SINGAPORE undefined Eight Indonesian maids have fallen to their deaths from high-rise apartments in Singapore this year, and the Indonesia Embassy said Tuesday it is pushing for a ban on cleaning outside windows.

Indonesia, which supplies about half of Singapore’s 200,000 maids, has asked employment agencies to include a clause in work contracts that prohibits maids from cleaning the outside of windows or hanging laundry from high-rise apartments, Indonesian Embassy Counsellor Sukmo Yuwono told the Associated Press.

(Brings A New Meaning To I Don`t Do Windows)

More at source: Washington Post

The janitor who found the package alerted administrators, who then opened it and called for help. Personnel from the nearby towns of Lancaster, Clinton, Littleton, and Bolton quickly set up a decontamination tent outside the high school’s main entrance.

Coan, who was joined at a press briefing by the Nashoba regional superintendent and the Chiefs of the Bolton police and fire departments, said that the substance is being handed over to the FBI’s Worcester office, which will perform further testing.

More at source: Boston.com

“We decided to take a top to bottom look at our company’s impact on the environment, not only inside customer locations but outside it as well,” company President Ryan Stark said. “What we discovered is that we could lower our impact on the environment by changing how we traveled to locations.” The company analyzed each trip to locations and discovered that many of their service calls required single employees to travel to locations to perform inspections or perform routine service.

A pink marker flags the spot on the ground where Greg Myers says he found a human skull on Friday.

"Never know it could've been laying there for a year," Myers thought aloud.

He says he was cleaning out a drainage ditch in his front yard, like he does every spring, but this year he found something that isn't a part of his yearly routine.

"There were leaves there and stuff, and I thought it was an old ball or something until I shovel tapped it. Then I said, 'No! That ain't no ball!'," described Myers, "No, it's a human skull."

More at source: WKYT

Earlier this year, the 7 Investigation team knocked on the doors of several Treasure Valley homes on a meth property list where, legally, no one is supposed to live until they are properly cleaned.

We found people living in some. Others were unoccupied, like the apartment in this story. Over the past few months, KTVB followed the owner's costly quest to get off the list of homes that are made unlivable because of former meth labs.

More at source: KTVB

At Salary.com, the arithmetic is based on the time and value of all the various jobs moms take on, including laundry-machine operator, janitor, van driver, cook, facilities manager, psychologist and CEO (of the entire household). The results show that stay-at-home moms put in one honey of a workweek: 94.7 hours. After factoring in duties and corresponding approximate wages ($36.85 hourly for the “psychologist” role, $13.11 for “cook” responsibilities), a stay-at-home mother is worth an average of $17.80 per hour, or $112,962 annually.

MINNEAPOLIS - The workers who clean major retail stores like Kmart, Target and Best Buy often face shocking conditions of exploitation, including heavy workloads, long hours and lost wages, according to a new study of the industry and a lawsuit against a major cleaning contractor. The information was released Wednesday by CTUL, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha/the Center for Workers United in Struggle, a community organization that works for fair wages and better conditions for retail cleaning workers, many of whom are recent immigrants.

Last fall, workers employed by Diversified Maintenance Systems, a cleaning contractor for retail stores including Kmart, Target, and Best Buy, filed suit, charging that the cleaning contractor required them to work up to 80 hours a week without overtime pay. Diversified Maintenance has been the subject of at least six private lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor over its failure to pay overtime wages.

More at source: Workday Minnesota

Pittsburgh, PA, April 27, 2012 --(PR.com)-- Pittsburgh residential cleaning company, Mr. Maid announced the opening of their commercial cleaning division.

“After cleaning houses numbering in the thousands during the past 7 years,” said owner Jim Jones. “We are going to use our expertise to offer the same high quality cleaning work that our community has come to expect to the commercial community in and around the Pittsburgh, Pa. Area.”

More at source: pr.com

Zep Inc.'s (ZEP) fiscal second-quarter earnings rose 13% as the commercial cleaning-products company reported improved sales in many of its markets while higher materials costs hurt margins.

Chief Executive John K. Morgan said increased sales in segments such as automotive, home improvement retail, vehicle wash offset volume declines within end-markets such as government, institutional and janitorial.

The company--whose products range from Armor All Professional products used at car washes to insecticides sold by mass retailers--has been grappling with soft demand from small-business customers and high commodities prices that have outpaced its ability to raise prices

More at source: Wall Street Journal

Jairo Hernandez of Lynn, Mass., filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board's regional office in Boston against the Service Employees International Union Local 615. He filed the charges for himself and his coworkers at Complete Cleaning.

SEIU Local 615 officials claimed collective bargaining privileges with Complete Cleaning even though workers nearly unanimously oppose the union hierarchy in their workplace, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is providing free legal assistance for the workers in the case. Under federal law, it is illegal for a union to claim such a status without the consent of the majority of the employees.

More at source: Legal News Online