Italian car giant Fiat today pulled out of talks aimed at securing the future of Opel in Berlin, citing that the German government had been “unreasonable”. The Italians thinking the German government is unreasonable – who would have thought that…

Apprentice 2009 update……..

24 year old Retail Business Manager Howard Ebison has been evicted from the house..
No! Sorry…fired from the board room…mixing up my reality shows again!

The “Nice Guy” of the boardroom was fired by Sir Alan Sugar for being too cautious and risk adverse in his choice of product whilst project managing the losing team on the shopping channel task.

Shame our banking sector didn’t take more of this approach?!

Nestlé, Shell and the Cabinet Office are among the employers backing a new centre for workplace health at Lancaster University.

The Centre for Organizational Health and Wellbeing was formally launched at the House of Commons last night and will see academics work with health and HR professionals on a wide range of research projects related to workplace well-being.

Professor Susan Cartwright, director of the centre, said the new organisation would focus “not just on the factors that lead to poor health but the processes that positively enhance health”.

The employers backing the centre, also including Tesco and Manchester City Council, will inform research that will initially focus on absenteeism at work, leadership and the effectiveness of health promotion initiatives.

“The organisations that have joined have recognised that healthy people are really important to their company and there is much they can do to promote, maintain and enhance health,” said Cartwright.

The launch of the centre comes on the back of Dame Carol Black’s review into the working population, which called for a new approach to workplace health. Sickness absence costs the UK economy £13.2 billion a year, according to the CBI.

Health minister Ben Bradshaw said there was a clear business case for promoting workplace health and called for a “revolution” in approaches to ill-health prevention.

“Over the next few years we will not see the same significant increase in NHS spending as we have in recent years. We will have to manage on less generous increases with big health changes around an aging population. Unless we get a handle on prevention and the workplace agenda we will not be able to sustain the health system,” Bradshaw said.

At the launch event Cartwright also revealed new research from the centre, which found that two-thirds of UK employees were spending more time at work in an attempt to safeguard their jobs during the recession. Almost half (42 per cent) of the 2,247 workers surveyed said they felt more insecure about their jobs over the past three months.

“In the future we might see less absence but more people going to work in a recession to prove their commitment to their organisation,” added Cartwright.

The government intends to introduce new regulations to prevent union members being denied employment by secret blacklists, business secretary Lord Mandelson said today.

The Information Commissioner reported in March that 40 construction companies had subscribed to a database used to vet construction workers, which has now been closed under data protection law. Many of those on the list were union activists who were therefore branded as troublemakers.

“People should not be victimised at work or denied access to employment opportunities because of their trade union membership,” Mandelson said. “Evidence from the Information Commissioner showed there was a problem. There is already legal protection against the misuse of people’s personal details. We now plan to strengthen the law by introducing new regulations to outlaw the compilation, dissemination and use of blacklists in this way.”

The government has promised a short consultation early in the summer on revised regulations, which would supplement the provisions of the Employment Relations Act 1999. Regulations could then be approved by Parliament in the autumn.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “It is outrageous that unscrupulous employers have been victimising trade unionists through shady blacklisting practices that have no place in a democratic society. I am glad that the government is now consulting speedily on this issue which will, I hope, lead to quick and effective action to outlaw this utterly unacceptable practice.”

Last week, construction worker Mick Dooley became the first person to take legal action over the blacklisting scandal that emerged in March. Dooley, a prominent member of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians who has stood for the leadership of the union, has lodged a claim against Robert McAlpine, one of the firms alleged to have used the list.