Chiquita lays off remaining day workers in Panama
The layoffs are effective Friday, it said.
Chiquita Panama had fired 5,000 workers in late May as Panamanians across the country protested against several issues including a social security reform they said would affect their future pensions. Its management left Panama by early June.
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Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Democrat mayor slammed for spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do city employees' jobs
A California politician is slammed after spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do his employees' jobs. San Jose Mayor, Matt Mahan, spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses - at $400 per account - for city workers to use. By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15 percent of its workers, trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing, and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes. Mahan staff even used it to help draft talking points before a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, and he used it to help write a $5.6billion budget for the new fiscal year. Mahan is now pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley's biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology. 'The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,' Mahan said in an interview. 'It's always bumpy with new technologies.' Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1million residents, but some residents are angry he's spending money on the program when the city is already in a deficit. He is not the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes. While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches. 'Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,' he said. 'You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.' However he added that 'you still need a human being in the loop. You can't just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.' However, not everyone is happy about his purchase. 'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote on X. 'After all, AI has been writing Mahon's speeches & possibly X posts & replies! An 'authentic' mayor, indeed.' 'If AI is being used in San José government, the results are invisible to the taxpayers footing the bill. Mahan's obsession with tech gimmicks is just a distraction from his failure to lead on the issues that matter: public safety, housing, and restoring pride in our neighborhoods,' another wrote. 'San José doesn't need more tech talk. It needs results.' Another complained of the deficient the city is in. However, not everyone is happy about his purchase. 'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote 'Matt, pass that good stuff you are smoking. SJC is in a recession, a $43 million SJ budget deficit & all factors blamed r Sanctuary/ DEI related,' they wrote. One of San Jose's early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city's transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12million grant for electric vehicle chargers. Arjona Amador set up a customized 'AI agent' to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document. Arjona Amado started using it to help save time. 'The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,' she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government. Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings. With close relationships to some of the tech industry's biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area's biggest cities are helping to promote AI adoption. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft's Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT. San Francisco's plan says it comes with 'robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances - not replaces - human judgment.' San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn't yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology's propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations. ChatGPT's digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' commission. In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document. Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot's capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person's behalf. Developing and selling such 'AI agents' is now a key focus for the tech industry. More than an hour's drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent. These include allowing the parks and recreation department to use an AI agent to help residents book amenities or check how busy they are before visiting. Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn't buy a full license for the technology due to the cost. The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40 percent of 'agentic AI' projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, 'due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.' San Jose's mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers 'in the bowels of bureaucracy' to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork. 'There's just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,' Mahan said. 'Whether it's finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 [to] 50 percent more productive - quickly.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
New laws set to protect penalty rates and overtime pay for millions of Aussie workers
Australian workers who rely on award wages would have their rights to penalty rates and overtime pay protected under one of the new federal parliament's first bills. The legislation would prohibit award-earning employees from accepting penalty rate reductions in exchange for a higher base rate of pay if it would leave them worse off. New employment minister Amanda Rishworth earmarked the bill in Canberra on Saturday as the first off the rank for the returning Labor government. If passed, it will amend the Fair Work Act to provide stronger protections for the roughly 2.6million people whose pay is set by an award. An award is a legally mandated minimum rate of pay for workers within certain industries or occupations. People covered by awards are more likely to work on a part-time or casual basis and be women or under 35 years of age. In justifying the legislation, Rishworth said there were cases before the Fair Work Commission she feared could reduce worker's overall pay. 'What's become clear is there is a number of cases on foot which are trying to roll in penalty rates or reduce penalty rates in an unfair way,' she said. 'And so, what's become clear is that we need added legal protection to make sure penalty rates and overtime are protected in our award system.' She appeared alongside retail workers who said penalty rates were a crucial component of their overall pay packages. Retail worker Liarne said she earned about $6.35 an hour in penalty rates, about $7,500 over the course of a year. 'That's really important because it helps me pay for rent, groceries, school fees and the care of my animals, which I love dearly,' she said. 'Penalty rates are really important.' Another retail worker, Daniel, said his penalty rate earnings - about $85 per week - allowed him to foot the bill for necessities and lifestyle expenses. 'Generally, I find living on six to $700 a week is a struggle, whether you've got a partner to rely on or not,' he said. 'Penalty rates honestly makes a huge difference, and without it, I'd have to work more. See my family less, see my dog less, see my friends less. 'Just not go to the movies, not ever have a holiday. It's a myriad of things that would affect me.' Rishworth said employers in the retail, clerical and banking sectors had applied to the Fair Work Commission to 'trade away' penalty rates of lower-paid workers. The announcement could add to the grievances likely to be aired by business groups at the productivity summit to be hosted at Parliament House in August. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox told the A ustralian Financial Review there was a 'dark irony' in Labor's attempts to fast-track the bill at a time when productivity talks loomed. Despite ongoing efforts to negotiate with the government over the proposed reforms, Mr Willox said there was 'obvious concern that it could further reduce workplace flexibility, especially at a time when we are already seeing rising national unemployment and the private sector clearly in job-shedding mode'. Labor will only need support from the Greens to secure a majority for the bill which it expects to sail through parliament soon after it resumes on Tuesday.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
It's time the world woke up and noticed the Argentinian miracle
Okay, it is still only on a par with Egypt and Suriname. But the credit ratings agency Moody's this week gave Argentina its second upgrade since its radical libertarian president Javier Milei took power. It is yet more evidence of the dramatic improvement in the country's fortunes. Growth has accelerated, inflation is coming under control, rents are falling and its debts are steadily becoming more manageable. The dire warnings from the economic establishment that Milei's bold experiment in slashing the burden of the state have been proved woefully wide of the mark. The only question now is this: when will the rest of the world wake up to the Argentinian miracle? While France scraps bank holidays to keep the bond markets happy, while the Chancellor Rachel Reeves struggles to fill the latest 'black hole' in the nation's books, and while even the United States bond market frets about the independence of the Federal Reserve, one country – and a very unlikely one as well – is getting upgraded. Moody's this week bumped up Argentina, a nation that for 50 years has been characterised by bailouts and mismanagement, from Caa3 to Caa1. It cited 'the extensive liberalisation of exchange and (to a lesser extent) capital controls' for the improving outlook. Sure, it is still technically rated as 'junk' – after all, this is a country with nine debt defaults, including the largest in IMF history, over the last 200 years. But the direction of travel is clearly right. That is just one indicator among many. The economy overall is expected to expand by 5.7pc this year despite the huge cuts to public spending and the 'chainsaw' applied to government employment by the president. Inflation came down to a monthly rate of 1.6pc last month, which may not exactly count as Swiss-style stability, but is a lot lower than the 200pc-plus it was running at when Milei took office. The IMF has rolled over the massive loan it extended to the country under the previous administration. Rents, a major problem with housing unaffordable to many people, have fallen by 40pc over the last year after the government scrapped all rent controls, bringing a flood of properties on to the market. Bond prices are rising, with the government able to borrow money on the global markets again. Sure, there are plenty of challenges ahead. Poverty is widespread, and there are still relatively few new industries, although its shale oil and gas sector is starting to boom, with Vista Energy reporting a 57pc increase in output this year, and forecasting it will double over the next 24 months. One point is surely clear, however: in the 18 months since Milei took office, Argentina's economy has been transformed. It has been achieved by radically slashing the size of the state. Promising a 'shock therapy' for the economy, the government has laid off more than 50,000 public sector workers, closed or merged more than 100 state departments and agencies, frozen public infrastructure projects, cut energy and transport subsidies, and even returned the state budget to a surplus. Milei has not followed through on all his promises. Argentina has not switched to the dollar as its official currency, as he pledged it would, and doesn't look likely to any time soon (although come to think of it, on current trends its peso may be a better bet than the American currency). But he has gone further and faster in deregulating the economy than any politician in modern times. The improvements in its performance are a stark contrast to the catastrophe that was forecast, and probably quietly hoped for, by a majority of the Left-leaning economic establishment. On taking office, 103 prominent economists, including France's Thomas Piketty, wrote a public letter warning that 'apparently simple solutions may be appealing, they are likely to cause more devastation in the real world'. It hasn't happened. Instead, Argentina is steadily recovering from decades of mismanagement. The real question is this: when will the rest of the world wake up and notice? The bulk of the policy-making and financial establishment still inhabits a mental universe where government spending is what drives growth, where regulation is seen as the key to innovation, where 'national champions' are expected to lead new industries, while industrial strategies will pick the winners of the future, and the only role for the private sector is a 'partner' for the finance ministry. We see that in the UK, with the National Wealth Fund getting billions in funding even though no one knows what it will actually do, and with GB Energy getting even more for the green transition. We see it across the European Union, with endless regulations that are bizarrely designed to promote competitiveness, and with the Commission in Brussels only this week proposing a turnover tax on every business of any significant size within the bloc. We even see it in the US, with Donald Trump, hardly an economic liberal, imposing tariffs to try to reshape the economy instead of leaving it to the market to decide where companies should invest. And we see it most of all in China, with industries from autos to aerospace to artificial intelligence receiving huge state support to conquer the world. Argentina under Javier Milei is the only major country taking a different path. Perhaps because subsidies, controls and protectionism have turned it into a basket-case, it was ready to try the alternative. The results are now clear. In reality, open, free markets and a smaller state are the only way to restore growth, and Milei is proving it all over again.
