January 29, 2021 will remain memorable to the oil-rich Niger Delta communities because that was the day the Appeal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, delivered a groundbreaking judgment on three separate lawsuits brought by four Nigerian farmers over oil spills in three villages: Goi, Oruma and Ikot Ada Udo, in Rivers and Bayelsa States respectively. The oil spills rendered the claimants’ farmlands and fishponds useless.
The court had declared that Royal Dutch Shell Subsidiary was liable for the spills that have devastated the above-mentioned communities in the Niger Delta. The judgments are said to be historic as it is the first time Shell’s parent company has been found liable for a ‘breach of duty of care’ regarding abuses committed abroad by its foreign subsidiary company.
FOUR major gig economy firms in Milan have been ordered to employ 60,000 delivery riders and pay €733 million (£635m) in fines in a huge victory for workers’ rights.
The decision follows last Friday’s landmark Uber ruling in the British Supreme Court that found drivers for the company were workers and not self-employed.
Authorities in Italy’s largest city gave Deliveroo, UberEats, JustEat and Foodhino-Glovo 90 days to comply with their order.
Deputy Prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano said: “The vast majority of these riders are employed with occasional self-employment contracts . but it emerged without a shadow of a doubt that they are fully included in the organisation of the company.”
Oil spill damage in the Niger Delta region, April 6, 2010 (Flickr/Sosialistisk Ungdom)
Simon Ayafa has witnessed oil pollution in the Niger Delta region since he was 15. Now, at 35, he feels the region has been made uninhabitable by decades of oil spills. You to go the stream to fetch water and you get oil, said Ayafa, who is a parishioner at St. Paul s Catholic Church in Bodo, a fishing village that has suffered from massive oil spills. You go to the farm and the crops are damaged and cannot produce because of pollution. That is our fate here.
A series of pipeline spills between 2008 and 2009 left the entire area flowing in oil. With support from Amnesty International, the community took legal action against Royal Dutch Shell. The case was settled out of court in 2015 for the equivalent of about $36.6 million, with part going to the community and the rest divided among the community s residents.
But he was denied bail on the grounds he could be a flight risk.
Assange is awaiting the result of an appeal in the High Court over whether or not he should be sent to the US.
He has been accused of conspiring to leak classified material in 2010.
Supporters of Julian Assange have rallied for the Wikileaks founder s release from prison (pictured: supports during a snap rally in Sydney)
Assange is awaiting the result of an appeal in the High Court over whether or not he should be sent to the US (pictured: Assange arrives at the Westminster Magistrates Court, after he was arrested in London)
Uber’s loss of a UK labour case could impact gig firms
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Some months ago, soon after the US presidential election, I wrote of how Uber and other gig-economy firms had won a big legal victory in California. During a presidential election, other referendum choices are also on the ballot in each state. California carried a referendum in the 2020 election on a yes/no vote on a measure named Proposition 22. It was critically important to firms such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and GrubHub. These businesses that use ‘casual’ workers had threatened to leave the state had the measure not been voted in. They wanted their drivers and food deliverers classified as contractors and not as employees.