Canada's Power Corp shuts down China unit, lays off staff, sources say

Selena Li

Tue, May 21, 2024,

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Power Corporation of Canada (Power Corp) has shut its China investment unit and dismissed all staff, said two people briefed on the matter, becoming the latest Western financial firm to pull back amid the country's economic challenges.

Power Sustainable, which is the asset management arm of Power Corp and manages $4.5 billion of assets globally, started laying off all of its 17 local staff in recent weeks as it moved towards shutting down the Shanghai-based unit, said the people.

Economic slowdown has seen many of the Western financial firms that scrambled to expand China operations a few years ago take a hit on their earnings and rein in their ambitions for what was a key piece of their global growth strategy.

The closure of Power Sustainable (Shanghai) Investment Management, which was established in 2019 and invested in public equities in China, was due to the group's change in strategy, the people said, declining to be named as they are not authorised to speak to media.

It is not immediately known how much assets the onshore arm managed. The group utilised the platform to not only invest on behalf of onshore clients but also offshore clients, one of the two people said.

Power Sustainable made "a strategic decision as part of the realignment of its (investment) management business to wind down its China public equity strategy", a Montreal-based Power Corp spokesperson told Reuters without commenting on local staff.

"We remain optimistic about China's future prospects and economic growth," said the spokesperson.

Power Corp will remain invested in the country with investments in mainland China's public equity markets through its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) licence, the spokesperson added.

A QFII licence allows offshore institutions to mostly invest in China's listed securities without having to set up operations in the country.

The Power group of companies has investments in China through one of its subsidiary's 27.8% holding in China Asset Management Company (ChinaAMC), China's second-largest mutual fund manager.

Power Corp had in recent months turned more pessimistic about the investment business amid China's faltering economic growth and rising geopolitical uncertainties, the people said.

The unit's closure adds to a growing list of global financial firms that have cut back their China business presence or growth ambitions in the recent past, as prospects dimmed for the world's second-largest economy.

Over the last two months, Fidelity International, Morgan Stanley and Legal & General have either sharply cut China-focused jobs or have shelved expansion plans, Reuters reported.

(Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Christopher Cushing)

The starting salary for a new American Airlines flight attendant is low enough to qualify for food stamps in some states

Sunny Nagpaul
Tue, May 21, 2024

New flight attendants—faced with low starting wages, long days with relatively fewer payable hours, and no opportunity to renegotiate wages on their contacts since 2019, even while inflation has been steadily rising—need to weather a lot of turbulence en route to a financially stable career path.

An employment verification letter from American Airlines is circulating on Reddit and collecting attention because of how low starting wages are for some newly hired flight attendants. The letter, which states that a new American Airlines flight attendant will have a projected annual salary of $27,315 before incentives and taxes are collected, has sparked conversations about fair wages for flight attendants and how inflationary price hikes are making life unaffordable for many Americans—even if the economy and labor markets look good on paper.

The union that represents American Airlines workers, called the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, verified the authenticity of the letter, CNN reported, which is issued for potential landlords or other services where flight attendants need to verify their employment and income.

While the salary listed in the letter is above the federal poverty line of $15,060 for a single-person household, that figure doesn’t reflect the true cost of living on a national level, which can be much higher in major metropolitan areas.

The union has also been calling out the low starting pay, which for a single-income household meets the qualification criteria for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food-stamp benefits, in several states including Massachusetts and New York.

The union is also calling attention to a growing issue of “corporate greed” by drawing comparisons between the wages an flight attendant can earn as opposed to what the company’s CEO, Robert Isom, earns.

The starting salary for a new flight attendant is about $27,000 per year, which is just a fraction of the CEO’s $31.4 million earned last year—an amount 1,162 times greater than the earnings of a new attendant.

American Airlines did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

To be sure, a concoction of challenges lie between the union representing American Airlines’ flight attendants and management. Under a federal law called the Railway Labor Act, workers and union members in the airline and railroad industries are not allowed to go on strike without permission from the government. Federal mediator groups, like the National Mediation Board, could authorize such permission by declaring an impasse in negotiations between American Airlines and the union group, or by allowing the union to pursue a potential strike.

The last contract the union negotiated was signed in 2014, according to a November update by the association, and workers have been without a raise since 2019.

“Flight attendants are frontline workers left shouldering the weight of inflation without the compensation needed to keep pace with the industry,” the association wrote in a statement, and added that attendants’ quality of life “could be improved with a new collective bargaining agreement.”

Recently the union has been pushing for a new contract to raise hourly wages, joining flight attendants from other airlines, including United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Southwest, which are making similar demands.

Ensuring flight attendants are properly paid is especially important considering their work model includes many hours of unpaid work. On average, full-time flight attendants only get about 75 hours of hourly pay each month, and pay often only officially begins once the plane’s doors close, rather than compensation that also accounts for hours when they need to be at the airport or on the plane during the boarding process.

“One of the most stressful parts of the flight experience is during the boarding process,” the union wrote in a May 20 summary, adding, “yet we are not paid for this work.”

Securing boarding pay, the union wrote, “is an important step in addressing this historic inequity”; other airlines have notably been making those changes, albeit slowly. In June 2022, Delta Air Lines instituted boarding pay for flight attendants, offering workers half their hourly rate during boarding, after facing threats of a union campaign. Delta, however, is the only major U.S. airline whose flight attendants are not unionized.

The union is now proposing a 33% pay raise with a cap at $91 per hour during the first year of a new contract, with pay raises of 5%, 4%, and 4% for the remaining years of a four-year agreement. It’s also calling for retroactive pay raises based on how much attendants worked during the last five years of negotiations.

American Airlines “refused to budge off a top rate of $76 per hour, plus boarding pay and other improvements,” the union wrote in the summary, but the company included benefits like boarding pay, higher 401K matching contributions, and profit sharing on the same formula as pilots in its most recent contract proposal to the union.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Environmental groups critical of new B.C. government old-growth logging report

CBC
Sun, May 26, 2024 

Advocate Eddie Petryshen walks next to logs that were cut from old-growth trees near Revelstoke, B.C. The B.C. government has released a report on its progress on some recommendations regarding old-growth logging — with environmental advocates saying the government should move quicker.

 (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada - image credit)


The B.C. government has released a report on its progress protecting old-growth forests, but some First Nations and environmental groups say the plan released Friday falls short.

The report comes three years after the B.C. government committed to policies to conserve old-growth trees, and includes updated timelines on protections for old growth.

Now, environmental groups are urging the government to accelerate its protections and issue emergency logging bans in old-growth forests.


Sarah Korpan, B.C. government campaign specialist with non-profit Ecojustice, said she was disappointed to see the province change its timeline for implementing enhanced old-growth protection.

"This highlights a pattern of behaviour from this government of delaying the action required to meaningfully protect at-risk species and ecosystems, including old growth forests," she said.

The remains of a cut block is seen near Port Renfrew in 2021. Canada's forest carbon accounting system is a complex model that estimates the carbon in harvested trees, along with the carbon removals from the replanted trees and many other sources to get an accurate picture of forest emissions.

The province committed to deliver on 14 recommendations, including enhanced mapping and monitoring of old-growth forests. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)

Old-growth trees, according to the province, are those trees that are at least 140 years old in B.C.'s Interior, and 250 years old on the coast.

In 2020, the province committed to a three-year action plan to protect old-growth forests which included protecting at-risk old-growth forests and policies to protect biodiversity and ecosystems.

The province committed to deliver on 14 recommendations, including enhancing mapping and monitoring of old-growth forests, consulting Indigenous leaders and deferring development in old forests.

More than three years later, the province says in its new report it has implemented eight recommendations, and has extended deadlines to deliver on the remaining six recommendations.

Now, the province has committed to finalizing its framework for stewarding land and water by 2025, along with producing a plan to address the ecological risks of forest service and other resource roads.

It will also run a compliance program until 2029 to ensure its orders on old-growth areas are followed.

First Nations urging faster action

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said in a press release the action plan is a "welcome step," but the B.C. government must accelerate its timeline.

"We are pleased that this government shares our concern for old-growth trees," he said. "We must take immediate steps to stop the logging of at-risk old-growth on the ground."

In its report, the B.C. government said after consulting with First Nations, it has temporarily protected 2.4 million hectares of old forest by designating it as what's known as a deferral area.

Indigenous leaders in British Columbia say opposition political leaders derailed a plan that would have cleared the way for shared decision-making between the province and First Nations about the use of public land in their territories. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, says they are "disgusted" that the leaders of BC United and the B.C. Conservatives "leveraged" the province's plan "as a shameless opportunity for partisan political gain." Phillip speaks during a news conference in Vancouver, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.More

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said in a statement that the government should accelerate its timeline for protecting old-growth forests. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press)

The process, which the province introduced in 2021, prevents logging in an area for two to four years. Korpan said what happens to the trees in these deferral areas once that period ends is unclear.

Tegan Hansen, senior forest campaigner for Stand.Earth, said the government's plan lacks a commitment to bring a long-term end to logging in old-growth forests.

"What we can't do is let these really vulnerable, irreplaceable stands of old-growth be cut down," Hansen said. "We really need to look at the urgency from the province and ask our elected officials to take a stand."

Jens Wieting, the senior policy and science adviser for Sierra Club B.C., says that the last time the province collected data on rates of old-growth logging was in 2022.

"We need more transparency. We need more up-to-date information," he said. "The last data available for 2022 shows over 160 soccer fields' [worth] of old growth forests getting logged every day."


B.C. misses the mark with old growth update, critics claim

Local Journalism Initiative
Fri, May 24, 2024 



The B.C. government continues to move at a glacial pace to meet an overdue promise to transform the logging industry and protect endangered old growth forests and ecosystems, say B.C. conservation groups.

On Monday, the province issued its latest progress report on transforming forestry practices to preserve ancient forests and vital ecosystems and meet 14 calls to action from the old-growth strategic review (OGSR) completed in spring of 2020.

The From Review to Action plan is a lackluster effort that fails to include any new steps, specific details, or deadlines urgently needed to preserve what little old growth remains, said Jens Wieting, Sierra Club BC’s senior policy and science advisor.

“I’m disappointed. Without ambitious timelines and milestones, the newly-released update does not guarantee the necessary forestry reforms nor timely interim and long-term protection of at-risk old-growth,” said Wieting.

It’s been four years since the review was completed. The plan included immediate, short and long-term targets for industry changes over a three year period, he noted.

The most urgent review recommendations called for the immediate deferral of logging in diverse forests facing the greatest risk of irreversible biodiversity loss, protecting more massive trees, partnering with First Nations to include communities’ input in forestry decisions and developing public transparency and reporting in the industry.

“Now we’re seeing the province say, ‘It will take years to achieve the full intent of some of the recommendations,’” Wieting said.

In the old growth update, the province cited progress on forestry reforms and biodiversity protection, highlighting a $1.1-billion three-way agreement between British Columbia, Indigenous leaders, and Ottawa to protect 30 per cent of B.C.'s land and oceans by 2030.

The province is also improving on-the-ground understanding on the state of old growth forests through better mapping, data and knowledge sharing, and aims to create more local forestry jobs, the update said.

"Aligned with the Old Growth Strategic Review, we are supporting local decision-making in forest landscape planning, getting fibre that was previously considered waste to mills and boosting made-in-B.C. wood manufacturing that provides more local jobs for every tree harvested," said Forestry Minister Bruce Ralston in an emailed statement.

“By working together, we will make sure our forests are healthy and continue to benefit communities and people for the long term.”

The province’s ongoing commitment and work with First Nations to implement the strategy’s goals is commendable, Wieting said.

However, most notably, the province has secured logging deferrals in less than half of the 2.6 million hectares of the most at-risk old-growth areas sheltering the biggest, oldest trees, or the rarest or most ecologically important habitat prioritized by the technical advisory panel (TAP) in 2021, he stressed.

That still leaves 1.3 million hectares of the most critical stands without any apparent protection from logging, Wieting said. The government is working to improve mapping and data on old growth forests, but has more than enough existing information to take interim measures to secure deferrals in the highest priority areas, he added.

Ralston's office did not provide comment or respond to questions by Canada's National Observer about what the plan is for the unprotected priority deferral areas moving forward and what level of protection, if any, they can expect.

To date, the province and First Nations have temporarily deferred logging in 2.4 million hectares of old growth in 11 areas throughout B.C., including some parts of the Fairy Creek watershed and central Walbran area, where a number of tense and protracted logging blockades took place.

However, it's not clear to what extent those announced deferrals are a result of new protection measures, or if they include previously existing provincial forestry protection measures already in place, such as the old growth or wildlife management areas protected from logging set up in the Fairy Creek region.

Further, there's also little clarity about where the TAP’s prioritized deferrals areas are located and how long the temporary protections are in place, said Tobyn Neame, forest campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, in a statement.

The old growth update states the immediate recommendations in the review such as the urgent TAP deferrals are in “advanced” stages of completion, an assessment the Wilderness Committee categorically disputes, said Neame.

However, in tandem with the report, the forestry ministry website did release some data that gave a partial breakdown of the current inventory of old growth forests in B.C. — such as how much old growth is deferred overall, the amount of prioritized TAP areas deferred or not and what TAP areas have been harvested since 2021.

To date, only three per cent of the total TAP prioritized areas, or 77,847 hectares, fall inside timber harvest areas with existing cutting permits. Nearly a third of that amount — predominantly big tree old growth — has been logged, according to the ministry. The minister's office did not clarify if additional cutting permits will be issued moving forward in other unprotected TAP priority areas.

The report also postpones the spring roll-out of B.C.’s new blueprint to protect biodiversity until 2025 after the provincial election, said Neame. The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework plan aims to develop wildlife recovery plans, research and laws that value nature over resource extraction and collaboratively steward B.C.'s lands and waters with First Nations.

The Nature Agreement and attached funding is a critical and immediate tool the province could employ, said Wieting. It would allow First Nations to consider old growth logging deferrals in their territories. Securing the immediate and long-term protection of the most ecologically valuable old growth stands could pay a double dividend by helping B.C. meet its commitment to protect 30 per cent of its most valuable forests and lands, Wieting noted.

“It will take generations for industrially degraded forests to recover,” he said.

“But we don’t need many years to protect what's left of the last endangered old growth forests, to implement the paradigm shift in forest stewardship and move away from destructive logging and ongoing loss of biodiversity.”

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Biden overtime pay rule challenged by US business groups

Updated Thu, May 23, 2024
By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -A coalition of U.S. business groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a Biden administration rule that would extend mandatory overtime pay to 4 million workers, saying it goes too far.

The groups filed a complaint in Sherman, Texas federal court late on Wednesday claiming the U.S. Department of Labor lacked the power to adopt the rule and that it would force businesses to cut jobs and limit workers' hours.

The rule would require employers to pay overtime premiums to workers who earn a salary of less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year, when they work more than 40 hours in a week.


The current threshold of about $35,500 per year was set by the Trump administration in a 2020 rule that advocacy groups and many Democrats have said does not cover enough workers.

The business groups in the lawsuit said the costs of complying with the new rule "will force many smaller employers and non-profits operating on fixed budgets to cut critical programming, staffing, and services to the public."

The Labor Department declined to comment. In adopting the rule, the agency said that lower-paid salaried workers often do the same jobs as their hourly counterparts, but work more hours for no additional pay.

The groups involved in the lawsuit include the National Federation of Independent Business, the International Franchise Association and the National Retail Federation.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump.

The only other judge in Sherman, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, in 2017 blocked a rule that would have raised the overtime salary threshold to about $47,000.

Mazzant said the cutoff was so high that it would sweep in some management employees who are not entitled to overtime pay under federal wage law.

"The Department’s 2024 Overtime Rule largely repeats the errors of the 2016 Rule and fails to address the flaws previously identified by this Court," the business groups said in their lawsuit.

Under the new rule, the salary threshold will increase to $43,888 on July 1 and to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. And starting in 2027, the threshold will automatically increase every three years to reflect changes in average earnings.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, William Maclean)

HSBC’s Americas Chief Says He Won’t Compel 5 Days in the Office

Todd Gillespie and Manus Cranny
Thu, May 23, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc won’t force US staffers back to the office five days a week unless new regulations from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority require it.

“We will adjust to the Finra rules, we will make sure whoever needs to be here five days a week will be here five days a week, but I don’t want to decree people coming back,” Michael Roberts, chief executive officer for the US and Americas, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “I want them to come back because they want to come back and they feel productive and they feel good about it.”

Finra is preparing to sunset pandemic-era accommodations for monitoring brokers, traders and other staff. Banks are weighing how many workers they’ll force to return to the office full-time, while the regulator itself has said tighter attendance policies aren’t necessarily required, depending on how banks respond to the rules.

Even without new requirements, HSBC’s New York office attendance has doubled to 80% after the company opened its new building to employees, Roberts said at the offices in New York’s Hudson Yards neighborhood.

Read More: Wall Street’s Five-Day Office Rules Aren’t Our Fault, Finra Says

“Today, our overall attendance levels are 80%,” he added. “Before we moved? Less than 40%. We’re running out of space very quickly, and in fact we just took some additional space in this building.”

The London-based company is looking to establish more of a footprint in the US, where many of its wealthiest corporate and individual clients have a significant presence. HSBC officially opens its local office on Thursday, where about 400 traders are working and the bank recently opened a new flagship wealth hub. It has about 214,000 employees worldwide.

The bank is also on the hunt for its next chief executive officer after Noel Quinn’s surprise announcement last month that he’ll be stepping down. The board is leaning toward appointing an internal candidate, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.

There “clearly is an advantage for someone who knows the institution” to take the top job, Roberts said, declining to say if he will put himself up for it. The bank is talking to both internal and external candidates, he added.