The ongoing Corona Virus pandemic was first identified in the Wuhan province of China in December 2019. The virus primarily spreads between people via respiratory droplets from coughing or sneezing. There is no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment. Recommended preventive measures include maintaining distance from other people, and monitoring and self-isolation for people who suspect […]
Category: Corporate Watch
26 November 2019: McDonald’s will pay $26 million to resolve claims the fast-food chain skimmed wages from some 38,000 workers at its corporate-run outlets across California. The preliminary accord settles a years-long legal battle that began in 2013 when Los Angeles McDonald’s worker Maria Sanchez with three other employees filed suit against the company. The suit […]
On 23 September 2019, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a directive to Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) restricting withdrawals of all depositors to only Rs. 1,000 each for a period of 6 months. No reasons were stated nor any explanation offered in the RBI press release issued the next day. Over 3 […]
The Patanjali group of Baba Ramdev, through companies controlled by his business associate, Acharya Balkrishna, and some of their closely-associated land dealers, acquired more than 400 acres of forested common lands in the Aravalli hills in Kot, just off the state highway connecting Gurugram and Faridabad, according to a Business Standard report of 6 June. […]
On 29 April 2019, Multi-billion dollar US conglomerate PepsiCo, the parent company which markets brands like Lays Chips, Pepsi and Tropicana juice sued 9 farmers in Gujarat for intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement. The company slapped Rs. 1.5 crore on each farmer, as damages for growing the FL-2027 potato variety used in its Lays chips. […]
20 March 2019: Alphabet LLP., the company which owns search engine Google was fined $1.69 billion by the European Union for stifling competition in online advertisements. The European Commission found that Google had placed exclusivity contracts on website owners, stopping them from including search results from Google’s rival services like Bing and DuckDuckGo. Google had […]
On 27 February 2019, the Adani Group won the public-private partnership (PPP) bid for the operation of Guwahati Airport. The Adani Group has also won the bids for the other 5 airports (Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram) that the Airport Authority of India (AAI) put up for auction in December 2018. Having no previous […]
On 15 January 2019, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) fined the German automotive manufacturer Volkswagon (VW) Rs. 171.34 crore for installing emission cheating devices on its vehicles. The amount was proposed by an expert panel estimating the health costs of nitrogen oxide gases emitted by VW vehicles using the city of New Delhi as base. […]
A US court imposed a fine of $835 million dollars on Alphons Iacobelli, Vice President, Employee Relations at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Alphons Iacobelli was found guilty of bribing union officials on behalf of his employer to obtain concessions and advantages and lowering benefits in collective bargaining agreements, along with charges of tax evasion. Automobile companies […]
30 June 2018: Heating engineer, Gary Smith, from Kent, won his claim against Pimlico Plumbers at the UK Supreme Court, establishing that he was a worker and not self-employed. Pimlico Plumbers, which lost at every stage of the dispute, had appealed to the highest court, arguing that those it sent out to repair leaking pipes […]