PLANYC 2030

 

A 10th employee of iPhone-maker Foxconn jumped to his death late Wednesday, just hours after the company’s chairman promised to make life better for employees at the sprawling production site in southern China.

The company did not give details of the death but China’s official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday that an initial police investigation indicated the 23-year-old man from northwest China had committed suicide by jumping from a seventh floor dormitory balcony.

Another employee at Foxconn’s Shenzhen campus attempted to slit his wrists, but survived with medical attention, the Xinhua news agency said late Thursday.

The deaths have thrown a spotlight on the labor practices of Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, whose clients include Apple, Hewlett Packard and Sony Ericsson.

Apple and other clients have said they are investigating working conditions at Foxconn, which has some 420,000 employees at its base in Shenzhen and has come under fire for its secretive corporate culture.

Workers live inside the factory complex and churn out products for the world’s leading computer and phone companies in round-the-clock shifts.

Taipei-based Hon Hai spokesman Arthur Huang confirmed the 10th death but denied reports on three Taiwan TV stations that another person, a young woman, had also jumped late on Wednesday, surviving with serious injuries.

Just hours before the latest reports, the usually media shy Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou had opened the company’s sprawling facilities in Shenzhen to reporters and vowed to take sweeping action to prevent more deaths.

Gou made another trip back to the plant Thursday following the Wednesday media tour. Pictures on Taiwan TV stations showed him boarding his private jet.

SAFETY NETS INSTALLED

All 10 of the deaths have been of young migrant workers, among the millions who leave the poor hinterlands of China for the boom towns of the south and east coastal areas in search of work and high wages.

Two others have been seriously injured after also jumping from buildings, in incidents that labor groups say expose the harsh working conditions at Foxconn.

Li Ping, secretary general of the Shenzhen municipal government, told a news conference Wednesday that the pressure of being away from home with little care from society was part of a complex set of factors underpinning the suicides.

He said the government was joining with police and Foxconn to consider a range of ideas such as building up sports and cultural facilities to improve the living environment, Xinhua reported.

The firm was training about 100 mental health counselors and installing 1.5 million square meters of netting, Xinhua said.

“Although this seems like a dumb measure, at least it could save a life should anyone else fall,” Gou was quoted as saying.

In a report to clients, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch said that while the incidents would affect Hon Hai’s image, they are unlikely to cause a significant impact on earnings, a view echoed by UBS, which noted that Hon Hai remains a “top-notch supplier.”

Foxconn shares rose 4.2 percent in a Hong Kong market up 1.2 percent, having fallen to a seven-month low earlier this week. Hon Hai shares fell 0.4 percent in Taiwan, with the broader market up 1.1 percent.

In another sign of labor discontent in south China, Japanese car maker Honda said Thursday a dispute had shut down one of its parts plants, causing the closure of four car-making plants.

 

What’s that? A young college grad lecturing her elders about online privacy?

It might go against conventional wisdom, but a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is adding fuel to the argument that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites.

Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online – and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, 21, is among those young adults. On the job hunt since graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts, she’s been “scouring” her Facebook page, removing photos that contain beer cups and any other signs of college exploits. She’s also dropped Twitter altogether.

“I have to present a public face that doesn’t have the potential to hurt my image,” McManus says.

She has seen otherwise upstanding adults, well past their 20s, sharing compromising photos and questionable rants with too many people online. “I get embarrassed for these people and sometimes just want to shake them,” she says.

In this instance, adults over the age of 30 might do well to listen. The Pew study and a mounting body of new research is showing that the very generation accused of sharing too much information online is actually leading the pack in online privacy.

The Pew study found, for instance, that social networkers ages 18 to 29 were the most likely to change the privacy settings on their profiles to limit what they share with others online. The percentage who did so was 71 percent, compared with just 55 percent of the 50- to 64-year-old bracket. Meanwhile, about two-thirds of all social networkers who were surveyed said they’ve tightened security settings.

The survey also determined that:

- about half of young people in that 18-29 bracket have deleted comments that others have made on their profile, compared with just 29 percent of those ages 30 to 49 and 26 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds. The numbers were similar when it came to social networkers who removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them.

- When asked how much they can trust social networking sites, 28 percent of the youngest adults surveyed said “never.” A fifth in the 30-49 bracket said that and just 14 percent of those ages 50 to 64 agreed.

The Pew report, which was released Thursday, was compiled from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between Aug. 18 and Sept. 14, 2009, among a sample of 2,253 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Mary Madden, the Pew researcher who was the study’s lead author, says the findings partly reflect the fact that young people have been using social networking longer than their elders, thus making them more experienced in dealing with its intricacies.

But she says young people also are at a point in their lives where, like McManus, they’re looking for work and just starting to develop a name for themselves.

Consider also that the study found that a quarter of online adults said their employers now have policies about how they portray themselves online.

“Young adults have, in many ways, been forced to become experts in their own form of social revision,” Madden says.

They’re also an extremely “brand conscious” generation, says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral candidate at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina who co-founded ClaimID.com, a free online identity management service that he now uses as a research project.

“Increasingly, it’s the advice that young people get from counselors and elsewhere: ‘You need to have your own brand and you have to watch that brand,’” Stutzman says.

He jokes that older people don’t care as much because “if you’ve got a pension, you can pretty much say what you want.”

There might be a bit of truth to that. The older you get, the less you have to worry about applying to college and attempting to move up the career ladder.

Stefanie Juell, a 28-year-old in Westchester County, N.Y., has become increasingly aware of this. So she recently opened an extra Facebook account after her supervisor and people she’d met through work started to friend her on her personal account.

“You don’t exactly want to reject your supervisor,” she says. “Nor do you want him or her to see everything that your friends write on your wall or the pictures that people tag of you.”

So now, she uses that new professional Facebook account for her job in alumni relations at a small liberal arts college. In the evening, she shifts to her long-standing personal Facebook account, which has its security settings set as tightly as possible.

“It’s important to separate,” she says, “and to maintain a work-life balance.”

 

Honda has had to halt production at its four Chinese car assembly factories, because of a strike over pay at one of its China-based parts plants.

The Japanese company said talks were continuing to try to resolve the dispute at the parts facility in the southern city of Fushan.

The strike at the plant, which makes gearboxes and engine parts, started last week.

Honda said it hoped to resume production as soon as possible.
 

Resolution efforts

According to newspaper reports, the 1,900 staff at the parts facility want their monthly wages to be increased from 1,500 yuan ($220; £151) to 2,500 yuan.

“We are still trying to resolve the labour dispute with the help of the local government at the Fushan plant,” said Honda’s China spokesman Zhu Linjie.

Like most of the world’s leading carmakers, Honda has enjoyed a big rise in sales in China.

It sold 219,514 cars in China during the first four months of this year, up 39% on a year earlier.

Honda runs three of its four car assembly factories in China as joint ventures with Chinese carmakers to supply the domestic market.

It has two factories in association with Guangzhou Automobile and one with Dongfeng Motor Corporation.

Honda’s fourth Chinese factory makes its Jazz small car model solely for export.

 

It’s not just sites like Amazon.com and eBay.com that are doing business overseas, a new study from order fulfillment provider Shipwire reports. More small- and medium-sized merchants are doing business abroad, the study finds.

International order fulfillment for the small and medium-sized merchants that do less than $100 million in annual sales and use Shipwire’s services grew 11 percentage points from 9% in 2008 to reach 20% of total shipped orders in 2009, Shipwire reports. The report polled both U.S. merchants, which made up 62% of the sample, or 47 merchants, and merchants from other countries, which comprised 38% of those polled, or 28 merchants.

The study found non-U.S. merchants do more international business than U.S. merchants. 75% of non-U.S. merchants were shipping outside of their home countries versus 13% of U.S. merchants.

A separate analysis just of high volume Shipwire merchants found:

    * 18% export products to a warehouse outside of their home country and 15% of this group’s 2009 total orders ship from a facility outside of their home country.

    * 13% of the U.S. merchants conduct business with one of Shipwire’s international fulfillment warehouses in either Canada or the U.K.

    * 75% of the non-U.S. merchants do business in the Shipwire’s U.S. facility and 25% do business in one of Shipwire’s other fulfillment centers in Canada or the U.K.

“It appears that U.S.-based merchants are not tapping into overseas opportunities as readily as are international customers,” says Damon Schechter, CEO and founder of Shipwire. “However, we expect that this gap will slowly begin to close as U.S. merchants search for growth markets overseas in greater numbers.”

Shipwire also looked at its merchants’ automated storage and retrieval shipments over the holiday season, which it defines as the day after Thanksgiving to the end of the year. This period was 27 days in 2008 and 28 days in 2009.

Between the 2008 and 2009 holiday seasons, the average order volume per merchant grew 44%, and the average number of units shipped per merchant increased by 26%.

“This shows that while merchants did ship 26% more product, they shipped it in more orders,” Schechter says. “This seems to indicate that there were more online shoppers; but, the average customer bought slightly less product per order in 2009 over 2008.”

Schechter says this could suggest a trend towards online impulse purchases.

Shipwire operates fulfillment distribution warehouses in three U.S. cities as well as Toronto, Vancouver and London.

 

Triumph Motorcycles has ridden the recovery in UK manufacturing to a victory over key rival Honda and is now setting its sights on American adversary Harley-Davidson.

The Leicestershire-based bike maker has revealed that booming sales in April made its brand the best-selling in Britain in the over-500cc sector, overtaking Honda. It wants to make that ranking permanent this year as it continues to increase its market share following record UK sales in 2009.

Chairman Lord Digby Jones says part of the boost has come from a strong yen, which has raised the prices of Japanese rivals in the UK market.

While the recession knocked back overall sales of new motorcycles and Harley Davidson motorcycle batteries by 20% in Britain last year, UK motorcycle production actually grew, according to the Motor Cycle Industry Association.

But beyond currency effects Jones also cites Triumph’s strong brand, new products and a big push at domestic and overseas sales. Of the 46,000 bikes Triumph will make this year, just 9,000 will be sold in Britain.

“We really want to get hold of America,” said Jones, former head of industry group the CBI. “We have launched the Thunderbird straight into the middle of Harley-Davidson’s market and it has just been voted bike of the year in America, right in Harley-Davidson’s backyard,” he adds, referring to an award from a US magazine.

Twenty years since resurfacing from receivership, the manufacturer also has its eye on more sales in the Gulf, where the Prince of Bahrain has a Triumph, as well as in Asia more generally.

In Britain it is launching a string of upmarket dealerships, including one this month on home turf in Leicester.

“What we want to do is make Triumph number one in the UK market, year in, year out,” says Jones.

YOSEMITE, Calif. — After toiling for three decades in finance, it wouldn’t be surprising if 65-year-old Patrick Althizer kicked back and lived off his savings and Social Security.

But with a spirit not ready for sedentary retirement — as well as college costs for two daughters — he veered off to a new career path: leading shutterbugs through the stunning waterfall areas of Yosemite National Park.

Althizer has embraced his new vocation with enthusiasm. He plastered decals that promote his firm, Photo Safari Yosemite, on the windows of his white Jeep Cherokee, networked with the folks who run local tourist attractions, and at his daughters’ behest, joined Facebook to promote his firm, which takes tourists to the best photo-taking spots in the national park.

“I was a Navy photographer when I was younger — when I was in my twenties — (then) I got diverted into a finance career for about 30 years,” he says. “When I was 64, I got out of the finance business and tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

His answer: start his own business by pairing two of his passions — photography and exploring.

He joins millions of other Americans in ramping up a business at an age when many slow down. Folks 55 to 64 represented the second-largest jump in entrepreneurial activity by age (just behind 35- to 44-year-olds) from 2008 to 2009, according to an Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last week by entrepreneur-focused group Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Other studies, such as a recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, as well as data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), also show an uptick in older folks becoming their own bosses.

The number of self-employed Americans rose to 8.9 million in December 2009, up from 8.7 million a year earlier, according to BLS data provided by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. Self-employment among those 55 to 64 hit nearly 2 million, a 5% rise from the prior year. Self-employment for those 65 and older hit 939,000 — a 29% increase.

The rise has been fueled by factors such as the tidal wave of Baby Boomers who don’t want to stop working, economic necessity triggered by the recession, and the rise in longevity, says Dane Stangler, a research manager at Kauffman.

“Americans are not only living longer but also living healthier longer, suggesting that those entrepreneurial 60-year-olds could be 2020′s entrepreneurial 70-year-olds,” he says.

Economic impetus

Slightly more than 2 million people 55 and older were looking for jobs in April — 52,000 more than in March, according to BLS data provided by the AARP Public Policy Institute. The unemployment rate for that age group, 7%, is lower than the 9.9% national average, but the demographic is often out of work for longer periods. (The duration of unemployment for older jobseekers rose from 38.4 weeks in March to 42.9 weeks in April.)

Nearly six in 10 older unemployed workers had been out of work for 27 or more weeks in April. At the start of the recession in December 2007, 23% of this group were out of work for that length of time.

A third of workers age 55 and older who were laid off in the past 12 months and did not find a job said they were considering starting their own business, according to a CareerBuilder.com survey taken in February and March. (CareerBuilder is jointly owned by Tribune, McClatchy, Microsoft and USA TODAY parent Gannett.)

Bryan Goodman, 53, decided to focus full time on his big-and-tall-man’s clothing business after he lost his job as a manager at a Boston car dealership.

“For many years, I had been selling things causally on eBay, but when I got laid off and couldn’t get another job, I decided that … I could do this as a business,” he says.

Economics also were a factor for 69-year-old Alan Friedman, to think big — very big — about his entrepreneurial route.

For decades, Friedman sold high-end antiques, but with the downturn, and some of his clients’ tastes changing to more contemporary furniture, he decided to start a new venture called Transitions in Design in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“It’s very difficult in the economy today, especially dealing in high-priced merchandise,” he says. “In the last few years, I lost a good portion of my customer base.”

He began to replicate iron furniture from the 1950s, which he was able to sell at more affordable prices. He also tapped into his own creativity and began to design large-scale bronze sculptures for individuals as well as municipalities.

Business hasn’t been brisk, but Friedman says he’s going to keep at it. “I need to make a living.”

Non-economic factors play roles, too

Businesses born from older folks come about for many reasons. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a major birthday lighting the entrepreneurial spark. Other times, it’s serial entrepreneurs who can’t squelch the urge to keep creating new firms.

“These milestones do hit people squarely over the head — it’s the workforce equivalent of a midlife crisis,” says Robert Litan, Kauffman vice president for research and policy. “They force you to ask the question ‘What am I going to do for the rest of my life?’ “

The idea of starting a new business can also come after a chance meeting with someone who has an interesting job or pastime.

A customer who bought a slew of dock lines from boating store West Marine inadvertently steered Thomas and Connie Betts toward a new profession. Thomas, an operations manager for the retailer, asked about the large purchase — and the customer said he was using the rope for his alpaca ranch.

“I said, ‘What’s an alpaca?’ ” recounts Brett.

But the more he learned about the mild-mannered animal, and the value of its soft fleece, the more interested he became.

He and Connie, ages 55 and 56 respectively, researched the animals and took classes on raising alpacas. They moved to the Hood River, Ore., area, where they had yearned to live, and started Cascade Alpacas of Oregon.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” says Connie. “We love our alpacas.”

Not always smooth sailing

The Bettses are enjoying their business — and making a profit — but it took extensive effort to get to that point. Tom and Connie continued to work at different jobs so they had funding as they got the ranch going, and Connie still holds down a separate full-time job so they have extra money coming in.

“It sounds really simple to say ‘I’m going to start my own business,’ ” says Deborah Russell, AARP director of workforce issues. “But it’s a huge undertaking, and it needs to be taken seriously.”

Russell says that making a vocation change at midlife comes with decision-making stress such as how to fund a venture without risking a retirement nest egg.

Entrepreneurs in their twenties and thirties have decades to make up lost money if a firm fails. But older owners simply have less time.

The Bettses said they mapped out several “worst-case scenario” situations when they decided to go ahead with the alpaca ranch. “With alpacas, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. It can take years” to make a profit, says Connie. “We said, ‘What’s the worst that can happen, and can we live with that?’ “

EBay seller Goodman says the financing issue has also been top of mind. He’s dramatically cut back on living expenses to fund his venture, but is now thinking “Do I use my retirement money?”

The hurdles for older workers also go beyond the potential of losing retirement savings.

“Facility with technology is a big barrier for a lot of older people,” says Kauffman’s Litan.

Another obstacle for most older people is that they just don’t have the stamina that they once had, Litan says. “It’s true,” says the 60-year-old. “I know it myself.”

Some advantages exist

Yet, for all the pitfalls, signs indicate this is a good time for a more mature person to become a business owner.

Those seeking counseling can now choose from numerous online resources that target older entrepreneurs, such as the Small Business Administration’s “50+” page (sba.gov/50plusentrepreneur) and the “Start Your Own Business” section of RetiredBrains.com, a site started by 75-year-old Arthur Koff when he was 68.

A plethora of information exists that small-business owners can glean from their peers — often by logging onto social-networking sites.

Many older entrepreneurs also have the advantage of having non-technology-related networks that were built up through years of face-to-face interactions, says Litan.

“Older people have a deeper social network than kids that just have 400 friends (online),” he says. “They have a real, live Facebook — these are people they can count on.”

In addition, maturity comes with another big advantage: experience.

Nearly all the company founders surveyed in a Kauffman study released last fall said prior work experience was an important success factor.

Patty Tobin, 56, says her work in the asbestos removal field, as well as her time as a marketing consultant, greatly helped her in her jewelry venture.

“I know how to deal with banks, how to read a lease, how to hire people and how to manage people,” she says.

She also says that a positive attitude — and a willingness to keep learning — have also been large factors in her entrepreneurial success.

Tobin says she “has no formal training in design or fashion,” but once the environmental contracting firm she co-owned closed a few years ago, she began to experiment with jewelry design.

She first sold her wares to a boutique in her local Albany, N.Y., area, and has slowly expanded her business. Last fall, she opened a boutique in Manhattan, and a few weeks ago, she introduced her merchandise to buyers in Canada.

“You can teach an old dog new tricks if they’re willing to learn, and I am,” she says.
Self-employment by age

Q: Can I just suggest that small business owners avoid the hard sell? Nothing turns me off like that.— Camille

A: I couldn’t agree with you more. We have all come across the hard sell business and salesman. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not, and often it completely backfires. Case in point: For Mother’s Day my daughters and I went shopping in a tea store in a nearby mall. Rather than entering the Zen-like atmosphere one would expect, it was if we entered Glengarry Glen Ross.

You recall that great film from the 90s, don’t you? Originally a David Mamet play, the movie depicts a couple of days in the lives of some real estate salesmen. The corporate office sends in Alec Baldwin (definitely in his pre-Jack Donaghy days) and he has a peculiar motivational technique: He announces that everyone except the top two salesmen will be fired in the next week. Not surprisingly, the salesmen resort to heavy-handed, dishonest, and hard-sell tactics to get sales and save their jobs.

Well, that is what my daughter and I seemingly walked into in the tea shop. It was the boiler room of Earl Grey! No, that sampler is not good enough, the $100 one is what you want! That tea you just chose will “spoil” in 10 days if you don’t buy this $40 tin to put it in! It was a strange experience, and yes, we left without purchasing a thing. But plenty of others remained.

It’s actually easy to see why a manager would push hard-sell tactics on his or her minions: It’s easy and can get short-term results. Fear is a mighty motivator and instilling it in one’s sales staff can ensure that sales will get done.

But in actuality it is a very shortsighted strategy. Consider all of the downsides to the hard sell:

•Poorer quality sales:  When you force someone into buying something they may not really want, what you are really doing is setting the business up for failure. What often happens is that later, when the pressure is off and customers consider the interaction and the products they purchased, they decide that they do not really want or like the product. They will return it or even cancel their credit card authorization. What the company is left with then is a faux-sale and a disgruntled customer.

•Disgruntled customers:  Indeed, this is potentially an even worse problem. Customers who get products or services crammed down their throat don’t usually stay customers for long. Feeling used and abused, they rightfully take their money elsewhere.

•Unhappy employees:  The parade of bad outcomes keeps on coming. Aside from fake sales and unhappy customers, forcing the hard sell strategy on your staff often leads to low morale and high turnover.

People will only work in a high-pressure sales environment for a few reasons:

• They really need the job
• They like the money
• They thrive under pressure

Most people however, when forced to sell something they do not believe in, or sell something to people who are only marginally interested, will look for a new job that is not so morally compromising.

•Bad morale:  Between the high turnover rate, and selling stuff in questionable ways, the overall staff mood at the hard-sell workplace is typically very poor. Employees in such places don’t believe in the company or the product and they often conspire against management, whom they perceive to be the enemy. This all in turn creates:

•A bad brand: It is hard to create a positive brand and stellar reputation when your employees don’t like you and your customers resent you.

So please, do us all a favor and avoid the hard sell.

Today’s Tip:  Here’s a nice offer: Capital One just announced the launch of Venture for Business, a premium rewards credit card offering small business owners double miles on every purchase. You get 5,000 miles for signing up and these double miles can be redeemed for travel (air fare, hotel room, rental car, etc.) cash back, gift cards, merchandise or charitable donations.

 

Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its “boot on the throat” of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill.

But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.

“I’m tired of being nice. I’m tired of working as a team,” said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.

“The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP’s word,” declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill’s effect on the ecosystem.

That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.

In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.

“If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I’m frustrated, too,” said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.

“Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can’t do something about a very big problem,” Allen told The Associated Press Friday.

Still, as simple as it may seem for the government to just take over, the law prevents it, Allen said.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents – including paying for all cleanup – with oversight by federal agencies. Spills on land are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, offshore spills by the Coast Guard.

“The basic notion is you hold the responsible party accountable, with regime oversight” from the government, Allen said. “BP has not been relieved of that responsibility, nor have they been relieved for penalties or for oversight.”

He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill – and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.

“There’s nothing that we think can and should be done that isn’t being done. Nothing,” Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.

There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.

Asked if President Barack Obama had confidence in BP, Gibbs said only: “We are continuing to push BP to do everything that they can.”

The White House is expected to announce Saturday that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and ex-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly will lead a presidential commission investigating the oil spill. Graham is a Democrat. Reilly served as EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. The commission’s inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling.

BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the federal government has been “an integral part of the response” to the oil spill since shortly after the April 20 explosion.

“There are many federal agencies here in the Unified Command, and they’ve been part of that within days of the incident,” said Chapman, who works out of a joint response site in Louisiana, near the site of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Criticism of the cleanup response has spread beyond BP. On Friday, the Texas lab contracted to test samples of water contaminated by the spill defended itself against complaints that it has a conflict of interest because it does other work for BP.

TDI-Brooks International Inc., which points to its staffers’ experience handling samples from the Exxon Valdez disaster, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped audit the lab and approved its methods.

“A typical state laboratory does not have this experience or capacity,” TDI president James M. Brooks said.

The company’s client list includes federal and state agencies along with dozens of oil companies, among them BP, a connection first reported by The New York Times. TDI-Brooks said about half of the lab’s revenue comes from government work.

Test results on Deepwater Horizon samples will figure prominently in lawsuits and other judgments seeking to put a dollar value on the damage caused by the spill.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, who traveled to the Gulf the day after the explosion and has coordinated Interior’s response to the spill, rejected the notion that BP is telling the federal government what to do.

“They are lashed in,” Hayes said of BP. “They need approval for everything they do.”

If BP is lashed to the government, the tether goes both ways. A large part of what the government knows about the oil spill comes from BP.

The oil company helps staff the command center in Robert, La., which publishes daily reports on efforts to contain, disperse and skim oil.

Some of the information flowing into the command center comes from undersea robots run by BP or ships ultimately being paid by BP. When the center reported Friday that nearly 9 million gallons of an oil-water mixture had been skimmed from the ocean surface, those statistics came from barges and other vessels funded by BP.

Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill – 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access.

“This is really closer to Apollo 13 than Exxon Valdez,” he said, referring to a near-disastrous Moon mission 40 years ago.

“Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector,” Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP.

Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said. Most recently, it responded to an EPA directive to find a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the oil underwater.

In two instances – finding samples from the bottom of the ocean to test dispersants and distributing booms to block the oil – BP did not respond as quickly as officials had hoped, Allen said. In both cases they ultimately complied.

“Personally, whenever I have problem I call (BP CEO) Tony Hayward” on his cell phone, Allen said.

 

Industrial heavyweights General Electric Co. and Mitsubishi are raising the temperature of a 2-year-old dispute claiming patent infringements and monopolistic behavior in the U.S. wind turbine market.

In a complaint filed in a U.S. District Court in Arkansas yesterday, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries accused GE of scheming to control the nation’s wind power market. Through a series of “baseless claims of patent infringement,” Mitsubishi said in its complaint, GE has successfully scared off potential Mitsubishi customers and discouraged well-capitalized foreign competitors from setting up shop in the United States.

“GE is attempting to kill competition in the marketplace to the detriment of U.S. consumers,” said Mitsubishi spokeswoman Sonia Williams. “We anticipate damages will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and may be over $1 billion.”

In a separate suit filed in Florida yesterday, the Japanese turbine maker accused GE of infringing on a critical Mitsubishi patent.

The Mitsubishi complaint is the latest in a series of claims and counterclaims unfurled by the two companies, made as competition increases in the U.S. wind market and as both companies roll out their latest high-capacity wind turbines. GE, Japan’s Mitsubishi, Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, Germany’s Siemens AG and a growing crop of global industrial conglomerates are racing to get a permanent foothold in North America, where wind projects are grabbing a bigger share of electricity generation.

This grudge match started in 2008, when GE filed complaints at the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging Mitsubishi had infringed on GE wind-turbine patents. The U.S. ITC ended its investigation in January after finding Mitsubishi had not violated the patents, but it left the door open for further action. In February, GE then filed a suit in a Texas court accusing Mitsubishi of breaching the GE patents.

Japanese turbine maker claims it’s been shut out

The dispute at the ITC attracted the attention of influential members of Congress with GE factories or headquarters in their states. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, which is where GE Energy is located, and Republicans from Southern states wrote letters to the ITC warning that job losses would result if GE lost the patent case.

The dispute also continues to play out amid heated discussion about U.S. leanings toward protectionist policies and the capacity of global wind and solar companies to reach American consumers without expanding their U.S. manufacturing base.

In the complaint yesterday, Mitsubishi said that GE has a 70 percent market share for variable-speed wind turbines. As Mitsubishi tells it, once it entered the market in 2006 and secured lucrative contracts, GE “embarked on an unlawful scheme” to drive it and others out of the U.S. market.

Variable-speed windmills are designed for significant utility-scale power generation. They operate on a wide range of wind speeds when connected to the transmission grid. Mitsubishi also claimed that GE obtained a handful of wind-turbine patents through improper means and failed to disclose sources of information to the U.S. patent office.

“GE’s unlawful scheme has worked,” says the complaint. “Prior to the initiation of GE’s first lawsuit against Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi had sales of approximately $2 billion a year of variable speed wind turbines in the United States. Since GE’s litigation campaign began over two years ago, Mitsubishi has not sold a single variable speed wind turbine in the United States.”

GE calls claims ‘outrageous’

When GE filed a new suit against Mitsubishi shortly after the ITC ruling, Mitsubishi explains, “This, GE hoped, would prolong the period of uncertainty over Mitsubishi turbines in the U.S. market for the pendency of the second suit.”

GE spokesman Daniel Nelson in an e-mail called Mitsubishi’s antitrust complaint “meritless and outrageous.”

“GE stands strongly behind the merits of its patent infringement lawsuits against [Mitsubishi] and will fight to protect its intellectual property,” Nelson said, adding that the company intends to “vigorously defend itself” against Mitsubishi’s charge of patent infringement.
Matt Kaplan, a wind analyst at Emerging Energy Research, said wind purchasers have been scared off by the potential for legal problems if they purchase turbines from Mitsubishi instead of GE. The market-level impact is there, but he said the complex patent infringement claims made by the companies are hard to parse.

“It shows that the market is very competitive,” he said, “and that Mitsubishi does feel a real threat from GE patent issues.”

Tempest in once-tranquil market

GE controls about 44 percent of the North American market for wind turbines and components, and Mitsubishi comes in a distant fourth. Still, Kaplan said, the Japanese manufacturing giant isn’t to be toyed with, and neither is the line-up of significant global power players that want a piece of the U.S. wind market.

“GE’s dominant lead over the market has made it difficult for companies to enter and steal market share,” Kaplan said. “But Mitsubishi, a heavy industrial company, does have the ability to threaten GE.”

Kaplan said the ITC ruling and its ability to push back against GE litigation is critical for Mitsubishi. The company plans to begin construction this year on a $100 million plant in Fort Smith, Ark., to build wind-turbine engines for the U.S. market.

While Mitsubishi’s Williams said the project is still a go and could employ nearly 400 people, she acknowledged the drop-off in Mitsubishi wind contracts since GE’s claims raised concerns about building the plant. She warned that the plant could sit idle “if GE’s unlawful conduct continues.”

According to the American Wind Energy Association, 15 companies sold large-scale wind turbines to U.S. customers in 2009, up from five companies in 2005. “The wind industry is increasingly in the hands of major industrial players,” Kaplan said. “This is a clear shift from what we’ve seen in the past.”

Companies interested in installing wind-power capacity in the United States haven’t shied away from the market, Kaplan said, but the GE-Mitsubishi disputes have caused those companies to pause for a second and walk gingerly as they chooses their suppliers.

 

PepsiCo Inc said it is planning to up its investment in China by $2.5 billion over the next three years, as it sees more growth in the market.

This new investment is apart from the $1 billion the cola and snack food giant had announced in 2008, and which will be completed this year.

“This investment reflects very clearly our great confidence in China and our long-term commitment to this very important, growing market,” Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi said in a statement.

The new investment will be allocated to a variety of projects, including new manufacturing facilities, a significant scaling up ofthe company’s research and development operations, expanded agricultural development and brand-building initiatives.

Pepsi, which competes with Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc (DPS.N), plans to open 10 to 12 new plants in China to manufacture soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages and snacks and will install additional production lines in existing facilities.

“We look forward to continuing to evolve our business in China and offer Chinese consumers a full portfolio of foods and beverages,” Nooyi, who is in Shanghai to visit the Shanghai Expo, added.