Foreign Workers

LONDON - Thousands of energy workers across Britain walked off the job yesterday, joining a growing campaign of protests against foreign citizens being hired for an oil industry construction project in England. Seven hundred employees held a wildcat strike at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, provoked by the decision of Italian construction company IREM to use Italian and Portuguese workers for a $280 million project at Total's Lindsey oil refinery in northeastern England.

A $5 million grant from the Department of Labor, funded by fees companies pay to bring in temporary skilled workers from overseas, will help train hundreds of Greater Boston workers and students for careers in life sciences and health care, Mayor Thomas M. Menino said Thursday. The grant will underwrite the Metro Boston Skilled Careers in Life Sciences Initiative, a four-year program to train 360 residents of more than 80 communities, along with support for student internships and career counseling for some 3,000 individuals.

Major banks sought permission to bring thousands of foreigners into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were being laid off, according to an Associated Press review. The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years, positions like corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts, and human resources specialists, at an average annual salary of $90,721.

Chevron Corp. says it is still trying to extinguish a five-day old fire on its rig off Nigeria's coast after presuming two foreign workers dead. Chevron said Friday it is preparing to drill a relief well to fight the fire. Ian Laidlaw, an official from FODE Drilling Ltd., which was operating the rig on Chevron's behalf and employed the two foreign workers, declined to give their nationalities. Chevron announced Thursday that a search for the missing workers had been called off. The San Ramon, California-based energy company says 152 other workers were rescued from the...

A federal investigation found that at least $7 million in federal stimulus money intended to provide jobs for unemployed Oregonians instead paid wages to 254 foreign workers. The Oregonian reports ( http://bit.ly/qIcQRW) the money went for forest cleanup jobs in central Oregon in 2009 when unemployment was over 11 percent. Contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs and brought in foreign workers. A report this week from the Labor Department's inspector general found the contractors used legal loopholes but violated no laws or...

It was perfect apple-picking weather on a crisp day at Carlson Orchards in Harvard, a family-owned farm that grows 21 varieties of the fruit. But on this weekday, not far from the pick-your-own rows, were several Jamaican men filling up large buckets with up to 30 pounds of apples over and over, climbing up and down wooden ladders about 10 times every hour, in an autumn ritual that's as emblematic of the New England apple industry as leisurely weekend...

Patni Computer Systems Ltd., an Indian outsourcing firm with its US headquarters in Cambridge, has agreed to pay more than $2.4 million after federal investigators found it underpaid hundreds of employees hired under a controversial visa program for highly skilled foreign workers. The Department of Labor said Patni hired 607 employees to do computer work in 32 states in 2004 and 2005, but they were not paid prevailing local wage rates, as required under the H-1B visa program. Patni will pay the workers more than $2.4 million under an administrative...

A $5 million grant from the Department of Labor, funded by fees companies pay to bring in temporary skilled workers from overseas, will help train hundreds of Greater Boston workers and students for careers in life sciences and health care, Mayor Thomas M. Menino said Thursday. The grant will underwrite the Metro Boston Skilled Careers in Life Sciences Initiative, a four-year program to train 360 residents of more than 80 communities, along with support for student internships and career counseling for some 3,000 individuals.

Chevron Corp. says it is still trying to extinguish a five-day old fire on its rig off Nigeria's coast after presuming two foreign workers dead. Chevron said Friday it is preparing to drill a relief well to fight the fire. Ian Laidlaw, an official from FODE Drilling Ltd., which was operating the rig on Chevron's behalf and employed the two foreign workers, declined to give their nationalities. Chevron announced Thursday that a search for the missing workers had been called off. The San Ramon, California-based energy company says 152 other workers...

US companies are seeking more visas to bring highly skilled foreign workers into the country, hinting at a stronger labor market. The annual quota of 85,000 H-1B visa applications was filled in eight months this year, two months earlier than in 2010 - although not nearly as quickly as in the years before the recession, when the quota could be exhausted in as little as two days. "It indicates an improved economy, but not like boom times," said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who helped create the H-1B visa program.

BEIRUT - Using bulldozers and their bare hands, Lebanese workers pulled bodies from the rubble of a collapsed five-story residential building yesterday, bringing the death toll to 25, officials said. Most of the dead were foreign workers living in Lebanon. The owner of the building was arrested yesterday, a day after the building suddenly disintegrated into a pile of twisted metal and broken concrete. "The ground shook like an earthquake; that's what we all thought," said Mazen Farhat, 46, who lives in the area and was passing by when the building collapsed.

US companies are seeking more visas to bring highly skilled foreign workers into the country, hinting at a stronger labor market. The annual quota of 85,000 H-1B visa applications was filled in eight months this year, two months earlier than in 2010 - although not nearly as quickly as in the years before the recession, when the quota could be exhausted in as little as two days. "It indicates an improved economy, but not like boom times," said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who helped create the H-1B visa program.

It was perfect apple-picking weather on a crisp day at Carlson Orchards in Harvard, a family-owned farm that grows 21 varieties of the fruit. But on this weekday, not far from the pick-your-own rows, were several Jamaican men filling up large buckets with up to 30 pounds of apples over and over, climbing up and down wooden ladders about 10 times every hour, in an autumn ritual that's as emblematic of the New England apple industry as leisurely weekend...

A federal investigation found that at least $7 million in federal stimulus money intended to provide jobs for unemployed Oregonians instead paid wages to 254 foreign workers. The Oregonian reports ( http://bit.ly/qIcQRW) the money went for forest cleanup jobs in central Oregon in 2009 when unemployment was over 11 percent. Contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs and brought in foreign workers. A report this week from the Labor Department's inspector general found the contractors used legal...

GENEVA — Up to 1 million foreign workers and others trapped in Libya are expected to need emergency aid because of fighting in the North African nation, aid officials said yesterday as they sought $160 million to deal with the crisis. UN officials say that amount is only for the next three months — and they expect the crisis to go on longer than that. The United Nations is effectively frozen out of sections controlled by leader Moammar Khadafy’s forces and is only seeking humanitarian aid for opposition-controlled areas.

JERUSALEM — Israeli government offices that provide a wide array of public services are pulling the plug on online payments on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays, potentially creating another source of friction between the religious and secular in the Jewish state. Ultra-Orthodox Cabinet ministers are leading the charge to enforce the religious prohibition on spending money on Jewish holy days. But for nonreligious residents, tourists, and foreign workers, the planned ban joins two leading ills of Israeli life — red tape and religious restrictions — in...

WASHINGTON - More investment in math and science education and a more liberal policy toward skilled foreign workers are crucial if America is to avoid losing its competitive edge in the world, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates told Congress yesterday. The shortage of scientists and engineers is so acute that "we must do both: reform our education system and our immigration policies. If we don't American companies simply will not have the talent to innovate and compete," Gates said in testimony to the House Science Committee.

ABUJA, Nigeria -- Eight foreign workers, including one American, were kidnapped from a drilling rig off Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta yesterday in the latest incident highlighting the tenuous security of oil operations in this nation, Africa's largest crude producer. The kidnappers have offered to negotiate the release of the hostages -- six Britons, the American, and a Canadian -- who were taken before dawn from the drilling rig Bulford Dolphin, according to the company that operates the rig, which was about 40 miles off the Nigerian coast.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration toughened rules yesterday on wages and job safety protections for temporary farm workers, reversing a Bush-era policy that unions said fostered cheap labor and undercut the hiring of Americans. The Labor Department issued regulations that, among other things, will require growers to make a greater effort to fill crop-picking jobs with domestic workers. Thousands of foreign workers have been hired to do this work in recent years. Farm owners have vehemently opposed changes to the H-2A Guest Worker Program since the current administration first attempted...

Major banks sought permission to bring thousands of foreigners into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were being laid off, according to an Associated Press review. The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years, positions like corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts, and human resources specialists, at an average annual salary of $90,721.