Union considers BA dispute offer

。 11 May 2011 Last updated at 21:11 ET  The bitter dispute between the Unite union and British Airways has been continuing since 2009 Union members are meeting later to consider an offer which could end the long-running dispute between British Airways and some cabin crew.

The BBC has learned Unite union leaders are said to be "content" with what has been negotiated during talks with BA.

If those at the Heathrow meeting back the offer, a formal ballot of union members could be held within weeks.

This dispute began in 2009 over cost cutting but became bogged down over the loss of travel perks to striking staff.

Staffing levels

It has resulted in travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of passengers with the bill for the disruption caused to BA estimated to be ￡150m.

Continue reading the main story John Moylan Industry correspondent, BBC News

This has been one of the most bitter and prolonged industrial disputes of recent years.

It involved four strike ballots, led to 22 days of strike action and disrupted the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. It cost BA about ￡150m.

But a change of personnel at the top of both BA and the Unite union gave fresh impetus to resolving the row. Talks got under way in March, away from the glare of publicity.

The new deal will cover disciplinary action that some staff suffered during the strike and the issue of the removal of travel perks to those that went on strike.

It should also lift the threat of any further disruption to BA flights this summer.

However, after 22 days of strikes over the past 18 months, hopes have been raised that an end to the row is in sight.

Negotiations between the two sides resumed in March, when cabin crew voted in favour of a further round of industrial action, and have been going on for weeks.

The union held back from announcing strike dates pending the talks.

A spokesman for the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association - a branch of Unite - confirmed that "talks have now concluded to the satisfaction of both parties".

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who has held talks with BA chief executive Keith Williams, will address a mass meeting of union members and the union leadership is expected to recommend they accept the offer.

If they do, a formal ballot will be held, with the result expected in July. This raises the prospect of BA flights being free from disruption through summer.

The dispute started in November 2009 as a row about staffing levels on some long-haul flights. BA reduced the number of cabin crew on long-haul flights from 15 to 14 and introduced a two-year pay freeze from 2010.

Unite said this would hit passenger service and affect the earnings and career prospects of cabin crew.

But the union's demands shifted to the reinstatement of some workers sacked during industrial action and the decision, affecting about 7,000 Unite members, to take away travel perks from striking staff.

Leadership changes

Progress is thought to have been made on those two issues, which were the main sticking points, and reports suggest the proposed deal would also cover union representation and pay.

Former British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh became the focus of the anger of many union members during the dispute.

Mr Walsh has since moved on to head the company formed by the merger of BA and the Spanish carrier Iberia, International Airlines Group, and was succeeded by Mr Williams.

Mr McCluskey was elected in Novemebr 2010 to succeed former joint general secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson.

In Elite Library Archives, a Dispute Over a Trove

Authors and intellectuals spend lifetimes trying to earn a coveted place inside. Now, one of them is fighting desperately to get out.

In a move that has turned scholarly heads, Paul Brodeur, a former investigative reporter for The New Yorker, who donated thousands of pages of his work to the library, is demanding that the papers be returned. He claims that an institution renowned for its careful stewardship of historical documents has badly mishandled his.

The charges are roiling the genteel world of research archivists, who usually toil in dust-jacket obscurity, and inciting a lively debate about which pieces of the past are worth preserving.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Brodeur — known for his zealous pursuit of asbestos manufacturers and corporate polluters as a journalist — has mounted an elbows-out campaign to shame the library, firing off e-mails to dozens of prominent academics and authors pleading his case and enlisting their support. The library, which rebuts Mr. Brodeur’s claims, is refusing to return all of his work, escalating a year-old dispute that has played out on an unusually public stage. Beginning last month, Mr. Brodeur and the New York Public Library posted dueling accounts on the Web site of the Authors Guild Bulletin, an influential newsletter for writers.

The back-and-forth has prompted several high-profile writers and academics to weigh in. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, told Mr. Brodeur in an e-mail that his experience seemed to be “a distinct departure from the standards of ethical propriety and intellectual integrity that I would have expected the New York Public Library to maintain.”

After learning of the controversy, John Stauber, author and founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, told Mr. Brodeur, “This is shocking.”

Ann Thornton, a top official at the library, called the situation “very unfortunate.” Mr. Brodeur calls it something else: “A breach of trust.”

During his years at The New Yorker, Mr. Brodeur, 79, a novelist turned award-winning reporter, built a career out of exposing the environmental hazards and health risks created by industry. In the process, he also filled an ever-expanding wall of file cabinets in his office. Mr. Brodeur said a colleague at the magazine, Philip Hamburger, mentioned that he had donated his own papers to the library and suggested that he do so as well. In 1992, Mr. Brodeur gave the library some 300 boxes.

In 1997, he recalled being told, the documents had been reviewed and prepared for public viewing, a claim confirmed by a senior library curator at the time.

That year, Mr. Brodeur and his wife toured what was described as the “permanent collection” of his papers in the main branch’s stacks, which stretch 88 miles. Mr. Brodeur watched, contentedly, as giant mechanized glass panels opened up to reveal the files behind his biggest exposés — on the flesh-eating enzymes in household detergents, the erosion of the ozone layer by industrial gases and a corporate cover-up of the links between asbestos and cancer.

So he was baffled?a year ago — nearly two decades after his donation — when the library notified him that it no longer wanted three-fourths of his papers. He was instructed to either retrieve the undesired documents or to allow the library to destroy them, according to copies of the correspondence he provided to The New York Times. “As I’m sure you understand,” William Stingone, a curator at the library, wrote him, “we need to manage our ever-diminishing resources, including space, even as our collection grows.”

As it happens, Mr. Brodeur did not understand. He was livid. In a June 2010 letter to the library demanding the return of his entire collection, Mr. Brodeur wrote, “I no longer have confidence in the New York Public Library’s stewardship of the papers I donated more than 18 years ago.”

The staff at the library called the episode a misunderstanding. Despite what Mr. Brodeur might have been told, curators said, they did not finish sorting through his papers until last year.

In a series of letters and phone calls to Mr. Brodeur over the summer, they explained that, as they did with every donation, they had carefully weeded out what would be useful to generations of researchers (original letters and rare primary documents) and excluded less-meaningful artifacts (photocopied news stories and multiple drafts of New Yorker writings). In the process, an original donation of about 320 boxes had been whittled to 53.

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Thornton, who oversees collections and exhibits, showed off the results of that winnowing, displaying a detailed catalog and a sampling of documents on a long table outside the library’s Rose Main Reading Room. The Brodeur collection appeared carefully labeled by subject and date. There were folders containing fan mail from readers (one called an article he had written for The New Yorker “extremely provocative and well-researched”). There were copies of letters from Mr. Brodeur to his colleagues at the magazine (including an angry missive to Seymour Hersh, who had backtracked on an endorsement of a much-debated Brodeur book about the dangers of electrical power lines in 1997. Mr. Brodeur called him “craven” and “lame.”). And there was an unfinished draft of a novel, titled “Coral Sea,” about an investigative journalist who stumbles on an important secret.

 

Thailand and Cambodia Clash Again in Border Dispute

BANGKOK — Thai and Cambodian troops clashed for a third day on Sunday in the first major territorial encounter since an informal cease-fire that followed four days of fighting in February. At least 10 people were killed and thousands of residents were evacuated from border areas, according to reports from both sides.

The United Nations called on the countries to settle the conflict peacefully, with an effective and verifiable cease-fire. The exact cause of the latest clash, which began early Friday, was unclear, with the two sides accusing each other of making the first move in what was mostly a long-range artillery duel.

The fighting was reported at border areas 100 miles west of Preah Vihear, an 11th-century temple that has been the focus of armed tensions since it was listed in 2008 by the United Nations as a World Heritage site under Cambodian administration.

Both nations claim ownership of a strategic area of 1.8 square miles near Preah Vihear. Two other ancient Hindu temples in the border area are the focus of the latest eruption of fighting.

In his weekly television address, the prime minister of Thailand, Abhisit Vejjajiva, accused Cambodia of starting the fighting. “When there is firing into Thailand, we must fire back,” he said.

Mr. Abhisit added: “We must not fall into Cambodia’s trap in trying to spread a picture of conflict, or say the conflict is unsolvable through bilateral talks.”

A sticking point in efforts at negotiations is Thailand’s resistance to Cambodia’s demand for mediation by international bodies. In the past, outside judgments have favored Cambodia. In 1962, the World Court ruled that Preah Vihear, which stands on a border bluff overlooking the Cambodian countryside, belonged to Cambodia.

The disputes involve border demarcations between the two countries made by former French colonial administrators and include references to competing maps and interpretations of maps.

The conflicting claims are a rallying cry for nationalists on both sides. In Thailand, they have become a focus of the antigovernment “yellow shirt” protests in recent months.

In February, the United Nations forwarded a Cambodian request for mediation to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in which both sides agreed to allow unarmed military observers to be posted along the border.

But the Thai military resisted that plan, and the country’s foreign minister, Kasit Piromya, said that his government was trying to secure the cooperation of the armed forces to find a peaceful settlement.

Cambodia accused Thailand over the weekend of firing artillery shells “loaded with poisonous gas” and of flying jet fighter sorties over Cambodian territory. Thailand rejected the accusations as groundless.

 

Medical Experts Dispute a Hospital’s Claims on Heart Device Data

This month, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada said in a statement, “results to date show significantly improved outcomes for our cardiac patients” who got heart implants made by a little-known company, Biotronik. The statement was attributed to Kathleen Silver, the chief executive of the hospital.

Ms. Silver issued that statement after an article in The New York Times reported that cardiologists there switched in 2008 to using Biotronik devices after that company started paying them thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

A hospital spokeswoman later said in response to a reporter’s question that Ms. Silver’s comments were based on data drawn from a national registry of heart patients who received an implanted defibrillator. University Medical Center also provided The Times with limited data from that registry that it said backed its contention.

But several experts knowledgeable about that defibrillator database said in separate interviews that it did not track how device recipients fared after they left a hospital. As a result, it cannot and does not provide data to hospitals or manufacturers about the long-term performance of any company’s device. It also does not produce data that can be used to compare the performance of competing implants made by different companies.

“To saying that we are doing better is a bridge too far for the data they have,” said Dr. Jeptha Curtis, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale, who has worked on research studies involving registry data.

Told of the experts’ assessments, Danita Cohen, the spokeswoman for the Las Vegas hospital, responded in writing by stating, “By way of clarification, U.M.C. did not intend to say that our better outcomes can be attributed to a particular device.”

She added that the hospital’s remarks about “improving patient outcomes” were intended to mean that its use of the defibrillator database was helping it monitor its performance.

The hospital’s disputed claims may intensify scrutiny of the ties between the Las Vegas physicians, Biotronik and a company called Western Medical that acts as the company’s sales representative in Nevada and several other states. Those ties are currently under review by state officials in Nevada. The Justice Department started a separate investigation last year into Biotronik’s sales and marketing practices.

The Times article focused on relationships between a device industry sales official named Caesar Fonte and cardiologists at a Las Vegas practice, Nevada Heart and Vascular. Before 2008, when Mr. Fonte worked at Boston Scientific, a defibrillator producer, the same cardiologists were paid consultants to that company and almost exclusively used its devices, hospital data shows.

Then in 2008, Mr. Fonte quit Boston Scientific and started Western Medical, the Biotronik distributor. The implant specialists at Nevada Heart and Vascular then became paid consultants to Biotronik and switched to using its devices in nearly all patients.

Both Biotronik, the physicians and Mr. Fonte have rejected any suggestion that the consulting fees were inducements to get them to use the company’s devices.

The defibrillator database is part of the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, a project run by the American College of Cardiology Foundation, in conjunction with a professional medical group, the Heart Rhythm Society. It is often referred to as the ICD registry, which is short for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, the device’s formal name.

In 2004, Medicare mandated the creation of a national ICD registry as a condition for approving payments for defibrillators for a new class of patients, for whom evidence of a benefit was equivocal. Implant makers, who have realized vastly added sales from the Medicare ruling, supported the registry for one year then cut back financing. Its is now underwritten by hospitals, but limited financing has restricted the data it can collect.

Essentially, during a procedure to implant a defibrillator, information is collected about areas like a patient’s heart function and other medical conditions. If an existing defibrillator is being replaced by a new one, a hospital can also indicate one of several reasons why such a replacement is being performed.

The information from the national ICD registry provided by University Medical Center to The Times reflected data from two of those device replacement fields. It showed that for a four-year period between 2007 and 2010, no device had been replaced at University Medical Center because it had been recalled or because it had malfunctioned.

Earlier, when providing the data, Ms. Cohen, the hospital spokeswoman, said that its results were “highly significant” when compared with the national average for such replacement reasons. The hospital added that Biotronik has not issued any recent device recalls.

Experts like Dr. Curtis said, however, that the hospital’s data was effectively meaningless because there was no way of knowing from it whether a device being replaced at U.M.C. had been initially implanted there, or whether devices implanted at U.M.C. were later replaced elsewhere.

“If they are thinking that no news is good news from the registry, then they are misunderstanding what function the registry is performing,” said another registry expert at Yale, Dr. Harlan Krumholz.

The national ICD registry does report back to hospitals about in-hospital complication rates related to device implantation procedures so they can compare it with the national average. Asked for its complication rate, U.M.C. declined to release it.

 

Medical Experts Dispute a Hospital’s Claims on Heart Device Data

This month, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada said in a statement, “results to date show significantly improved outcomes for our cardiac patients” who got heart implants made by a little-known company, Biotronik. The statement was attributed to Kathleen Silver, the chief executive of the hospital.

Ms. Silver issued that statement after an article in The New York Times reported that cardiologists there switched in 2008 to using Biotronik devices after that company started paying them thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

A hospital spokeswoman later said in response to a reporter’s question that Ms. Silver’s comments were based on data drawn from a national registry of heart patients who received an implanted defibrillator. University Medical Center also provided The Times with limited data from that registry that it said backed its contention.

But several experts knowledgeable about that defibrillator database said in separate interviews that it did not track how device recipients fared after they left a hospital. As a result, it cannot and does not provide data to hospitals or manufacturers about the long-term performance of any company’s device. It also does not produce data that can be used to compare the performance of competing implants made by different companies.

“To saying that we are doing better is a bridge too far for the data they have,” said Dr. Jeptha Curtis, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale, who has worked on research studies involving registry data.

Told of the experts’ assessments, Danita Cohen, the spokeswoman for the Las Vegas hospital, responded in writing by stating, “By way of clarification, U.M.C. did not intend to say that our better outcomes can be attributed to a particular device.”

She added that the hospital’s remarks about “improving patient outcomes” were intended to mean that its use of the defibrillator database was helping it monitor its performance.

The hospital’s disputed claims may intensify scrutiny of the ties between the Las Vegas physicians, Biotronik and a company called Western Medical that acts as the company’s sales representative in Nevada and several other states. Those ties are currently under review by state officials in Nevada. The Justice Department started a separate investigation last year into Biotronik’s sales and marketing practices.

The Times article focused on relationships between a device industry sales official named Caesar Fonte and cardiologists at a Las Vegas practice, Nevada Heart and Vascular. Before 2008, when Mr. Fonte worked at Boston Scientific, a defibrillator producer, the same cardiologists were paid consultants to that company and almost exclusively used its devices, hospital data shows.

Then in 2008, Mr. Fonte quit Boston Scientific and started Western Medical, the Biotronik distributor. The implant specialists at Nevada Heart and Vascular then became paid consultants to Biotronik and switched to using its devices in nearly all patients.

Both Biotronik, the physicians and Mr. Fonte have rejected any suggestion that the consulting fees were inducements to get them to use the company’s devices.

The defibrillator database is part of the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, a project run by the American College of Cardiology Foundation, in conjunction with a professional medical group, the Heart Rhythm Society. It is often referred to as the ICD registry, which is short for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, the device’s formal name.

In 2004, Medicare mandated the creation of a national ICD registry as a condition for approving payments for defibrillators for a new class of patients, for whom evidence of a benefit was equivocal. Implant makers, who have realized vastly added sales from the Medicare ruling, supported the registry for one year then cut back financing. Its is now underwritten by hospitals, but limited financing has restricted the data it can collect.

Essentially, during a procedure to implant a defibrillator, information is collected about areas like a patient’s heart function and other medical conditions. If an existing defibrillator is being replaced by a new one, a hospital can also indicate one of several reasons why such a replacement is being performed.

The information from the national ICD registry provided by University Medical Center to The Times reflected data from two of those device replacement fields. It showed that for a four-year period between 2007 and 2010, no device had been replaced at University Medical Center because it had been recalled or because it had malfunctioned.

Earlier, when providing the data, Ms. Cohen, the hospital spokeswoman, said that its results were “highly significant” when compared with the national average for such replacement reasons. The hospital added that Biotronik has not issued any recent device recalls.

Experts like Dr. Curtis said, however, that the hospital’s data was effectively meaningless because there was no way of knowing from it whether a device being replaced at U.M.C. had been initially implanted there, or whether devices implanted at U.M.C. were later replaced elsewhere.

“If they are thinking that no news is good news from the registry, then they are misunderstanding what function the registry is performing,” said another registry expert at Yale, Dr. Harlan Krumholz.

The national ICD registry does report back to hospitals about in-hospital complication rates related to device implantation procedures so they can compare it with the national average. Asked for its complication rate, U.M.C. declined to release it.