In The News

How Not to Be a Boiled Frog

Chua Lee Hoong September 3, 2003
Wages are not the only factor that leads to higher labor costs; corporate payments to retirement plans do as well. Foreign companies seeking to raise the bottom line search for countries with the lowest labor costs, often leaving formerly cheap nations for even cheaper ones. And Singapore has felt such a phenomenon first hand. Ten years ago Singapore enjoyed foreign direct investment (FDI) of...

As China Gallops, Mexico Sees Factory Jobs Slip Away

Juan Forero September 3, 2003
The search for profit drives companies to look for the lowest production costs possible, and that search is taking more and more American companies from factories in Mexico to factories in China. America's southern neighbor received a boom in employment after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, but China's rise as a supplier of cheap labor is now...

Call Centre Boom is Here to Last

Rashmee Z Ahmed September 1, 2003
Multinational companies seeking lower-wage labor will be increasingly looking to India to run their telephone call centers, concludes a recent survey by a British market analysis firm. Predicting a "21st-century gold rush" of MNCs moving to India, analyst Evan Kirchheimer says five to seven percent of Western agent positions are expected to be outsourced to India over the next few...

Shell Workers Protest Planned Job Cuts

Mike Oduniyi August 28, 2003
Employees of Shell Petroleum's base in Nigeria are protesting the proposed centralization of the oil company's global operations. Under a new proposal called "Exploration and Production Globalization," Shell says it hopes to increase the efficiency of its operations. "The Group continues to explore best practices in its drive to evolve a more overall efficient...

Oh for Babies to Boost the Economy

Eddie Lee August 26, 2003
Are large families passé? In most developed and rapidly developing countries this increasingly seems to be the case. Across Europe, fertility rates have dropped well below replacement level – so low in fact that Germany will have to import half a million immigrants a year to keep the working-age population stable. A similar phenomenon is occurring in Singapore where the government is resorting...

Ecologists Fear Disaster as Oil Rush Takes Grip in Quake Zone

Nick Paton Walsh August 25, 2003
The Russian island of Sakhalin will soon be home to the largest energy project in the world, and there is fear, possibly the largest disaster. The oil rich island borders Japan and lies directly on top of an active seismic fault line, a fact that has environmentalists up in arms. They fear that the underground pipelines will not be able to withstand the island's frequent earthquakes and...

Ecologists Fear Disaster as Oil Rush Takes Grip in Quake Zone

Nick Paton Walsh August 25, 2003
The Russian island of Sakhalin will soon be home to the largest energy project in the world, and there is fear, possibly the largest disaster. The oil rich island borders Japan and lies directly on top of an active seismic fault line, a fact that has environmentalists up in arms. They fear that the underground pipelines will not be able to withstand the island's frequent earthquakes and...