Latest news with #Furukawa
5 days ago
- Politics
Ecuador apologizes to plantation workers who were exposed to 'modern slavery' conditions
QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuador's government issued a public apology on Saturday to a group of plantation workers who were subjected to slave-like conditions according to a ruling issued last year by the country's Constitutional Court. In an event held near the presidential palace in Quito, various members of Ecuador's Cabinet recognized that more than 300 workers of a Japanese-owned abaca plantation were forced to live in conditions of 'modern slavery' with Labor Minister Ivone Nuñez pledging that Ecuador will strive to 'build a state that guarantees the human rights of workers.' The apology issued by government officials is one of the reparation measures ordered by the court last year. In the ruling, the Constitutional Court determined that between 1963 and 2019 workers of the Japanese company Furukawa were forced to live in dormitories without basic services at a plantation in western Ecuador, where accidents were common due to the lack of safety training. Former employees of Furukawa attended Saturday's ceremony along with their lawyers, who have accused the company of not paying reparations to the workers who were affected by the harsh conditions at its plantation in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas province. Furukawa representatives were not immediately available for comment. The company changed owners in 2014, and it has said that conditions have changed since then. Furukawa has also asked Ecuador's government to lift a ban on the sale of its properties in Ecuador so that it can pay reparations to workers. The abaca plant, which is also known as manila hemp, is used to make specialty papers, ropes and fishing nets. The plant resembles a banana plant, but its fruits are not edible.
Korea Herald
5 days ago
- Korea Herald
Ecuador apologizes to plantation workers who were exposed to 'modern slavery' conditions
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador's government issued a public apology on Saturday to a group of plantation workers who were subjected to slave-like conditions according to a ruling issued last year by the country's Constitutional Court. In an event held near the presidential palace in Quito, various members of Ecuador's Cabinet recognized that more than 300 workers of a Japanese-owned abaca plantation were forced to live in conditions of 'modern slavery' with Labor Minister Ivone Nunez pledging that Ecuador will strive to 'build a state that guarantees the human rights of workers.' The apology issued by government officials is one of the reparation measures ordered by the court last year. In the ruling, the Constitutional Court determined that between 1963 and 2019 workers of the Japanese company Furukawa were forced to live in dormitories without basic services at a plantation in western Ecuador, where accidents were common due to the lack of safety training. Former employees of Furukawa attended Saturday's ceremony along with their lawyers, who have accused the company of not paying reparations to the workers who were affected by the harsh conditions at its plantation in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas province. Furukawa representatives were not immediately available for comment. The company changed owners in 2014, and it has said that conditions have changed since then. Furukawa has also asked Ecuador's government to lift a ban on the sale of its properties in Ecuador so that it can pay reparations to workers. The abaca plant, which is also known as manila hemp, is used to make specialty papers, ropes and fishing nets. The plant resembles a banana plant, but its fruits are not edible. Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas and is also among a handful of countries that produces large quantities of abaca.
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Morgan Stanley Sticks to Its Buy Rating for Asics (ASCCF)
In a report released yesterday, Ai Furukawa from Morgan Stanley maintained a Buy rating on Asics (ASCCF – Research Report), with a price target of Yen4,100.00. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter According to TipRanks, Furukawa is an analyst with an average return of -8.4% and a 33.33% success rate. The word on The Street in general, suggests a Hold analyst consensus rating for Asics. Based on Asics' latest earnings release for the quarter ending March 31, the company reported a quarterly revenue of $208.31 billion and a net profit of $31.65 billion. In comparison, last year the company earned a revenue of $174.1 billion and had a net profit of $26.74 billion
The Sun
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Ecuador apologizes to farm workers deemed to live like slaves
QUITO: Ecuador's government apologized Saturday to some 300 people who worked as farmers for a Japanese textile firm in conditions which a court likened to modern-day slavery. These people worked on plantations that produced abaca, a fiber used in textiles and the auto industry. As of 2021, Furukawa's plantations for abaca covered almost 23,000 hectares spread over three provinces on the Pacific coast, where the majority of the population is Black. Some workers gave birth to children in unsanitary and overcrowded camps, while others were denied proper medical attention after work-related injuries, according to testimony given at a news conference in Quito back in December. That month the Constitutional Court ordered Furukawa to pay $120,000 to each of 342 victims -- a total of around $41 million. The company was also ordered to make a public apology to them. It has not complied with either order. The court said that over the course of five years Furukawa had people living in conditions of modern-day slavery in its abaca fields. It also ordered the government to apologize to the workers, and that is what happened Saturday. The company violated 'national and international regulations that affected, in essence, human dignity,' Labor Minister Ivonne Nunez said. She said 'the state, through the various ministries, as the sentence explains, turned a deaf ear' to the plight of the abused workers. Nunez spoke at a ceremony with other government ministers at Quito's Independence Plaza, as ex-Furukawa workers chanted slogans such as 'reparations, reparations' and 'modern slavery, never again.' After the court ruling, Furukawa said it does not have the money to pay the damages ordered by the tribunal and called them disproportionate. Back in December, at a meeting at a human rights group's headquarters, plantation workers told horror stories of their lives raising abaca. 'We have been confronting the monster that is Furukawa,' Segundo Ordonez, a 59-year-old farmer, said at the meeting.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Ecuador apologizes to plantation workers who were exposed to 'modern slavery' conditions
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador's government issued a public apology on Saturday to a group of plantation workers who were subjected to slave-like conditions according to a ruling issued last year by the country's Constitutional Court. In an event held near the presidential palace in Quito, various members of Ecuador's Cabinet recognized that more than 300 workers of a Japanese-owned abaca plantation were forced to live in conditions of 'modern slavery' with Labor Minister Ivone Nuñez pledging that Ecuador will strive to 'build a state that guarantees the human rights of workers.' The apology issued by government officials is one of the reparation measures ordered by the court last year. In the ruling, the Constitutional Court determined that between 1963 and 2019 workers of the Japanese company Furukawa were forced to live in dormitories without basic services at a plantation in western Ecuador, where accidents were common due to the lack of safety training. Former employees of Furukawa attended Saturday's ceremony along with their lawyers, who have accused the company of not paying reparations to the workers who were affected by the harsh conditions at its plantation in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas province. Furukawa representatives were not immediately available for comment. The company changed owners in 2014, and it has said that conditions have changed since then. Furukawa has also asked Ecuador's government to lift a ban on the sale of its properties in Ecuador so that it can pay reparations to workers. The abaca plant, which is also known as manila hemp, is used to make specialty papers, ropes and fishing nets. The plant resembles a banana plant, but its fruits are not edible. Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas and is also among a handful of countries that produces large quantities of abaca,
