so he’ll still be fabulously rich, even if he has to spend more to keep his workplaces safe and pay his workers higher wages.  

Indeed, Amazon, as well as the nation, will actually do better if workers feel that they are being cut in on the action. Social stability, after all, is good for business.

A Nation Fit for Heroes

When this war—this World War Virus—is over, we, as a nation, will have to stake stock. We will mourn our losses, we will regret our economic calamity, and we will thank our essential workers.

And then we will have to figure out how to secure that better deal for all American workers.

It’s no longer possible to kid ourselves. We can no longer live with the illusion that the forces of globalism—who outsourced all those jobs to China and who devalued work here at home—have our best interests at heart. We won’t get fooled again.

Instead, for inspiration, we should look to labor—the labor that the great Lincoln told us was always superior to capital. Let’s look, for instance, to the frontline workers in Chattanooga, to all essential workers, and to working people across the country.  

If we see the world through their eyes and respect their best values, we’ll be reminded that hard work brings something that money can’t buy—honor. And a politics that celebrates earned honor is an effective politics—as in, winning elections.

So here’s the opportunity for conservatives, for populists, and nationalists, and all the rest of the right and center-right: The Republican Party should always abide by its core principles, and yet at the same time, it should return to its Lincolnian roots, becoming the avowed party of first responders, blue-collars, and other frontline workers—and joined by, of course, soldiers, homemakers, and believers.  

And yes, of course, entrepreneurs, small businesses, venture capitalists, and even fatcats would be fully welcome into this party; they should understand that if ordinary Americans are doing well, then they, too, will do well. After all, what a business needs most is a customer.  

If we can we organize our economy around the well-being of the middle class—just as we once did—then we can all have a healthy, strong, and secure country.  

By contrast, if we are weak as a nation, and either viruses or China rule the world, then nobody—and nobody’s wealth—will be safe.  

The nation is ready to reward the party whose platform reflects the hard lessons we have learned these past few decades—and the even harder lessons we have learned in the past few months.

Can this happen? Can the Grand Old Party become the Grand Worker Party? We’ll have to see.  

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Economy Health Politics blue collar workers coronavirus essential workersJeff Bezos Populism Republican Party working class

[superhenryleo-blog]

How to successfully franchise in Australia

Franchise brands inbound to Australia will find a smaller but well-established franchise market. Peter Buckingham, MD of Spectrum Analysis Australia, tells you what to expect Franchising in Australia has become the distribution method of choice for some 1,314 systems and 80,000+ franchised businesses. According to the IBISWorld Franchising in Australia report

published in November 2018, the industry:

• Employs around 594,500 people • Represents $27.4 billion in annual wages • Is worth an estimated $181.8 billion in revenue

History

Franchising’s rapid growth was kick-started when McDonald’s, KFC, Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) and some other large QSR’s brought over their systems from America in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Personally, I became involved in franchising when the government legislated in the Petroleum Retail Marketing Franchise Act of 1980, that every service station owned, leased or operated by the major oil companies was a franchise ̶  effective immediately, with the incumbent given nine years’ worth of franchise tenancy. This created around 8,000 new franchises overnight!

The Senate Inquiry into franchising

The franchising sector in Australia has run into some headwinds over the last year, with the Government instigating a Senate Inquiry into the operation and effectiveness of the Franchising Code of Conduct. The report released on the 14th March 2019 has given 71 recommendations which the Government will have to decide upon and implement accordingly.

The report released in March 2019 heavily criticises the actions of one specific company (RFG), and suggests that many franchisors need to give stronger support to their franchisees, and so restore confidence in the industry. The Senate Inquiry recommends that a Franchising Taskforce be established to consider the recommendations and implementation strategies, and most commentators do not envisage changes impacting until mid-2020 at the earliest. Mary Aldred, CEO of the Franchise Council of Australia, said the FCA welcomed the report and looks forward to engaging with the task force.

An international franchise presence in Australia

US franchises have grown strongly in Australia over many years. Australia has some great advantages for US franchisors, as there are no language issues (we speak “Australian”), and there is a strong legal system in operation to protect the investment. However, the expectation of some US companies can be over-zealous, and brands considering expansion into Australia should be aware the total Australian population (25 million people) is just slightly below the population of Texas, and about two thirds that of California.

In the opposite direction, many Australian franchise systems are having great success heading overseas, probably currently led by F45 Training, an Australian-grown franchise now operating in over 40 countries across the world. Others, such as like 2017 Australian Franchisor of the Year Poolwerx, Bakers Delight and the Foodco Group are all expanding in the USA and elsewhere.

Processes to enter into Australia

There are no prohibitions to international ownership in Australia, unlike countries in Asia and the sub-continent who demand local ownership and controls. There are locally-based experienced franchise consultants and very well-established legal firms to assist inbound franchisors in all issues regarding the legal process and managing expectations.

The normal process recommends having involvement in operating some level of company operations in order to give credibility to a new System, and we have seen many franchise systems fail because they believe an investor will put up all the funds, with the franchisor unprepared to commit.

One aspect that often creates issues for US franchisors is our labour laws and the minimum wage that employees must be paid. We can only say labour is probably more expensive than in the USA, especially in the food and hospitality industry because of Australia’s Award wages system. This often results in some differences in the forecast P&L modelling and revenues and margins that need to be met.

One US pizza company has been coming over for more than 15 years, always looking for a rich master franchisee to open their business in Australia. Our advice to them over the period has always been, if you are so confident in your processes and system, then open one or two stores yourselves to demonstrate that the system will be a success. So far that has not occurred.

Many US systems with reasonable backing by the franchisor have had great success over the years in Australia, whether that has been QSRs like McDonald’s, KFC, Subway and Dominos, convenience stores like 7-Eleven or fitness franchises like Anytime Fitness, Orange Theory and Extend Barre.

New systems are also coming into Australia, and these are not always in the food and fitness business. OsteoStrong and Carl’s Jr are examples of well-financed expansions into the country. Some systems have come and gone – and are returning again! Taco Bell has entered Australia twice previously and is setting up again, as has Cinnabon, which came to Australia in 2002. We can only wish them success this time around and hope they have learned from their previous experiences.

Franchise Council of Australia

Australia has a strong body pushing franchising forwards in the form of the Franchise Council of Australia (FCA). The FCA has Chapters in all mainland states, and runs a three-day National Franchise Convention every year, which is seen as the peak industry event, culminating in the Gala Awards Dinner and the announcements of the awards including Franchisor of the Year – won in 2018 by Hire a Hubby, Australia’s largest handyman system.

Education is one of the cornerstones of the FCA, and they and Griffith University have worked with the ACCC to ensure there is free online education available for anyone considering taking on a franchise. Many experts in the industry have contributed to create a strong level of education.

To further assist in education of the industry, the FCA has also adopted the Certified Franchise Executive (CFE) system from the US. Around 100 people have been awarded their CFE, and this number is growing rapidly.

Finding Franchisees in Australia

The biggest complaint from franchisors has been the quality and financial capacity of prospective franchisees. Whilst many are willing, the financial requirements to join a good system are quite high, and out of practical reach.

Australia has a strong banking system, and banks are reluctant to loan monies to prospective franchisees against the goodwill of the business.FRANdata has recently expanded in Australia to assist in this process, by encouraging the banks to evaluate systems and be prepared to loan monies to well-run franchise systems and their potential franchisees.

Following a Royal Commission into the Banking and Finance Industry being released in February 2019, banks have been criticised for undertaking levels of irresponsible lending, which has effectively tightened up money-lending for potential franchisees. Many systems are finding good potential franchisees are unable to raise the necessary funds to join their systems at present.

The shortage of franchisees has led many companies to seek hard-working people who wish to come to Australia to apply. This has led to a considerable amount of business immigration.

Regulated markets

Franchising has become a mature distribution method for many major companies. The Federal Government has stepped in to place some forms of national regulation over it, by legislating a Code of Conduct, which is administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The Code of Conduct aims to:

* Be fair to both parties * Ensure a proper Disclosure Statement is provided to would-be Franchisees * Ensure the Franchise Agreement is reasonable to both parties * Minimise legal actions by bringing an arbitration process in before legal actions are taken

Any company wishing to franchise in Australia must comply with the Code of Conduct or risk prosecution by the ACCC.

There has been some push from various state governments over the last 10 years to introduce their own separate regulations, however, this has not come to pass, meaning that we have one set of regulations Australia-wide. The huge advantage of this is to minimise red tape. This sets Australia apart from countries such as the USA where states may have their own franchise regulations, Complying with registration and fees from one state to another can be very complex.

Summary

Franchising is moving slowly forward in Australia where we have a relatively mature market, and a great variety of systems working under the franchise format. Australia is open to business for international franchise systems to enter the market with minimal foreign ownership constraints. The main point of difference to many other countries is our relatively mature legislation which is aimed at ensuring the franchisor acts responsibly and encourages franchisees to be properly funded and act in a responsible and legal manner.

If you are looking to enter Australia, we recommend you liaise with the Franchise Council of Australia, and look at using a responsible consultant to assist you, and a legal firm which specialises in Australia’s Franchise Law. We look forward to welcoming you and your business into Australia. Come on over, and we’ll throw another shrimp on the barb!

[dannylenihan]

Why things cost what they cost...

In the last couple of weeks my little brand, 3 Legged Thing, launched a brand new Universal L Bracket - the QR11. For the most part, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Then, somebody sent me a link to a well known forum, where a conversation had started about the press release for the QR11. The comments were almost wholly negative with more than one contributor stating “You can buy this from **Insert website** for $7″ or “I got one from China for $5 and it works just fine”. 

Fantastic. What you actually did is perpetuate a cycle of intellectual property theft, and put your own equipment at risk by using something that has zero accountability, or any certification, made with unknown materials, in a factory where you have no idea what the conditions are like. That’s what you did. I’ll take you through it, step by step, so you can understand.

1: Intellectual Property.

Firstly, we (manufacturers) all trip up on intellectual property from time to time. When you file a patent, it takes the examiners upwards of a year to do all of the searches required to see if any prior art exists. As a small company, we simply don’t have the resources or the time to do this kind of search, and neither do most larger corporations, but we try our level best to ensure that we are only filing utility patents for true innovation. From time to time every company inadvertently steps on another’s toes, which is why we have a licensing system.

Chinese manufacturers have little or no regard for intellectual property. They are well known for copying other designs. They just buy the product, scan it, pull it into a CAD system, and then load it up to their machining. Voila - product copied. Zero overhead, unless you count the cost of the product in the first place, plus the engineers time, reverse-engineering, and maybe two or three attempts for a production sample before it comes out correctly - or at least, how they perceive “correct”. The process probably takes a couple of weeks, if that.

So, basically it’s a counterfeit, that took the hard work of a small company like mine, and without any consideration for the legalities (yes, it’s illegal) they copied it, stuck it in a box and sold it. But sure, you can have an L Bracket for six dollars.

2: Design & Deliver - this is just to demonstrate the work it takes to bring a single product, like our new L Bracket, to market.

a: Design meeting - new product introduction. What are the objectives? What are we trying to achieve?

b: Meetings with camera stores. Measure every camera. This takes a couple of weeks

c: We make a box sketch for the underside, and left side aspects, taking in to account every camera we've measured.

d: With all of the data in place I create a simplistic design which offers the most universal coverage for all cameras. Is it perfect? No. But that’s not the point - the point is a one-size-fits-all bracket, which may have some limitations, but serves to do the job it was designed for - to enable a photographer to switch from landscape to portrait without moving the tripod or head, retaining the composition.

e: Then I start to design the mechanical necessities - usually I start with the rubber pads. This process can take a long time. The rubber pads are crucial to the final product. My goal is to create maximum surface contact and grip, to provide a stronger, more secure connection. 

f: Innovation comes next - what other value can we add to this product? We add a number of extra functions to all of our products. This part of the process can take several weeks.

g: Once we have a final design, there are a number of stages. Filing patents or design registrations comes first - over the life cycle of a patent it will cost upwards of $100k for extending worldwide, annual renewals, legal costs, filing fees etc. 

h: Making a short run production for samples is next, and handing these out to a number of Pro-Team members to test and try and comment on.

i: Build the asset library. The costs and time implications of this should not be underestimated.

Photograph the products - pack shots

Lifestyle Images - shots in use, in different locations and environments

Product Video 

Product Information Packs for dealers

j: Packaging design and Instructions actually happens towards the end of the process. This can take a few months itself, as there are a number of things to consider - we write manuals in six languages, and our boxes and packaging have to comply to regulations in 206 countries - no easy feat.

k: Finally it’s the launch - Press releases, marketing, adding listings and writing copy for websites, blurb etc.

That whole process just took between 8 and 12 months, with thousands of man hours, and costs upwards of $100k in time, materials, legal fees, outsource costs etc.

The Bottom Line

The Chinese factory did it in two weeks, without any of the above effort. Is it any wonder they can produce something that looks similar for six dollars?

3: Factory Standards

Working conditions is an important part of our company ethos, as it is for most manufacturers in our industry. Sure, I could make things cheaper - the first factory I worked with, with one of my other brands back in 2005, was a total chop shop - I pulled out of there when I realised how bad the conditions were. That was a steep learning curve for me - since then, I inspect any factory for compliance to health and safety regulations before deciding whether or not to trial them, and I always, always stay at the factory for first production, to see that workers are treated fairly, provided with the necessary tools and safety equipment required to do their jobs properly.

"I always, always stay at the factory for first production, to see that workers are treated fairly, provided with the necessary tools and safety equipment required to do their jobs properly."

I’ve seen factories where the conditions are appalling. Where old ladies sit with woollen gloves, using their hands to knock burrs off die cast components, blood pouring up their arms. Where moulds that weigh over 600kg are carted around on rusty chains by workers with no safety helmets, wearing sandals or flip flops. Where workers using lathes or DMC’s sit with sparks flying at them, no goggles on, hands covered in splinters.

It’s inhumane. And for us, unacceptable. But sure, you can have an L Bracket for six dollars.

4: Materials

We use only the highest grade of materials. We use T6061 for aluminium with a 1.1% magnesium content. We use the highest grade of stainless steel for the safety pins and the camera screw. We’ve tested these to destruction, because we know that a 4mm shaft of stainless steel is the difference between holding your camera and losing it. Is the cheap, Chinese version free from materials that are restricted in most countries? Lead, cadmium and a few others besides? 

Here I am inspecting the aluminium billets at the factory. Our QC process starts at materials in, and is duplicated through every stage of production.

"We use only the highest grade of materials."

Then there are the actual processes to consider. I saw one comment along the lines of “got one from AliExpress, CNC’d, so every bit as good as a brand version”. That’s just not accurate. A CNC machine is just a 3D drill that does what it is mapped to do. There are all sorts of other considerations - which kind of lubricant do they use? Is it toxic? Do they have sealed waste flushing and specialist disposal? What about the tolerances? Is it precision engineered? Unlikely. Being that the aim of the game is to be as cheap as is humanly possible, I doubt that any single item sits in a block for more than five minutes, meaning it’s machined crudely and cheaply. It’s also the difference between using a $2 drill bit and a $100 drill bit. Both will make a hole, but only one will do it smoothly and accurately.

How is it finished? Is it anodized? Anodizing is a horrible chemical process that requires strict controls and safety equipment, and extensive training. Even the Chinese government have started to close many of the non-compliant factories, because of the injury and fatality rates, and the dumping of chemicals into groundwater.

"We recycle every gram of waste - from swarf to filings, everything is collected, rinsed, packaged and recycled."

So, the materials are unknown, potentially full of non-compliant chemicals, made in a factory that’s possibly poisoning the groundwater of the local community, and might be responsible for many workplace injuries, but sure, you can have an L Bracket for six dollars. 

5: Pricing

With months of development, huge legal costs for protecting designs and technology, thousands of man hours of labour, outsource costs, prototyping etc, this product has to make money. Contrary to popular belief, “profit” isn’t a dirty word. It enables everyone in the world who works in the private sector to have a job.

I have distributors in countries around the world. I need to sell the product to them, with a layer of profitability for my company. They need to sell it to camera stores, and also need to make a profit. The camera stores sell it directly to you, and they too need to make a profit, and it is this last link in the chain which is so at risk of extinction. Our industry has millions of employees around the world. We’ve already seen huge losses of jobs and stores since 2010, and we’re only just seeing small signs of recovery. A huge proportion of camera sales happen in stores - not online, and it is this facet that is most critical. The more stores that close, because they simply cannot compete with Chinese rip offs and off-the-shelf rebranded products, the less innovation will occur, and less production will happen, leading to higher prices and less jobs, until the economic viability of our industry is no longer sustainable.

The Reality

THAT is what you’re buying in to when you decide to get it cheaply. Far be it for me to judge anyone for their decisions - that’s not what this is about. This is about the disposable, throw-away comments that largely circumnavigate the actual circumstances of a product’s arrival in the market place.

Have you ever heard the expression “You get what you pay for”? Well, you do, if you buy something, anything, off the shelf in China, without any sort of verification process.

Anyway, I’m sure that any number of keyboard warriors will have something to say about this article. I’m not here to condemn anyone for their actions, far from it, I’m just trying to educate people to the realities of Chinese copies. 

There are only really a dozen or so global brands involved in camera support technology. As the smallest of these we are, perhaps, less affected by the Chinese copies, so I’m not writing this to protect my own company. This is about all of the great manufacturers, past and present, who spend millions on product development every year, only to see themselves ripped off by unscrupulous factories who don’t have the vision, the skill or the tenacity to create anything themselves. This is for the tens of thousands of employees of those companies who work hard, in daily fear of their livelihoods thanks to the incursion of illegal copies into our market place.

Are we perfect? No. But at least we’re doing it ourselves, with integrity, with compassion, with respect for human rights, with regard for regulations and compliance, with one eye on our planet and recycling, and with a degree of passion for this great industry.

That’s why it costs $50.

Thanks to Simon Pollock for the factory images.

[theculturedmarxist]

Stock buybacks are eating the world. The once illegal practice of companies purchasing their own shares is pulling money away from employee compensation, research and development, and other corporate priorities—with potentially sweeping effects on business dynamism, income and wealth inequality, working-class economic stagnation, and the country’s growth rate. Evidence for that conclusion comes from a new report by Irene Tung of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Katy Milani of the Roosevelt Institute, who looked at share buybacks in the restaurant, retail, and food industries from 2015 to 2017.

Their new paper contributes to a growing body of research that might help explain why economic growth is so sluggish, productivity so low, and increases in worker compensation so piddling, even as the stock market is surging and corporate profits are at historical highs. Companies are working overtime to make their owners richer in the short term, more so than to improve their longer-term competitiveness or to invest in their workers.

Buybacks occur when a company takes profits, cash reserves, or borrowed money to purchase its own shares on the public markets, a practice barred until the Ronald Reagan administration. (The regulatory argument against allowing the practice is that it is a way for companies to manipulate the markets; the regulatory argument for it is that companies should be able to spend money how they see fit.) In recent years, with corporate profits high, American firms have bought their own stocks with extraordinary zeal. Federal Reserve data show that buybacks are now equivalent to 4 percent of annual economic output, up from zero percent in the 1990s. Companies spent roughly $7 trillion on their own shares from 2004 to 2014, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on buybacks in the past six months alone.

The new Roosevelt Institute and NELP research examines public firms in three major but notoriously low-wage industries— food production, retail, and restaurants—weighing buybacks against worker compensation. Unsurprisingly, Tung and Milani found that companies were aggressive in purchasing their own shares. The restaurant industry spent 140 percent of its profits on buybacks from 2015 to 2017, meaning that it borrowed or dipped into its cash allowances to purchase the shares. The retail industry spent nearly 80 percent of its profits on buybacks, and food-manufacturing firms nearly 60 percent. All in all, public companies across the American economy spent roughly three-fifths of their profits on buybacks in the years studied. “The amount corporations are spending on buybacks is staggering,” Milani said. “Then, to look a little deeper and see how this could impact workers in terms of compensation, was staggering.”

How much might workers have benefited if companies had devoted their financial resources to them rather than to shareholders? Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could have provided each of their workers a raise of $18,000 a year, the report found. Starbucks could have given each of its employees $7,000 a year, and McDonald’s could have given $4,000 to each of its nearly 2 million employees.

“Workers around the country have been pushing for higher wages, but the answer is always, ‘We can’t afford it. We’d have to do layoffs or raise prices,’” Tung said. “That is just not true. The money is there. It’s just getting siphoned out of the company instead of reinvested into it.”

The report examines the period just before President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut came into effect, leading to an even greater surge of buybacks and thus an even greater surge of new wealth for the owners of capital, as wages have continued to stagnate. The tax legislation cut both the top marginal corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent—dropping the estimated effective tax rate on profitable businesses to just 9 percent, well below the effective tax rate for households—and encouraged firms to bring money back from overseas.

What did publicly traded corporations do with that money? Buy back shares and issue dividends, mostly. There was strong anecdotal evidence that that would be true even before the law passed. At a Wall Street Journal CEO confab held last fall, the former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn asked a room of executives, “If the tax-reform bill goes through, do you plan to increase your company’s capital investment? Show of hands.” Most participants sat still, prompting Cohn to ask, “Why aren’t the other hands up?” Surveys showed that corporations were planning to shunt money to shareholders, rather than putting it into research, mergers and acquisitions, equipment upgrades, training programs, or workers’ salaries.

Since then, analyses from investment banks and researchers have estimated that 40 to 60 percent of the savings from the tax cut are being plowed into buybacks. One analysis of companies on the Russell 1000 Index—which consists of big firms, much like the Standard & Poor’s 500 does—found that companies directed 10 times as much money to buybacks as to workers. As such, Milani and Tung said they expect the math on corporate spending on shareholders versus workers to become even more exaggerated in the coming years.

Not all economic and financial analysts see buybacks as problematic. “Far from being starved of resources, S&P 500 companies are at near-peak levels of investment and have huge stockpiles of cash available for even more,” argue Jesse M. Fried and Charles C. Y. Wang in the Harvard Business Review. “The proportion of income available for investment that went to shareholders of the 500 over the past 10 years was a modest 41.5 percent—less than half the amount claimed by critics.” Plus, if buybacks merely transferred money from businesses to investors who then reallocated that money to other, more dynamic businesses, the overall effect on the economy might be muted.

But more and more analysts disagree. Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock, a huge money-management firm, has argued that buybacks are bad for companies and even bad for democracy. “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote in an open letter. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.”

Analysts argue that buybacks hurt corporate America, American workers, and American growth in a few ways. For one, buybacks are a sign of short-termism among executives, the argument goes, boosting shareholder value without boosting the underlying value, profitability, or ingenuity of a given firm. Companies do not get better because of buybacks; it is just that shareholders get richer. In an exhaustive financial analysis of buybacks, the consultancy McKinsey found that companies would generally be better off issuing dividends or increasing investment instead. Buybacks also might distort earnings-per-share calculations and other measures of profitability and value.

A related issue is that buybacks draw money away from investment; a dollar spent repurchasing a share is a dollar that cannot be spent on new machinery, an acquisition, entry into a new market, or anything else. Researchers at Deloitte point out that buybacks and dividends have soared as a share of GDP, whereas investment in equipment and infrastructure has remained unchanged. And new research by Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon of New York University suggests growing business concentration, a lack of competition, and short-term thinking on the part of investors have all contributed to firms “spend[ing] a disproportionate amount of free cash flows buying back their shares,” fostering an environment of “investment-less growth.”

Then there is the effect on workers. Chief executive officers are the workers who benefit the most from buybacks, Milani and Tung argue, given that they are often primarily compensated with stock. On the other hand, salaried, hourly wage, and contract employees generally get nothing when companies buy their own shares. With the purchasing power of the minimum wage low, unions all but defunct in the private sector, and less and less competition among employers, workers have no recourse to demand more money, even if there is plenty to be distributed to them. Buybacks have perhaps thus helped stoke the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality the country has seen in the past 30 years, and particularly since the Great Recession. (Milani and Tung are careful not to draw a causal relationship between stagnant worker pay and rising buybacks, but other analysts have.)  

Both by increasing inequality and reducing corporate investment, and thus productivity gains, buybacks might be bad for the overall economy, too. A high-inequality economy is one with less consumer spending and demand across the board, thus one with a lower GDP. A low-investment economy is a more sclerotic and less innovative one, and thus one with a lower GDP.

The growth of buybacks and growing research on the perils they pose has increased interest in regulatory or legal action to bar or limit them. Tung and Milani argue that companies should be required, as they were before the 1982 rule change, to provide dividends rather than purchase shares with their cash. “Issuing cash dividends (regular or special) has a less predictable and manipulative impact on a company’s stock price—and thus is less prone to gaming by executives or activist investors for their own gain,” they write. “Dividends also do not have the same potential as buybacks to mask the market and balance sheet impacts of increasing executives’ stock-based compensation.”

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, among other legislators, have also put forward legislation targeting the practice, raising the prospect that the rules could change if and when Democrats take back power. “The surge in corporate buybacks is driving wealth inequality and wage stagnation in our country by hurting long-term economic growth and shared prosperity for workers,” Baldwin said in a release. ���We need to rewrite the rules of our economy so it works better for workers and not just those at the top.”

In the meantime, corporate boards are poised to spend hundreds of billions more on their own shares, benefiting executives along with the mostly wealthy Americans who own stock. Just this week, Caterpillar, for instance, said it plans to spend $1 billion buying back shares in the latter half of this year, before kicking off a new $10 billion round on buybacks starting in January. It is also in the midst of laying off hundreds of workers.