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Some Google employees reportedly face a pay cut of up to 25% if they work from home permanently, according to a leaked salary calculator

mcoulter@businessinsider.com (Martin Coulter)

© Provided by Business Insider Details of a new salary calculator has exposed Google's plans to alter pay based on location. Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Google employees who opt to work from home indefinitely could face pay cuts of up to 25%.
An internal salary calculator shared with Reuters showed those with long commutes faced losses.
A spokesperson said the Google's compensation packages had always been 'determined by location.'

Google employees may face a pay cut if they decide to work from home indefinitely, according to a leaked internal salary calculator obtained by Reuters.

The tech giant has appeared broadly supportive of remote workers since the outbreak of COVID-19, and just last week approved almost 10,000 employee requests to work from home. The firm pushed back its planned return-to-office date in light of the rising number of Delta variant cases, from September to October 18.

But according to an internal pay calculator seen by Reuters, some remote employees - particularly those with long commutes - could face pay cuts without changing their addresses.

In one example, Reuters found that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut - which is an hour's commute from Google's New York office - would be paid 15% less if they worked from home. Meanwhile, a colleague living in New York City would see no cut. In some cases reductions as high as 25% could come from a move away from San Francisco, Reuters reported.

One employee who spoke to the publication said they commuted into Google's Seattle's office from a nearby county and that they faced a pay cut of 10% if they worked from home full time.


They said: "It's as high of a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion." They added: "I didn't do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut."

A Google spokesperson told Reuters: "Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from."

Insider approached Google for further comment.

In April, Facebook warned some staff may face a pay cut to continue working remotely in more affordable areas.

Jack Dorsey's Twitter has also adopted a similar stance.

Location-based pay is the newest conflict between workers and employers, as remote Googlers face a 25% salary cut

sjones@insider.com (Stephen Jones) 

© Provided by Business Insider Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Employers are mulling pay cuts for remote workers with reduced living costs.

Google, Facebook, and UK government departments have all suggested cutting pay for remote workers.

But with a labor shortage and more workers willing to change jobs, it's not clear many firms will really risk it.

Workers who permanently choose not to commute into the office face a new sting: A pay cut from employers who argue their living costs are lower.

This latest conflict comes after white-collar workers took on employers over returning to the office and (mostly) won, and as employers gear up to mandate vaccines for returning workers.

The pay debate centers on whether those no longer commuting into city centers or other expensive hubs deserve to receive their current wages.

On Wednesday, news emerged that Google employees who work remotely full-time might face a salary haircut of as much as 25%.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that employees looking to "flee to lower-cost cities" could expect to have their compensation adjusted.

In the UK, The Guardian reported that several government departments were mulling whether to remove an approximately £4,000 ($5,500) top-up for civil servants who live in London and faced higher living costs.

The news came the same week UK chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak said working from home could hurt the career of younger workers.

The FDA Union, which represents the UK's civil servants, said the "insulting and cowardly attacks" had caused anger, and underappreciated the roles played by its members - 81% of whom already live and work outside of London.
Is this really the start of a new battle between firms and staff?

There are two sides to every story, and each argument holds its merits.


Video: Google Employees Could Face Pay Cut if They Work Full Time from Home (CBS SF Bay Area)

Companies such as Google and Facebook have invested vast sums in large, fancy campuses and want to see a return on their investment by having employees in the building.

It's also not uncommon for companies to vary pay, with 49% of UK employers already determining salaries by location, according to the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD).

But workers argue that they shouldn't be penalized for cutting their living costs, and that their employers may make savings in the long term.

It isn't clear how many businesses will risk the fight right now.

More workers are open to reassessing their careers and purpose than ever. During a tight labor market, employers attempting to reassess pay could drive away talent.

Given that it's still early in the days of hybrid work, it would be a rash action to take right now, a CIPD spokeswoman told Insider.

It could also lead to "an employment law minefield for businesses", said Malcolm Gregory, employment lawyer and partner at UK firm Royds Withy King.

"If they want all staff to work from an office, they may face an increase in formal requests to work from home that cannot be ignored. If they offer fully remote working and wish to reduce salaries, they will need to gain consent. That may not always be given."

British staff with protected characteristics under UK employment law - such as age, disability, and pregnancy - who find it difficult to commute could be able to bring claims against their employer.

However Gregory added that US workers could face more aggressive workforce strategies from their employers, due to the fact that most employment is at will.

Legal or HR headaches may be why few companies have cut pay so far.

Neither Google, nor Facebook have actually cut workers' pay. And a spokesperson for UK prime minister Boris Johnson said civil servants would not be punished for continuing to work remotely.

According to CIPD data, just 7% of companies are changing pay to reflect home working or have plans to.

In reality, decisions around pay and location will vary between sectors and businesses - but it will stay a point of public discussion for the foreseeable future.

‘It implies that those who work from home have less value’: How employees feel about salary cuts for not commuting to the office

Kate Ng 

© Provided by The Independent

The government has now lifted its pandemic requirement for people to work from home where possible, instead advising that employees may begin to return to office life. But in recent weeks the push for workers to gradually return to their desks is starting to feel like more of a shove.

According to screenshots seen by Reuters, Google employees could see differences in pay going forward if they work from home long-term. The brand has reportedly introduced an internal pay calculation tool that lets staff work out how their location might affect their wages.

But this isn’t just Silicon Valley. An unnamed senior cabinet minister suggested on Tuesday that civil servants who work at home have had a “de facto pay rise” because they don’t pay commuting costs, adding that this was “unfair” to those who have returned to the office.

Dragon Den’s Touker Suleyman also wrote this week that there was “no excuse” for people without health exemptions to “not to join the march back” as around 75 per cent of UK adults have now been fully vaccinated. He wrote: “If the only way to bring this about is to set one salary for people who work from home, and a higher one for those who come into the office and spend – in some cases – thousands of pounds a year commuting, then so be it."

Employees have hardly rushed back to the office. In fact, data has shown that the number of staff in the office since 19 July has risen marginally to 11.7 per cent, from 11.1 per cent before official guidance changed. But over the course of the pandemic, priorities among office workers have shifted. Research by networking firm Future Strategy Club found that 57 per cent still do not want to return to their 9-5 role, whilst 58 per cent want flexibility in their current role.

People who are forced back to the office will feel like they’ve lost hours with their family each week

Now, employees are questioning the motive behind suggesting pay disparities going forward between people working from home versus working in the office, with many arguing that wages should be determined by the value of one’s work, not their location. And others questioning the legality of changing salaries if job descriptions and workloads stay the same.

Jo Marie O’Reilly, a PR strategist who is currently based in Chester, said it is starting to feel as though some companies are trying to “bully” staff to return to the office. She told The Independent: “Suggesting those who commute into the office should be paid more feels like an attempt to divide the workforce, and imply that those working from home are somehow doing less work or that their work has less value.

“I don’t know a single person who, like me, was plunged into working from home unexpectedly in March 2020, that is desperate to get back to the 9-5 presenteeism of office life,” she said. “I think this pandemic has shown us that another way is possible and that we can and should be judged on the quality of our work and not the hours we spend sitting in a chair.”

Nicole Kow, a marketing consultant who has worked remotely all her working life, agreed: “Some companies [do] make a very good case for why they have pay discrepancies and cost of living is always a big thing, but what if someone decides to move from a rural area to a city? Will companies bump up wages then? What will this conversation look like?

“And I don’t understand this idea of paying someone less because they don’t want to go into an office. If your output and the value you bring to the company doesn’t change regardless of where you work, why should your compensation be impacted?”

Others pointed out that if employers want to strong-arm workers back into the office, the cost of commuting should be taken into account. In pre-pandemic times, London commuters spent an average of £5,114 in travel costs, equivalent to 18 per cent of an average annual London net salary after tax.

I don’t know a single person who is desperate to get back to the 9-5 presenteeism of office life

However, remote workers argue that it isn’t cheaper to be at home because the cost of commuting has been largely redistributed into utilities in the home, such as electricity, heating, water and internet access. As well as any potential adjustments needed to working spaces.

Writer and researcher Chloë Maughan said: “People who work from home are doing the same job and arguably they’re saving their employer money by using their own utilities. I do think there’s another question to ask about whether employers should pay where they’re forcing people to commute.

“The past year has really made the time and cost penalty of commuting feel even more stark. People who are forced back to the office will feel like they’ve lost hours with their family each week.

“This will be on contracts where employees are told their salaries are for 37.5 hours a week, or more, and yet in reality they might be losing an additional five hours plus each week just to get to and from the office at no benefit to them.”

Employers who are considering paying staff differently according to their location have been advised not to by some experts, as this could throw up a myriad of legal issues. Alan Price, CEO of BrightHR, told The Independent: “It is not advisable that employers pay staff less for working from home permanently, even on a hybrid basis, if their role will remain the same as when they were fully office-based – unless the employee agrees to it or their employment contract stipulates that such a thing can be done.”

It is important that employers check their employees’ contracts before making any changes

He explained that a change in pay may be classed as an unlawful deduction in wages if the employee is working the same number of hours and has the same workload, and is held under the same obligations as when they were in the office. Employers may also receive “indirect sex discrimination claims”, given the fact that more women work from home than men, as well as claims of constructive dismissal if an employee is forced to resign due to a pay cut.

"It is important that employers check their employees’ contracts before making any changes,” said Price. “For example, if a person works in a London based office but lives outside of the city, can an employer reduce or remove London weighting?

“If the contract stipulates that the employer can change pay if the employee is living outside of London, then perhaps removing London weighting could be possible. Even then, employers should be careful.

“If staff normally based out of London are paid the same as those in London doing the same work, it wouldn’t be advisable for an employer to enforce a pay reduction.

“On a similar note, if employers give some contractual perks with a financial value to those working in the office which are then removed because of homeworking, they may need to think about offering some compensation for this,” he added

UK

Right-wing columnist says working from home should mean a wage cut – and it hasn’t gone down well

'You are paid for the time you work. You are not paid to commute."

 Have you ever had a job?', wrote one person in response.

 by Joe Mellor
2021-08-12 11:34
in News



Tim Montgomerie has waded into the remote working debate after an unnamed minister suggested people working from home should see their salary docked.

Yesterday it was announced that Google employees could see their pay cut if they switched to working from home permanently in the wake of the pandemic.

It comes after the UK government got itself into another mess over its own policy.

Number 10 was forced to step in after a Cabinet minister suggested officials who insisted on working from home could see their salaries docked.

The reported comments to the Daily Mail provoked fury from trade unions who warned of strike action if the government tried to go down that route.

One person who seems to be very much on the ‘cut their pay’ side of the argument is right-wing columnist Tim Montgomerie.


When the civil servant story broke he tweeted: ” This minister is 100% right. If you want the continued benefit of working from home then don’t expect a salary that was designed for staffers commuting into the office.”

Reactions

Not everyone was thrilled with his comments and made their feelings heard on social media.

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Related: Ministers labelled ‘dinosaurs’ for wanting full-blown return to office

Hydrogen-powered vehicles: A realistic path to clean energy?


CANTON, Ohio (AP) — Each morning at a transit facility in Canton, Ohio, more than a dozen buses pull up to a fueling station before fanning out to their routes in this city south of Cleveland.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The buses — made by El Dorado National and owned by the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority — look like any others. Yet collectively, they reflect the cutting edge of a technology that could play a key role in producing cleaner inter-city transportation. In place of pollution-belching diesel fuel, one-fourth of the agency’s buses run on hydrogen. They emit nothing but harmless water vapor.

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is increasingly viewed, along with electric vehicles, as one way to slow the environmentally destructive impact of the planet’s 1.2 billion vehicles, most of which burn gasoline and diesel fuel. Manufacturers of large trucks and commercial vehicles are beginning to embrace hydrogen fuel cell technologies as a way forward. So are makers of planes, trains and passenger vehicles.

Transportation is the single biggest U.S. contributor to climate change, which is why hydrogen power, in the long run, is seen as a potentially important way to help reduce carbon emissions.

To be sure, hydrogen remains far from a magic solution. For now, the hydrogen that is produced globally each year, mainly for refineries and fertilizer manufacturing, is made using natural gas or coal. That process pollutes the air, warming the planet rather than saving it. Indeed, a new study by researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities found that most hydrogen production emits carbon dioxide, which means that hydrogen-fueled transportation cannot yet be considered clean energy.

Yet proponents of hydrogen-powered transportation say that in the long run, hydrogen production is destined to become more environmentally safe. They envision a growing use of electricity from wind and solar energy, which can separate hydrogen and oxygen in water. As such renewable forms of energy gain broader use, hydrogen production should become a cleaner and less expensive process.

Within three years, General Motors, Navistar and the trucking firm J.B. Hunt plan to build fueling stations and run hydrogen trucks on several U.S. freeways. Toyota, Kenworth and the Port of Los Angeles have begun testing hydrogen trucks to haul goods from ships to warehouses.

Volvo Trucks, Daimler Trucks AG and other manufacturers have announced partnerships, too. The companies hope to commercialize their research, offering zero-emissions trucks that save money and meet stricter pollution regulations.

In Germany, a hydrogen-powered train began operating in 2018, and more are coming. French-based Airbus, the world’s largest manufacturer of airliners, is considering hydrogen as well.

“This is about the closest I've seen us get so far to that real turning point,” said Shawn Litster, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied hydrogen fuel cells for nearly two decades.

Hydrogen has long been a feedstock for the production of fertilizer, steel, petroleum, concrete and chemicals. It's also been running vehicles for years: Around 35,000 forklifts in the United States, about 4% of the nation's total, are powered by hydrogen. Its eventual use on roadways, to haul heavy loads of cargo, could begin to replace diesel-burning polluters.

No one knows when, or even whether, hydrogen will be adopted for widespread use. Craig Scott, Toyota’s head of advanced technology in North America, says the company is perhaps two years from having a hydrogen truck ready for sale. Building more fueling stations will be crucial to widespread adoption.

Kirt Conrad, CEO of Canton’s transit authority since 2009, says other transit systems have shown so much interest in the technology that SARTA takes its buses around the country for demonstrations. Canton's system, which bought its first three hydrogen buses in 2016, has since added 11. It's also built a fueling station. Two California transit systems, in Oakland and Riverside County, have hydrogen buses in their fleets.

“We've demonstrated that our buses are reliable and cost-efficient, and as a result, we're breaking down barriers that have slowed wider adoption of the technology,” Conrad said.

The test at the Port of Los Angeles started in April, when the first of five semis with Toyota hydrogen powertrains began hauling freight to warehouses in Ontario, California, about 60 miles away. The $82.5 million public-private project eventually will have 10 semis.

Hydrogen fuel is included in President Joe Biden's plans to cut emissions in half by 2030. The infrastructure bill the Senate approved passed this week includes $9 billion for research to reduce the cost of making clean hydrogen, and for regional hydrogen manufacturing hubs.

The long-haul trucking industry appears to be the best bet for early adoption of hydrogen. Fuel cells, which convert hydrogen gas into electricity, provide a longer range than battery-electric trucks, fare better in cold weather and can be refueled much faster than electric batteries can be recharged. Proponents say the short refueling time for hydrogen vehicles gives them an edge over electric vehicles for use in taxis or delivery trucks, which are in constant use.

That advantage was important for London-based Green Tomato Cars, which uses 60 hydrogen fuel cell-powered Toyota Mirai cars in its 500-car zero emission fleet to transport corporate customers. Co-founder Jonny Goldstone said his drivers can travel over 300 miles (500 kilometers) on a tank and refuel in three minutes.

Because drivers' earnings depend on fares, Goldstone said, “if they have to spend 40, 50 minutes, an hour, two hours plugging a car in in in the middle of the working day, that for them is just not acceptable.”

For now, Green Tomato is among the largest operators of hydrogen vehicles in what is still a tiny market in Europe, with about 2,000 fuel cell cars, garbage trucks and delivery vans on the roads.

About 7,500 hydrogen fuel cell cars are on the road in the U.S., mostly in California. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai produce the cars, which are priced thousands more than gasoline-powered vehicles. California has 45 public fueling stations, with more planned or under construction.

Unlike with buses and heavy trucks, experts say the future of passenger vehicles in the U.S. lies mainly with electric battery power, not hydrogen. Fully electric vehicles can travel farther than most people need to go on a relatively small battery.

And for now, hydrogen production is adding to rather than reducing pollution. The world produces about 75 million tons a year, most of it in a carbon emission-creating processes involving steam reformation of natural gas. China uses higher-polluting coal.

So-called “blue” hydrogen, made from natural gas, requires an additional step. Carbon dioxide emitted in the process is sent below the earth's surface for storage. The Cornell and Stanford study found that manufacturing blue hydrogen emitted 20% more carbon than burning natural gas or coal for heat.

That's why industry researchers are focused on electrolysis, which uses electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen in water. Hydrogen mixes with oxygen in a vehicle’s fuel cell to produce power. The amount of electricity generated by wind and solar is growing worldwide, making electrolysis cleaner and cheaper, said Joe Cargnelli, director of hydrogen technologies for Cummins, which makes electrolyzers and fuel cell power systems.

Currently, it costs more to make a hydrogen truck and produce the fuel than to put a diesel-powered truck on the road. Hydrogen costs about $13 per kilogram in California, and 1 kilogram can deliver slightly more energy than a gallon of diesel fuel. By contrast, diesel fuel is only about $3.25 per gallon in the U.S.

But experts say that disparity will narrow.

“As they scale up the technology for production, the hydrogen should come down,” said Carnegie Mellon's Litster.

While a diesel semi can cost around $150,000 depending on how it’s equipped, it's unclear how much fuel cell trucks would cost. Nikola, a startup electric and hydrogen fuel cell truck maker, estimated last year that it would receive about $235,000 for each hydrogen semi it sells.

Clean electricity might eventually be used to make and store hydrogen at a rail yard, where it could refuel locomotives and semis, all with zero emissions.

Cummins foresees the widespread use of hydrogen in the U.S. by 2030, sped by stricter diesel emissions regulations and government zero-emissions vehicle requirements. Already, Europe has set ambitious green hydrogen targets designed to accelerate its use.

“That's just going to blow the market open and kind of drive it,” Cargnelli said. “Then you'll see other places like North America kind of follow suit.”

____

Krisher reported from Detroit. AP Business Writer David McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany.

Mark Gillispie And Tom Krisher, The Associated Press

Edmonton vandals target a Ukrainian WWII memorial with a complicated history
Raylene Lung 

© John Shypitka/CBC News Vandals painted messages on a memorial honouring the 14th Waffen SS Division at St. Michael's Cemetery, located in northeast Edmonton.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) is calling for the removal of two Ukrainian monuments considered racist, one of which was recently vandalized.

A memorial honouring the 14th Waffen SS Division in St. Michael's Cemetery, located in northeast Edmonton, was covered with red paint. The words "nazi monument" were painted on one side and "14th Waffen SS" on the other.

The statue of Roman Shukhevych was also vandalized with the words "actual Nazi" outside of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex. It has since been cleaned up.

The vandalism was seen on Monday night but it's not known when it happened.

In a news release sent on Thursday, Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy at FSWC, said the memorials honour "Nazi collaborators and war criminals" and urged that they be removed.

"It is beyond shameful to have monuments here in Canada," he stated in the release. "These monuments are nothing less than a glorification and celebration of those who actively participated in Holocaust crimes as well the mass murder of Polish civilians."

Abe Silverman, B'nai Brith Canada's manager of public affairs and a Holocaust survivor, said the organization has been working with the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex to remove the bust of Shukhevych.

"It's a disservice to our community when we put up statues that honour people who have a history that may be very acceptable to some and offensive to others," he said.

He said these types of discussions are emotional on all sides but added, "We do have to overcome the barriers that exist for the sake of harmony."

The Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Edmonton called the graffiti "disturbing" and reported it to police.

"This vandalism is part of the decades-long Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine and Ukrainians to create a false Nazi image of Ukrainian freedom fighters," it said in an emailed statement.

"The translation of the Ukrainian message on our vandalized monument is 'For those who fought for Ukraine's Freedom.'"

The Ukrainian Youth Unity Council said in a statement that recent accusations against its community have been "riddled with disinformation."

"As for those who presume a right to dictate to us about whom we should honour, we invite them to reflect upon whom they are serving when publishing divisive 'fake news,'" the statement read.

Jars Balan, the director of the Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at the University of Alberta, said the history of the monuments is complicated.

The memorial in St. Michael's Cemetery was put up to honour the people who fought against both the Soviet army and the Nazis for the independence of Ukraine during the Second World War.

"There's all this history behind this. And in history, context is everything. Horrible things happened in the Second World War," he said. "Difficult decisions, and decisions that may be regrettable in retrospect, were made. But it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of those people who had to make them then."

He said it's easy to refer to them as Nazis, but as a historian, he needs to be objective.

"Some of these people who ended up fighting in German uniforms were simply not Nazis. They were fighting for Ukrainian independence," he said. "And that was the best way to achieve it, as far as they were concerned. They didn't have any options."

BULLSHIT I AM NOT SURPRISED AT THIS APOLOGISM FROM JARS BALAN

The graffiti still remains on the memorial in St. Michael's Cemetery.

Edmonton police have not confirmed whether they are investigating.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon edges down, still high under Bolsonaro

© Reuters/Bruno Kelly FILE PHOTO: An aerial view shows a deforested plot of the Amazon near Porto Velho

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest fell 10% in July from a year earlier, after four straight monthly increases, preliminary data showed on Friday, but destruction remains far higher than before President Jair Bolsonaro took office.

Cleared forest in the month of July totaled 1,498 square km (578 square miles), nearly twice the size of New York City, according to government space research agency INPE.

From January to July, deforestation in the Amazon was up 7.8% from a year ago to 5,108 square kilometers, INPE data showed.

Last year, deforestation hit a 12-year high https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-environment-idINKBN28B3MV under far-right President Bolsonaro, who has weakened environmental enforcement and called for mining and commercial farming in protected areas of the rainforest.

In June, Bolsonaro again dispatched the military to protect the forest https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/brazil-bans-fires-redeploys-military-protect-amazon-rainforest-2021-06-29, repeating an intermittent strategy that has failed to reduce destruction to levels seen before he took office in 2019.

Bolsonaro's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest deforestation data.

The latest INPE figures cap the period for Brazil's official annual deforestation records, measured from August 2020 to July 2021 to minimize interference from cloud cover.

For the 12 months through July, the preliminary data shows a 4.6% decrease in deforestation. Scientists say a decrease in the preliminary numbers generally means there will be a decrease in the final, more accurate measure known as PRODES.

Vice President Hamilton Mourao, who leads the government's Amazon policy, said last week that the figures are now headed in the right direction.

"The cycle ended on July 31 ... I think it will be in the range of 4% to 5%, a very small reduction, very inadequate, but it's on track," Mourao told reporters.

But researchers say the destruction is still far higher than before Bolsonaro took office and a single-digit decrease does little to change the vast environmental impact.

The Amazon is considered a vital bulwark against climate change and its destruction is the top source of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's too early to celebrate the reduction in the deforestation rate this year," said Ane Alencar, the science director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

"It will be quite difficult for the government to change its image with a reduction that small."

Alencar said the annual PRODES figure will likely be above 10,000 square km for the third straight year. Before Bolsonaro, that level of destruction was last seen in 2008.

She said that Amazon destruction may have plateaued at this high level in part because of uncertainty over whether Bolsonaro will be re-elected and continue his rhetoric signaling to illegal loggers and ranchers that they will not be punished.

Bolsonaro has slid in opinion polls and is currently seen losing to former left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 2022 election, although neither has declared their candidacies.

"It's a moment where these people that are deforesting the Amazon, in the middle of nowhere, they are just waiting to see what is going to happen," Alencar said.

(Reporting by Jake Spring; additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Northern Sask. mine cleanup to cost roughly $1.6M

The Saskatchewan government has a price tag for cleaning up an abandoned northern mine.

The provincial government is paying two companies roughly $1.6 million to remediate the former Newcor gold mine near Creighton. QM Points LP, a joint venture between QM Environmental and Points Athabasca Contracting, will receive $1,363,000, while SNC-Lavalin will get $242,000 to remediate the site.

Newcor is one of six non-uranium mines the province has prioritized for cleanup. Two of those, the Vista and Western Nuclear sites, are also a stone's throw away from Creighton in the province's northeast.

Newcor is considered the highest-risk site, due to its proximity to Creighton and Douglas Lake, a Ministry of Environment spokeswoman said.

Since 2019, the province has paid at least $504,000 to SNC-Lavalin to study underground mine sites, including $104,000 approved in February that covered costs related to COVID-19, temporarily closing a mine shaft, and further planning and information gathering. That's on top of a $200,000 deal in June in which the province tapped the firm to develop an action plan and determine a long-term timeline for Vista mine's remediation.

The province is responsible for 33 non-uranium abandoned mines in northern Saskatchewan, ranging from high-priority sites to small exploration shafts and trenches.

Newcor sits on the eastern shore of Douglas Lake, about three kilometres southwest of Creighton. Activity started on the site with the discovery of gold in 1933. Mining continued there until at least the late 1940s, according to a 2012 report prepared for the Ministry of Energy and Resources.

Environmental standards and accountability weren't well established when the mine was developed, and the responsible parties aren't available for cleanup. However, the site is on Crown land, which leaves the province to manage the site's remediation, Ministry of Environment spokeswoman Val Nicholson said in a prepared statement.

Remediation will begin this month and is scheduled to be completed by the end of October. Work will include a permanent concrete cover over the mine shaft opening. Vegetated soil and an engineered geotextile liner will also cover contaminated waste rock. The work aims to stop contaminants from entering Douglas Lake, Nicholson said.

The site has been defunct for years and is cluttered with concrete, Creighton Mayor Bruce Fidler said.

The municipality isn't directly involved with the remediation project, but the site's proximity may be an opportunity for local businesses and labour, Fidler said.

"We're definitely looking forward to having these projects, and improving the environment," he added.

"We hope it will be (brought) back to nature where people go and walk around and enjoy the area without stumbling over old broken cement."

Nick Pearce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The StarPhoenix

A Lawyer's Deathbed Confession About a Sensational 1975 Kidnapping

Alex Traub
Thu, August 12, 2021

In this article:
Samuel Bronfman
Canadian businessman, philanthropist

An aerial view of the Bronfman estate in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., home of Edgar Bronfman, patriarch of the family and chairman of the Seagram Company, on Aug. 11, 1975. (Neal Boenzi/The New York Times)

Before dawn on Aug. 17, 1975, about 60 police officers and FBI agents charged into the New York City apartment of a fireman named Mel Patrick Lynch. The living room was dimly lit; its blinds were drawn. Lynch sat on the couch next to the unshaven, foul-smelling, bound and blindfolded 21-year-old scion of one of America’s richest families, Samuel Bronfman II, who had been missing for nine days.

Authorities arrested Lynch and an accomplice, Dominic Byrne. The men confessed to abducting Bronfman, describing the planning and execution of the crime and identifying the hiding spot of two garbage bags containing a $2.3 million ransom.

That seemed like the end of the drama. Actually, it was only a first act. The kidnapping trial turned out to have more narrative twists than the crime itself. Lynch and Byrne would be convicted of an extortion charge, but incredibly — after it seemed they had been caught red-handed — a jury pronounced them not guilty of kidnapping, a charge that could have put them in prison for life. They and their defense lawyers managed to convince jurors that there was, in fact, no kidnapping.

This miracle was pulled off in large part by Byrne’s attorney, Peter DeBlasio, who called the case “the greatest trial victory of my career.”

The Bronfman kidnapping is one of the stranger tales of New York’s criminal history, but over the following decades, hardly anyone had reason to recall the intricacies and mysteries — except DeBlasio. Even as he reveled in his triumph, he worried until the end of his life about what he had done to secure it.

DeBlasio’s mix of pride and unease combusted in July 2020, when he self-published a memoir, “Let Justice Be Done.” His book, which went largely unnoticed, reveals what he long told his two daughters was the secret of the Bronfman trial: His winning argument was premised on a lie — and he knew it.

It was effectively a deathbed confession. Just five months later, on Dec. 18, DeBlasio died of heart failure at 91.

DeBlasio’s memoir — along with an examination of 45-year-old court records and interviews with actors from this episode who are still alive — help set the record straight on a tangle of allegations. They range from a forbidden love affair to a yearslong surveillance campaign to a conspiracy that hoodwinked the nation.

On Aug. 8, 1975, Bronfman was in a Tudor mansion surrounded by dense woods. This was the center of a 180-acre estate north of New York City in Yorktown Heights, Westchester County, owned by Samuel’s father, Edgar, patriarch of the Bronfman family. A small group had gathered for a candlelit dinner of chilled vegetable soup, roast beef and, for dessert, mousse au citron. At 11:30, Samuel bid everyone farewell, got in his green BMW and drove into the night.

That June, Samuel Bronfman had graduated from Williams College, where he edited the sports section of the school paper and played varsity tennis. He was about to start a job in sales at Sports Illustrated. He and his girlfriend, Melanie Mann, whom he had met freshman year, were moving toward marriage. A night out without Mann might entail Samuel Bronfman cruising around a familiar set of Westchester bars.

At 1:45 a.m., the phone rang at the Yorktown Heights estate. The family’s butler answered and heard Samuel Bronfman’s voice. “Call my father,” he said. “I’ve been kidnapped.”

The Bronfman family owned Seagram Co., the sprawling conglomerate that The New York Times described around that time as “the world’s largest distiller.” Samuel Bronfman was an heir to a trust worth about $750 million, more than $3.5 billion today.

His abductors introduced themselves to the Bronfman family with a ransom note. They promised that if their plan went awry, a survivor of their group would track down and kill Edgar Bronfman, Samuel’s father, who was chair of Seagram. The note described bullets containing cyanide.

In statements to the press, the Bronfman family pleaded for evidence that Samuel was still alive and assured the kidnappers they would pay the ransom. Spokespeople were sent down the long driveway from the Westchester compound to more than 50 reporters camped outside the front gate. Curiosity-seekers dropped by, along with hot dog and ice cream vendors.

While reporters, lacking better material, analyzed the significance of grocery deliveries, Edgar Bronfman, one of the richest men in America, spent three nights dashing between telephone booths in and around Kennedy International Airport, struggling to understand terse instructions given by a man who called at prescribed times.

At about 3 a.m. on Aug. 16, Edgar Bronfman met the man below an aqueduct in Woodside, Queens, and delivered the ransom. Lurking in the background were about 100 FBI agents idling on motorcycles, in trucks, in a van, on at least one helicopter and in at least two decoy taxis. Yet after the handoff was made, the brigade of federal agents somehow allowed the rust-colored Oldsmobile that picked up the ransom to elude them and make a clean getaway.

The FBI was saved by a revealing blunder made by their target. The bagman had driven to the handoff in his own car; all the agents had to do was look up the license plate number.

They traced it to an apartment in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn belonging to Lynch, an Irish immigrant from the tiny village of Banagher. Lynch was 37 years old and a tall, broad bachelor who was losing his hair. His neighbors, who called him Fireman Lynch, said he was polite and reserved. When the guys at his fire company watched “Jeopardy!,” Lynch knew all the answers.

The FBI staked out the area around Lynch’s apartment. One car with two agents parked around the corner — improbably, right outside the home of Byrne, Lynch’s partner in crime.

Byrne found himself unnerved by the mystery car. He sent his daughter, Mary, to a police precinct a few blocks from their home. She told officers there that her family feared two hit men were lying in wait on their block.

Like Lynch, Byrne was an immigrant from rural Ireland — in his case, a village called Taughnarra. In other respects, Byrne, a 53-year-old limousine service operator, was the opposite of Lynch. He was about 5-foot-4 and known for theatrical blarney, greeting friends with a “top o’ the morning” while on walks with his dogs. A family man and joiner of civic groups, he attended Mass with his wife every Sunday.

The police quickly realized the hit men in the idling car were FBI agents, and they all converged on the Byrne family home. Byrne confessed on the spot, telling officers and agents that he had been forced into participating in the kidnapping. He persuaded officers that storming Lynch’s apartment could lead to violence, whereas following his normal protocol by giving Lynch a call to say he was on his way would smooth over the moment of their entry.

But on the phone, Byrne took a deep breath and tipped off his partner. “It’s all over, Mel,” he said. “They are coming over.”

Lynch’s place was two blocks away, and when the officers burst into the apartment, they found him and a blindfolded Samuel Bronfman sitting next to each other on the couch.

After being arrested, Byrne and Lynch explained that they had been friends for years and formally confessed to the crime. Their statements, coupled with a corroborating account from Bronfman, enabled authorities to piece together a clear story about what had happened.

“With the Bronfman kidnapping,” the Times editorial board wrote, “the men of the FBI did the job that American society expects and needs them to do.”

Despite its speedy conclusion, it was a crime long in the making. Years before the actual abduction, Lynch persuaded Byrne that a kidnapping would be easy to pull off without hurting anyone. One night late around summer’s end in 1973, they took their first trip to the house where Samuel Bronfman lived with his mother in Purchase, a hamlet in Westchester County. Lynch pointed out that no fence separated the house from its border on the Hutchinson River Parkway. Over the next two years, the men took 30 or 40 trips.

The final visit was Aug. 8, 1975. Lynch watched Samuel Bronfman pull into the garage in Purchase after the dinner with his father. He seized the moment. He ran toward the BMW, and as Bronfman emerged, he announced, “This is a stickup.” He handcuffed Bronfman and put a .38 automatic into his captive’s ribs.

Bronfman spent days begging not to be killed and struggling to go to the bathroom while restrained. After picking up the ransom, Lynch told Bronfman he suspected that the FBI was on to him and that he was thinking of fleeing the apartment and taking him hostage on the road. He said he would kill Bronfman and himself before going to jail. Then came Byrne’s call.

“They’re on their way,” Lynch said.

“Who?” Bronfman asked.

“The FBI,” Lynch replied.

Bronfman steeled himself. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“We’re going to give up,” Lynch said. He gave Bronfman his sneakers back and told him to put them on. He sat next to Bronfman on the couch. Moments later, federal agents, guns drawn, barged in.

The mood of celebration started to sour at the bail hearing a month later. The two defendants had retained separate counsel, and Lynch’s lawyer made the remarkable claim that Samuel Bronfman had masterminded his own kidnapping.

The prosecution called the allegation “absurd,” and DeBlasio portrayed Lynch as the mastermind, arguing that the fireman was guilty of “coercion” in forcing Byrne to participate in a real kidnapping.

By the time the trial began in October, Lynch had rejected the confession he gave to FBI interrogators. He had a new story to tell.

Lynch said he and Bronfman were, in fact, lovers: They first met at a bar in June 1974 and shortly thereafter began having sex, he testified, often in the pool house of the Bronfman property in Purchase. Byrne drove Lynch there because he owed Lynch favors, and Lynch made the trips to meet Bronfman, not surveil him. The reason he entered Bronfman’s property from the highway through the woods was for the sake of secrecy. Their conversations, he told the court, focused on Bronfman’s desire to shake down his family for cash; it was Bronfman’s idea to stage his own kidnapping.

Lynch agreed to join the caper, he explained, because Bronfman threatened to inform the fire department that he was gay, which he said would jeopardize his employment.

Lynch’s tale lacked basic information. He could not offer even a motive for the crime, like Bronfman’s need for immediate money. Asked what he and his lover talked about, Lynch referred to “things in general.” He said nothing about romance or desire beyond the clinical phrase “we had sex.”

Yet the prosecutor, Geoffrey Orlando, an assistant district attorney in Westchester, never broached the supposed love affair.

“Being called gay was much, much worse then,” Orlando said in a recent phone interview. It was 1976, and the topic of homosexuality was so taboo, he decided, that directly challenging the claim of an affair would be pointless.

Despite what his story lacked in logic or evidence, Lynch, the notably taciturn fireman, was mesmerizing as a storyteller during four days on the witness stand. NYPD officers and FBI agents would contradict themselves recounting basic police work; Lynch, whose story alleged an intricate hoax, could not be tripped up. “Anybody else join you at the table?” Orlando asked Lynch about his first meeting with Bronfman. “No, sir,” Lynch replied, confirming a minor detail of his testimony. “We were at the bar.”

Preparing for the trial, DeBlasio planned to attack Lynch as “a monster who preyed upon his feebleminded friend Dominic, forcing him under duress to aid in the most terrible of crimes imaginable.” Then he saw Lynch on the stand.

“I can look back now after a 50-year, 600-trial career and say that among the thousands of witnesses I observed, nobody approached the magnificence of Mel Patrick Lynch,” DeBlasio wrote. “He was the Arturo Toscanini and Enrico Caruso of witnesses. He turned a horror story into a tragedy of operatic dimension. The jurors were mesmerized. If they could have, they would have exploded in applause and cried for an encore.”

Orlando agreed with that assessment. “He was a great liar — absolutely, positively — and a sympathetic character,” Orlando said of Lynch.

Bronfman, conversely, looked to jurors like a man caught in a nightmare, fighting back tears and biting his fingernails while on the stand. Following a torrent of accusations about secret sexual escapades and plans to film pornography, the judge halted proceedings, took Orlando aside, accused him of a “lack of propriety” and said he was “amazed” Orlando had not objected when the defense made “smearing innuendoes” about Bronfman.

“In a case like this, the victim gets put on trial, and yet he has no means of making a defense,” Bronfman said after the trial.

Byrne did not testify, but he appeared strangely dissociated, indiscriminately beaming smiles at everyone in the courtroom: the jurors, the journalists, his co-defendant and even the Bronfman family.

Following Lynch’s commanding performance, DeBlasio tailored his defense to fit with the hoax angle, telling the court what he knew to be an outright lie.

“There was no kidnapping,” he said, addressing the jury. As for the FBI, he offered, “They should have been checking Sam Bronfman.” DeBlasio portrayed the Seagram heir as resentful that he had not “grown up the way the father wanted him.” Calling DeBlasio “brilliant,” Newsweek wrote that he “stirred jurors to his summation.” Two jurors told the Times they believed that Bronfman had indeed “engineered his own kidnapping.”

DeBlasio waited nearly 45 years to reveal that he had no doubt the story that convinced those jurors was false.

“About Sam,” DeBlasio wrote toward the end of his memoir. “I want it to be clear to all who may ever read these pages that Samuel Bronfman was not a part of the kidnapping.” He added, “Neither he nor Lynch were gay as far as anyone ever knew and certainly they were not lovers.”

This kind of admission from a lawyer, even in a tell-all memoir, is extraordinary. Experts say DeBlasio’s ethical breach did not come in his cunning courtroom argument, but rather in his attempt to clear his conscience.

“His obligation to his client continues forever, even after his client’s death,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who specializes in legal ethics. “He’s saying, ‘My client, who was acquitted of kidnapping, is really a kidnapper.’ That’s exactly what he’s not allowed to say.”

DeBlasio’s daughter, Alessandra DeBlasio, notified Samuel Bronfman about her father’s book. In an email to the Times, Bronfman responded to what he called a confession by DeBlasio. “I was really kidnapped in 1975 and his and Lynch’s defense was a fraud,” Bronfman wrote. “I am glad he acknowledged this fact.”

According to Alessandra DeBlasio, Byrne’s signed confession to the FBI (a document that Peter DeBlasio managed to suppress in court) made an overwhelming impression on her father. “He knew all along from day one that his guy had done it,” she said. She added that at no point in the trial did Byrne tell Peter DeBlasio his confession was false.

Then there was the blindfold Bronfman wore. It was a “putrid mess” with “ripped-off pieces of Sam’s flesh and his facial hair growing into the adhesive tape,” Peter DeBlasio wrote. “What hoax? Nobody faking their own kidnapping would wear a blindfold.”

Following Lynch’s and Byrne’s exoneration as kidnappers, the Bronfman family held a news conference at their corporate headquarters, the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. “I went into this kidnapping a little boy,” Samuel Bronfman said, “and I came out a man.”

Despite his escape from a harrowing ordeal, the resolution was disturbing for Bronfman. However baseless, the charges that he had hatched a conspiracy with a lover to defraud his family lingered in the decades to come.

“It poisoned the atmosphere forever for Sam,” said Orlando, the prosecutor, who became friendly with Bronfman during the trial. “He will forever be tagged with that allegation.”

Bronfman declined to comment on the impact the episode made on the rest of his life. Orlando said Bronfman, now 67, recently told him that his adult children “have no idea” the kidnapping took place.

Ten years after the trial, Edgar Bronfman named Samuel’s younger brother, Edgar Jr., head of Seagram, in what Fortune magazine called a “surprise.” Samuel Bronfman had worked at the company longer; unlike his younger brother, he had a college degree; and his elevation would have continued the tradition of the company’s passing to the eldest son of the family.

Edgar Bronfman Jr. oversaw a series of questionable investments and sold the company in what came to be seen as a financial debacle.

The title of DeBlasio’s book, “Let Justice Be Done,” was also his favorite legal expression. He used the “plain but powerful” phrase to conclude all of his closing arguments, including in the Bronfman trial. Yet something about that “greatest trial victory” caused him to question his credo.

“Whether justice was done in this case,” he wrote, “may not be for me to say.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

UN experts call for more rules on countries' use of spyware

JAMEY KEATEN
Thu, August 12, 2021, 

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights experts working with the United Nations on Thursday called on countries to pause the sale and transfer of spyware and other surveillance technology until they set rules governing its use, to ensure it won’t impinge upon human rights.

The experts, speaking out in the wake of new Pegasus spyware revelations, expressed concern that “highly sophisticated intrusive tools are being used to monitor, intimidate and silence human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents” in some places, the U.N. human rights office said.

“U.N. human rights experts today called on all states to impose a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of surveillance technology until they have put in place robust regulations that guarantee its use in compliance with international human rights standards,” it said in a statement.


Last month an investigation by a global media consortium showed further evidence that the military-grade Pegasus malware from the Israel-based NSO Group, a hacker-for-hire outfit, has been used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents.

The eight experts cited the “extraordinary audacity and contempt for human rights” shown by such surveillance and called on NSO to say whether it had assessed the human rights impact of the use of such tools and publish any findings of its internal probes into the matter.

The independent experts, who focus on a number of rights issues under mandates from the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, are in “direct communication” with NSO and the Israeli government, the statement said.

The experts noted that international human rights law requires countries to ensure protections against illegal surveillance, invasion of privacy and threats to fundamental freedoms like those of expression and assembly.

Pegasus infiltrates phones to vacuum up personal and location data and surreptitiously control the smartphone’s microphones and cameras. In the case of journalists, that lets hackers spy on reporters’ communications with sources.

The program is designed to bypass detection and mask its activity.

Shell pays $111m over 1970s oil spill in Nigeria

Wed, August 11, 2021,

Shell logo is reflected in a car mirror

Oil giant Shell will pay a Nigerian community $111m (£80m) over an oil spill more than 50 years ago.

A spokesman said the payment would mark the "full and final settlement" to the Ejama-Ebubu community over a spill during the 1967-70 Biafran War.

The company has maintained that the damage was caused by third parties.

A Nigerian court fined Shell the equivalent of $41.36m in 2010, but the company launched a number of unsuccessful appeals.

Last year, the country's Supreme Court said that, with interest, the fine owed by the company was more than ten times greater than the original judgement, although Shell denied this. The case was launched in 1991.

Shell has previously said it was not given the opportunity to defend itself against the claims, and began international arbitration over the case earlier this year.

"They ran out of tricks and decided to come to terms," lawyer Lucius Nwosa, who represented the local community, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. "The decision is a vindication of the resoluteness of the community for justice."

While the case dates back decades, pollution from leaking oil pipelines continues to be a major issue in the Niger Delta.

Earlier this year, in a separate case, a Dutch appeals court ruled that Shell's Nigerian branch was responsible for damage caused by leaks in the Niger Delta from 2004 to 2007.

The court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay compensation to Nigerian farmers, while the subsidiary and its Anglo-Dutch parent company were told to install equipment to prevent future damage.

Shell Nigeria liable for oil spills - Dutch court

Is crude oil killing children in Nigeria?

A group of farmers launched the case in 2008, alleging widespread pollution.

Shell argued that the leaks were the result of "sabotage".

Protesters accuse Raytheon of abuses, block plant entrances

Thu, August 12, 2021

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. (AP) — A group of activists blocked the entrance to a Raytheon plant in Rhode Island on Thursday morning to protest what they allege is the company's role in the “killing of civilians" and “other human rights abuses."

Some members of a group called the Fang Collective chained themselves to two vehicles next to the guard shack at the entrance to the Portsmouth plant at about 6 a.m.

Law enforcement, firefighters and tow trucks had also responded to the scene.

Two protesters were later arrested, the group said in a post on social media.

The men had attached themselves to concrete blocks within and underneath the vehicles, Portsmouth police said in an emailed statement. The fire department was called in to free them.

They are charged with trespassing, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of a police officer.

The group in an emailed statement said it was protesting the Waltham, Massachusetts-based defense contractor's “weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel, and their involvement in enforcing the U.S.- Mexican border."

“Raytheon profits from the killing of civilians, families and children in Palestine, Yemen and elsewhere," the group said.

Raytheon's Missiles & Defense plant in Portsmouth focuses on what it calls seapower capability — sensors, combat management systems, radar and sonar. About 1,000 people work at the facility.

“We respect the right to lawful and peaceful protest,” the company said in a brief emailed statement.

___

This story has been updated to correct the name of the Portsmouth plant to Raytheon Missiles & Defense, not Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.