| Bankruptcy cases of strategic companies in Moscow court drops 50%
MOSCOW. April 18 (Interfax) - The number of bankruptcy cases of strategic facilities handled by the Moscow Arbitration Court at the beginning of this year has shrunk by approximately 50% compared to 2006. A court spokesman told Interfax that in the middle of March the court was handling five such cases. The court spokesman noted the fact that bankruptcy procedures against certain companies have been launched several times by the same or different claimants. Earlier Moscow Arbitration Court chairman Oleg Sviridenko said on several occasions that strategic facilities should have a separate bankruptcy law. .
Berkeley High Students Learn Negotiation Skills
The union made some big wins at Berkeley High on Tuesday. Except that the students were acting as both management and labor and the cash was just play money. Juniors and seniors got together in the school library for a crash course in negotiation—courtesy the California Federa-tion of Teachers (CFT). The day-long session was part of CFT's Collective Bargaining Education Project (CBEP), which was held for the first time at the BHS campus. Based on the popular education techniques of Paolo Freire, the CBEP provides students with a range of labor history and contemporary union organizing and collective bargaining role-plays for the high school classroom. “It's a way of teaching them conflict resolution in the workplace. In this case, we have picked a hospital," said Fred Glass, communications director for CFT.
Fond du Lac County to pay for unworked employee hours
The county faced arbitration for reducing employees' work weeks by one hour for 32 weeks, said County Executive Allen Buechel. The county must now pay a little less than $42,000 for hours and unpaid benefits employees lost. Arbitration documents show the arbitrator, Susan Bauman, decided against the county because the county violated the collective bargaining agreement with a union when it reduced hours for an extended time. Officials chose not to appeal the decision, Buechel said. The county, he said, could try for an appeal but has little chance of winning. Buechel said he harbors no ill feelings toward employees, but is "very angry" at state legislators for supporting laws and regulations that make such actions possible. The county was only trying to save jobs and should not have to pay for time people didn't work, he said.
Rice's Mideast mediation effort hits snag
JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks stumbled yesterday when Israel balked at a proposal for the United States to hold parallel negotiations with both sides on an eventual peace treaty.At the same time, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sounded upbeat about the prospects for a regional peace summit pushed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.During the course of a day shuttling between Palestinian and Jordanian leaders in Amman and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, Miss Rice was forced to delay by 12 hours until this morning a statement expected to chart the future of talks aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.Israel Channel 2 news said that Mr. Olmert won't discuss Israel's objections to negotiating thorny final issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, and is uncomfortable with the idea of Miss Rice serving as intermediary with the Palestinians.Miss Rice tried to fend off the notion that her proposal for parallel talks was overstepping the traditional U.S.
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