• Ryanair chief claims he can force pilots to give up a week of leave | Business | The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/21/ryanair-boss-holiday-plans-michael-oleary-flight-cancellations

    En fait je me trompe, même en grande difficulté, O’Leary trouve encore le moyen de la jouer petit chef cruel :

    “I don’t even know how there would be industrial action in Ryanair,” O’Leary said. “There isn’t a union.

    The airline had “some goodies” to discuss with pilots, but warned: “If pilots misbehave, that will be the end of the goodies.”

    Rob Davies and agencies @ByRobDavies

    Thursday 21 September 2017 13.26 BST
    First published on Thursday 21 September 2017 11.45 BST

    The Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has escalated the airline’s dispute with pilots, saying they do not have a “difficult job” and claiming he can force them to defer their time off.

    O’Leary is scrambling to prevent more disruption to Ryanair’s schedule after cancelling up to 50 flights a day due to a rota “mess-up” that left it short of pilots.

    Speaking at the airline’s AGM in Dublin on Thursday, he dismissed suggestions of industrial action from disgruntled pilots seeking improved employment terms.

    “I don’t even know how there would be industrial action in Ryanair,” O’Leary said. “There isn’t a union.”

    #ryanair

    • Tout est là en fait :

      On Wednesday, a group of pilots turned down an offer of up to £12,000 to keep flying during their scheduled leave, many of them putting their names to a letter demanding full employment contracts instead.

  • Over half of new #cancer drugs ’show no benefits’ for survival or wellbeing | Business | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/05/over-half-of-new-cancer-drugs-show-no-benefits-for-survival-or-wellbein

    Dans la rubrique « #business »...

    "It is hard to understand why half the drugs were approved in the first place if they provide no clinically meaningful benefit,”

    #pouvoirs_publics et #argent_public au service de #big_pharma

  • Ryanair backs down over passenger rights for cancellations - BBC News

    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41445663

    Avis de gros temps pour Ryanair et peut-être les limites du modèle brutalissime sur lequel fonctionne - comme son nom l’indique si bien - le hard discount ou low cost.

    Ryanair has bowed to regulator demands and spelled out more options on offer to passengers affected by its planned flight disruption.

    It has avoided possible legal action by emailing those affected by more than 20,000 flight cancellations.

    On its site, Ryanair acknowledges it is required to offer those on cancelled flights full refunds or comparable tickets on rival carriers.

    Civil Aviation Authority boss Andrew Haines said Ryanair had “capitulated”.

    Earlier this week, Mr Andrew Haines said he was “furious” the airline had not been complying with the law by failing to offer to re-route passengers on rival airlines.

  • World’s first floating windfarm to take shape off coast of Scotland
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/hywind-project-scotland-worlds-first-floating-windfarm-norway

    Offshore windfarms are springing up across the North Sea for a reason – its waters are uniquely shallow enough to allow turbines to be mounted atop steel poles fixed to the seabed.

    However, such fixed-bottom turbines can only be installed at water depths down to 40 metres, making them little use for the steeply shelved coastlines of the US west coast or Japan.

    “If you look at coastlines around the world, there’s few that have sufficient area at depths down to 40 metres so if they want to deploy offshore wind, they need to introduce floating wind,” said Rummelhoff.

    As well as opening up new frontiers such as the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, floating windfarms could be placed farther out to sea to avoid the sort of aesthetic objections that scuppered a £3.5b windfarm off the Dorset coast.

    #énergies_renouvelables #éolien

  • Cambodian female workers in Nike, Asics and Puma factories suffer mass faintings | Global development | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/25/female-cambodian-garment-workers-mass-fainting

    Over the past year more than 500 workers in four factories supplying to Nike, Puma, Asics and VF Corporation were hospitalised. The most serious episode, recorded over three days in November, saw 360 workers collapse. The brands confirmed the incidents, part of a pattern of faintings that has dogged the 600,000-strong mostly female garment workforce for years.

    The women who collapsed worked 10 hour days, six days a week and reported feeling exhausted and hungry. Excessive heat was also an issue in three factories, with temperatures of 37C. Unlike in neighbouring Vietnam, where factory temperatures must not exceed 32C, Cambodia sets no limit, though if temperatures reach a “very high level” causing difficulties for workers, employers must install fans or air conditioning.

    According to unions, short-term contracts – common for workers in three of the factories – were also a key source of stress and exhaustion.

    #chaleur #femmes #ouvrières #exploitation #chaussures

  • BAE ’secretly sold mass surveillance technology to repressive regimes’
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/15/bae-mass-surveillance-technology-repressive-regimes

    Documents reveal official concerns that deal with countries including Saudi Arabia could put UK security in danger, says BBC BAE, Britain’s biggest arms company, secretly sold mass surveillance technology to six Middle Eastern governments that have been criticised for repressing their citizens, the BBC has reported. The sophisticated technology can be used to spy on a huge number of people’s emails and mobile phones, triggering accusations from human rights campaigners that it is being used (...)

    #BAE_Systems #écoutes #exportation #sécuritaire #web #surveillance #activisme

  • Google Home devices stop responding to Burger King’s TV ad prompt
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/12/burger-king-ok-google-commercial

    The commercial, which features a man using the phrase ‘OK Google’, had prompted the devices to wake up, much to users’ frustration Pepsi has dominated the headlines over the past week for having the country’s most irritating and offensive TV advertisement, but Burger King briefly took the mantle on Wednesday with an ad that includes a command to wake up voice-activated Google Home devices. The 15-second ad features a man in a Burger King uniform leaning into the camera to say : “OK Google, (...)

    #Google #Wikipedia #Home #publicité #marketing #Burger_King

    ##publicité

  • Le guide de Deliveroo pour déjouer les accusations de salariat déguisé
    http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/services/le-guide-de-deliveroo-pour-dejouer-les-accusations-de-salariat-deguise-680

    Les coursiers à vélo ne travaillent pas « pour » Deliveroo, mais « avec » Deliveroo. Au sein de la société anglaise de livraisons de repas, l’expression « bulletin de paie » est bannie au profit des « factures » à destination des livreurs ayant le statut auto-entrepreneur. Si le port d’une tenue à l’effigie de Deliveroo est obligatoire, l’entreprise parle « de kit » ou « d’équipement » mais surtout pas « d’uniforme ». Et la liste est longue.

    Deliveroo distribue en interne un document de six pages alignant les éléments de langage très précis de l’entreprise pour contourner les accusations de salariat déguisé, d’après une enquête du Guardian et du Financial Times. Le document est séparé en deux parties, avec les expressions utilisables et les tournures de phrases interdites.

    • Deliveroo accused of ’creating vocabulary’ to avoid calling couriers employees | Business | The Guardian
      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/05/deliveroo-couriers-employees-managers

      Do say: Supply centre
      Don’t say: Hiring office/hiring centre

      Do say: Supplier agreement, eg: “Your supplier agreement may be terminated if you continue to fail to meet the service delivery standards.
      Don’t say: Employment contract, eg: “_You are obliged by your employment contract to hit certain performance targets.

      *Do say: Working with Deliveroo, eg: “While you are working with Deliveroo as an independent supplier, we would typically expect you to accept 95% of orders you are available to perform when logged in.
      Don’t say: Working for Deliveroo, eg: “Our drivers work for Deliveroo.

      Do say: Riders choosing an area of work, eg: “Riders choose to work with us in localised areas to enable them to complete orders safely within time estimate.
      Don’t say: Assigning riders to a zone, eg: “_Drivers are assigned to their zone based on where we need them most.

      *Do say: Kit/equipment/branded clothing, eg: “If you purchased an equipment pack when you started working with Deliveroo, please bring it back to the supply centre, where we will repurchase it from you.
      Don’t say: Uniform, eg “Please return the uniform you were issued with to the hiring office and we will refund your deposit.

      Do say: Availability, eg “Please indicate your availability via Staffomatic.
      Don’t say: Shifts/sessions/hours, eg “We schedule riders’ shifts in Staffomatic.

      Do say: Unavailability notification, eg “If you are unavailable for work for a prolonged period of time/at a previously agreed time, please let us know.
      Don’t say: Absence request/booking a holiday/asking for time off, eg “If you want time off, you must book a holiday.

      Do say: Inactivity, eg “According to the system, your rider app has been inactive since ...
      Don’t say: Awol/unexplained absence, eg “According to the system you have been absent for ...

  • From Coke’s flower power to Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad – how ads co-opt protest | Media | The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/05/from-cokes-flower-power-to-kendall-jenners-pepsi-ad-how-ads-co-opt-prot

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2msbfN81Gm0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65l6RTTCJ2U

    Wednesday 5 April 2017 19.07 BST
    Last modified on Thursday 6 April 2017 07.29 BST

    When Nivea ran a recent Facebook ad with the supremacist-friendly tagline “White is purity”, it would have been reasonable to assume that, as far as misguided promotional campaigns go, it had cornered the market. Then Kendall Jenner stepped forward and offered a police officer a can of Pepsi.
    Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad criticized for co-opting protest movements for profit
    Read more

    In the two-and-a-half-minute video ad, which the soft drink corporation has now been forced to pull, the most fashionable member of the Kardashian clan is in the middle of a photoshoot when a passing protest march catches her attention. She rips off her blond wig, smudges her lipstick, casts off her couture and strides out into the crowd, surveying the scene, ascertaining, with the careful eye of a young Angela Davis or Gloria Steinem, what needs to be done to advance the cause. (The cause is not clear, as their banners, in the Pepsi colours, consist of painted love hearts, peace signs and the slogan “Join the conversation”. Perhaps they’re fighting for the rights of teenage diaries?)

    #publicité #résistance #récupération #coca_cola #pepsi_cola #multinationales #corporation

    • Message reçu via la mailing-list de Migreurop, le
      29.06.2018:

      Corporate Watch has just published updated company profiles of the UK’s four current detention profiteers.

      Each profile looks at the company’s business basics, history, key business areas, strategies, finances, bosses and shareholders, and ends with a “Scandal Sheet” listing some notable crimes and misdemeanours.

      G4S runs #Brook_House and #Tinsley_House. Mitie runs #Harmondsworth, #Colnbrook, #Campsfield, and recently took over the deportation “escorting” contract which includes running shorter term “holding facilities”. Serco runs #Yarl's_Wood. GEO Group, the second biggest US private prison company, runs #Dungavel.

      Please get in touch if you have any further information to add on any of these companies. You can contact us securely through out contact page: https://corporatewatch.org/contact

      #G4S

      https://corporatewatch.org/g4s-company-profile-2018

      G4S is one of the world’s biggest security companies, active in over 90 countries. And it’s one of the world’s biggest employers of any kind, with around 570,000 staff. Most of its business is in providing guards and security tech to business clients, as well as cash transport.

      Security is a global boom industry, and unlike other outsourcing giants G4S remains profitable and growing.

      G4S also runs prisons and immigration detention centres in the UK, Australia and South Africa under its “G4S Care and Justice” subsidiary. These are amongst its most profitable contracts.

      Although it recently sold most (but not all) of its controversial Israeli business, G4S works with Afghan warlords and in regimes like Syria or Sudan. It has a long record of scandals, failures and controversies – but keeps on winning new contracts.

      #Serco

      https://corporatewatch.org/serco-company-profile-2018

      Serco is an outsourcing company that specialises in public sector work. It runs services in five areas: defence, “justice and immigration”, health, transport, and “citizen services”. It works for 20 governments worldwide, but 40% of all its business remains in the UK, with another 19% in Australia as of 2017.

      One of its biggest contracts is running 11 Australian immigration detention centres. In the UK, it runs Yarl’s Wood detention centre.

      Serco has been hit by numerous scandals, most famously in 2013 when it was exposed along with G4S overcharging the government by millions on its electronic tagging contract.

      Serco was the first of the big-name outsourcers to hit financial trouble recently, with a run of profits warnings starting in 2013. Damage was done by numerous loss-making contracts taken on as the company raced to expand. As a result the company had to ask shareholders for £530m to keep the company going in 2015. Serco is struggling to get back on track, but hopes that its outsourcing model will prove profitable again long term: prisons and wars still seem a winning bet. They’d better be: shareholders haven’t received a dividend in three years.

      #Mitie

      https://corporatewatch.org/mitie-company-profile-2018

      Mitie is an outsourcing company providing a mixed bag of “facilities management” contract services to both corporations and government, from cleaning to consultancy. It is predominantly active in the UK.

      Mitie is having tough times: after a series of profit warnings the company has lost money in the last two years. Since 2016 it has gone through a major management reshuffle, large scale restructuring and the sale of the failing MiHomecare business. And its 2016 accounts are under official investigation for presenting a false picture of the company’s
      finances.

      The company’s “Security” division has always remained profitable, as has the “Care and Custody” division that locks up migrants. Mitie is currently the UK’s biggest detention profiteer: it runs the two Heathrow detention centres and Campsfield in Oxfordshire; and it recently won the £525 million deportation “escorting” contract.

      #GEO_Group

      https://corporatewatch.org/geo-company-profile-2018

      GEO is the second largest US private prisons company. It boasted of locking up 265,000 people in 2017.

      * It is profitable and stable: the US prison regime shows no sign of shrinking, and president Donald Trump (to whom GEO has donated) is a supporter of the private prison industry.

      *It has two UK contracts: #Dungavel immigration detention centre in Scotland; and prisoner transport for the Ministry of Justice in England and Wales, run by its UK joint venture #GEOAmey.

    • Detention centre profits: 20% and up for the migration prison bosses

      Just how much money do companies make from locking up people in the UK’s privately run immigration detention centres? Our analysis, the first to study the detention industry overall, suggests that profit rates of 20% or more are standard.

      The collapse of #Carillion has focused attention on the outsourcing corporations, who complain that government austerity is squeezing their once bountiful incomes. But immigration detention centres, along with prisons, remain very profitable. Of the UK’s eight long-term detention centres, seven are run by private contractors.

      Our analysis of recent accounts released by US prison profiteer #GEO_Group show it could be making as much as a 30% profit margin from running Scotland’s #Dungavel detention centre. This comes after internal #G4S documents revealed the company was making over 20% profit on its notorious #Brook_House deal – and over 40% on the neighbouring #Tinsley_House centre. (See below for full analysis of these figures.)
      Why is detention so profitable?

      It is certainly the case that some outsourcing contracts have been losing a lot of money. Obvious examples are the “COMPASS” contracts to run housing for asylum seekers not in detention.i G4S and #Serco each have two of these deals, for different regions, and complain bitterly about them. Transport and healthcare are other areas where many have struggled – Mitie, for example, sold off all its home care business at a loss last year. Mitie’s latest annual report also notes particularly tight margins in a number of other common outsourcing areas, including cleaning and engineering maintenance. These losses will of course hit businesses’ overall results.

      So why do detention contracts remain profitable? We can think of a number of reasons. One is the practice of using detainees, paid just £1 an hour, as effective slave labour. For example, GEO Group is reported to have saved over £727,000 in less than three years by paying Dungavel detainee labour below the minimum wage. Our 2014 report on detainee labour estimated the detention corporations between them could be saving £3 million a year by getting detainees to cook, clean, and maintain their own prisons.

      Another is that, as there is very little scrutiny of detention contracts, contractors can cut costs further by under-staffing and stripping facilities to a minimum. As we reported in 2015, detention outsourcers are allowed to “self audit” their own performance, with minimal checking by the Home Office. Meanwhile the voices of those in detention themselves, stigmatised as “illegals” and stripped of any rights, are rarely heard.

      Another reason is that these are relatively large deals with only a handful of specialist bidders (so forming an “oligopoly” who can keep prices high). There is not the same competitive pressure on margins as in, say, a general “facilities management” contract.

      Also, these companies know the business very well. The very-first purpose built immigration detention centre, Harmondsworth, was run by Securicor (now part of G4S) on opening in 1970. The rash of new PFI-funded detention centres opened during the Blair government were also handed straight into private management.

      Headline loss-making deals tend to be ones where outsourcing companies, seeking to keep growing their businesses in a tougher environment, push into new areas they haven’t tried before. For example, G4S and Serco came into the COMPASS deals with no experience as housing landlords. And in multi-million mega deals like COMPASS or a train line, a mistake can mean big losses indeed. Amongst the detention profiteers, Serco is particularly vulnerable as its whole £2 billion business is based on about 300 big government contracts.

      In general, while many other service contracts are being squeezed in today’s austerity conditions, locking people up remains good business. So does security more generally, in a world of increasing insecurity and inequality. This is ultimately why outsourcers who focus just on security and imprisonment like G4S and GEO Group are growing and turning a healthy profit. And this is why all the outsourcers keep bidding for detention contracts, alongside promoting the private prison industry.

      At a time where other government deals in sectors such as housing or transport are blowing up in corporations’ faces, locking people up is the outsourcing gift that keeps giving. Prison and immigration control industries are fuelled by insecurity, inequality, and xenophobia – and recent trends suggest the rush to lock up society’s unwanted is not going away. Or as Serco’s latest Annual Report puts it:

      “we can be very confident that the world will still need prisons, will still need to manage immigration … a prison custody officer can sleep soundly in the knowledge that his or her skills will be required for years to come.”

      Analysis: up to 30% profits at Dungavel

      Neither the Home Office nor the outsourcing companies publish the profits made on detention or other contracts. Such information is typically impervious to Freedom of Information requests: the public right to know is overruled by companies’ rights to “commercial confidentiality”. Last September, a senior G4S executive refused to disclose detention profits even when questioned by MPs in parliament. And accounting regulations do not require the companies – which mostly run a range of different businesses – to disclose details of individual contracts.

      However, there is one case where we can get a sense of the money involved: Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) near Glasgow. Since 2011, this has been run by the Florida-based GEO Group, the Trump-donating private prison empire which runs many of the infamous ICE detention facilities in the US. (See our full profile of GEO here).

      Dungavel is currently GEO’s only UK contract. The UK subsidiary that manages the contract, The GEO Group UK Ltd, files annual accounts with Companies House. Because all this company’s revenue appears to come from running Dungavel, these accounts give a unique insight into a detention profiteering contract.

      GEO told us that, while the details of its contract are commercially sensitive, the profit margin is “in the single digits”. However it is not clear if they are talking about the profit rate originally agreed with the Home Office in the contract, or the profits that they actually make – which could be much higher.

      The GEO Group UK Ltd’s revenue from “custody and offender management services” in 2017 was £5.2 million. The accounts tell us “cost of sales” – i.e. the costs incurred when delivering the contract, such as paying staff, maintaining the centre, feeding and monitoring those detained – came to £3.6m in 2017. That leaves a profit margin of 30%: very much in line with the sums G4S is reportedly making. The Dungavel profit margin is harder to discern in prior years as GEO held other contracts, including Harmondsworth detention centre until 2014. Even so, margins for all their operations have consistently been around 20% or above since 2011.

      GEO group told us this profit margin “isn’t solely related to the contract at Dungavel House, and therefore the contract is not our sole means of profitability”. However the accounts do not list any other source of revenue in 2017.ii

      We asked GEO to clarify but they did not respond. Published Home Office data show the contract is worth £45.2m over eight years: so it seems likely that the vast bulk, if not all, of the company’s money and operating costs are from running Dungavel. We also asked GEO what happens if their profit in fact exceeds the “single figure” rate specified in their contract. Do they pass cost savings on to the Home Office? Again, they did not respond.

      Besides “cost of sales”, GEO Group UK Ltd’s accounts also list “administrative expenses” of £0.7m in 2017. This takes the final “net” profit of the UK subsidiary as a whole down to a mere £1 million in 2017. And administrative expenses are significantly higher in previous years. The question is: how much of these are essential to running the detention centre? Or what part relate, for example, to moving money around a multi-national company, or shmoozing politicians and touting for new contracts?

      GEO told us these “cover the cost of operating the contract”, including “operations, utilities, repair and maintenance, programs, rent and lease expense and insurances”. However, accounting custom is usually to include all the costs directly incurred in the running of the contract in “cost of sales”, described above. And it is not clear which of GEO’s “administrative costs” here are necessary for the running of Dungavel or for their UK head office. There are also the costs involved in bidding for new contracts, which the company’s accounts repeatedly reference, plus, prior to 2017, significant foreign exchange losses on loans they have taken from their US-based parent.

      Again, we asked GEO for further clarification but did not hear back. It is impossible to say for sure without seeing their internal data. But the published accounts suggest the amounts GEO is making simply from running Dungavel are likely similar to those reported for G4S.

      20% profits at Brook House

      Internal G4S documents, which were reported on by the BBC and The Guardian last September, show similar high profit rates at that company’s Gatwick detention centres, Brook House and Tinsley House.

      As the Guardian reported, the Brook House contract made a profit rate of over 20.7% in 2016, and Tinsley House made over 41.5% – although this may be distorted because the centre was closed for part of the year. Profits in earlier years were slightly lower, but still typically around 20% or more.

      Like Dungavel, the original Brook and Tinsley House contracts signed in 2009 set official profit margins in the “single figures”. For Brook House, this is 6.8%. So G4S’ internal profit figures are well above what they are supposed to be making on the contracts.

      When questioned in parliament about these figures by the Home Affairs Select Committee, G4S’ regional director Peter Neden said that they based on “incomplete information”. But he refused to disclose any more “complete” figures. According to the BBC, Neden argued that doing so would “help competitors”, and said the reported profits “did not take account of costs, including human resources and IT. He said the company’s profits were not more than 20%, but he would not confirm what level they were.”

      Of course, without seeing the full G4S figures, there is no way to tell what these “human resources and IT” costs were. “Human resources” here, seems likely to refer to the company’s central management costs, as the wages of staff actually working in the centres are already included. But it seems highly unlikely that management costs and “IT” would be as high as 15% of all revenue – which is what would bring G4S’ profits down to their contractual levels.

      In fact G4S’ published accounts also support the picture of extreme profits, if we put a bit of work into analysing them. G4S’ detention centre business is run through a subsidiary with the Orwellian name “G4S Care and Justice Services (UK)”. Immigration detention is only a part of this subsidiary’s business. It also runs five prisons for the Ministry of Justice, and the loss-making COMPASS contract to house asylum-seekers outside of detention. (See our full G4S Company Profile for more detail.)

      G4S Care and Justice Services’ revenue was £335.41 million in 2016/17, the most recent reported year (£333.01 million in 2015). After operational costs of £290.2m, the profit rate directly from these contracts was £29.29 million, or 9% of revenue (in 2016, £30.13 million, or 9%).iii

      At first sight, this seems much lower than the internal figures. However, these figures are significantly impacted by major losses from non-detention contracts. Above all, this means the big COMPASS deal to house asylum seekers outside detention. G4S won the two COMPASS contracts for the North East, Yorkshire and Humberside; and the Midlands and East of England – and has been complaining ever since that it’s losing heavily on the deal.

      For example, in its 2016 accounts G4S Care and Justice adds £14.2 million to its costs to represent an “onerous contracts charge” – that is, money it expects to lose on the COMPASS deal. The year before it recorded a £20.7 million “onerous contracts charge”. It also makes other adjustments related to “commercial disputes” and old PFI contracts.

      To see what the figures look like without the impact of COMPASS and other “onerous” non-detention losses, we can first re-calculate gross profit using the company’s “cost of sales excluding specific items”. This starts to more accurately reflect what G4S made from running its detention centres and prisons. On this basis, gross profits were £45.25 million in 2016, 13.5% of revenue, and £50.83 million in 2015, or 15%.

      But in fact these are still under-estimates. This is because, to calculate profit rates with COMPASS stripped out, we also need to remove COMPASS’ contribution to revenue and costs. We do not know exactly what this is, but can estimate it from total contract values that the Home Office has disclosed. Combined, G4S’ two COMPASS contracts are valued at £765 million, over a total seven years (2012-19). So roughly £109 million per year, about one third of G4S “Care and Justice” total turnover.

      Take this off revenue and cost of sales and the profit rate was actually 20%.iv This is in the territory of the internal documents.

      As with GEO, additional costs such as “human resources and IT” referenced by Peter Neden to the MPs may well be included in “administrative expenses” section of the accounts, which would reduce this profit rate. Without seeing their full internal accounts there is no way of knowing the exact rate, and these calculations are unavoidably imprecise.v But as with GEO, the information we have available from published accounts appears to show the company is making very high returns indeed from its detention and prison business.

      Mitie and Serco

      The two other detention profiteers are Mitie, which runs the two Heathrow centres (Harmondsworth and Colnbrook), and Campsfield House in Oxfordshire; and Serco, which runs Yarl’s Wood. (See our full company profiles on Mitie and Serco for more information.)

      Unfortunately there is not the same available information on these two companies’ detention profits as for GEO and G4S. So far, no internal documents have come to light from Mitie or Serco. And their published accounts mix detention contracts alongside other business lines.

      What we do know is that both companies see detention as amongst their most profitable operations, and continue to actively bid for new detention contracts. We have no reason to believe that the detention centres they run aren’t just as profitable as Dungavel or Brook House.

      If you have any further information on these companies or their detention contracts please get in touch. You can contact us securely through our contact page.
      Conclusion: detention is good business

      Following the Carillion collapse, a chorus of outsourcing corporations have complained about how times are hard and profits meagre in the age of austerity. But there is a world of difference amongst outsourcing contracts. In some sectors, margins are undoubtedly tighter than in the boom days of Labour’s public-private giveaway. Elsewhere, though, the party continues.

      It is important here not to take the companies’ complaints at face value. For example, in 2015 the Financial Times cited unnamed “analysts” estimating sharp decline in detention centre profit margins “from 12 to 13 per cent 10 years ago to between 5 and 7 per cent now.” This was as Mitie explained how the terms of its new contract for the Heathrow centres pushed it to reduce staff and extend lock-up hours. In fact, after its first year of running the centres, Mitie Care & Custody’s profits were up six-fold. From the figures we’ve looked at above, if there has been some margin tightening this must mean that previous contracts were bounteous indeed.

      Annex: Detention contracts, size and value

      Please note these are necessarily rough estimates. Access to Home Office figures is sporadic and incomplete, to say the least, relying on occasional leaks or vague answers to Freedom of Information Act (FOI) requests.

      Heathrow: Harmondsworth and Colnbrook

      contracted to Mitie, September 2014-22

      number of beds: 1,065

      total value at award: £240m

      value per year: £30 million – roughly £28,000 per bed

      Campsfield

      contracted to Mitie, May 2011-19

      number of beds: 282

      total value at award: £42 million

      value per year: £5.25 million – roughly £19,000 per bed

      Gatwick: Brook House

      contracted to G4S, May 2009-18; now extended to 2020

      current number of beds: 558 (after recent expansion)

      total value at award: £90.4 million

      value per year: £10m – or roughly £18,000 per bed

      Gatwick: Tinsley House

      contracted to G4S, May 2009-18; now extended to 2020

      current number of beds: 178

      total value at award: £43.6 million

      value per year: £4.8 million – or roughly £27,000 per bed

      Yarl’s Wood

      contracted to Serco, 2015-23

      number of beds: 349 (average occupancy)

      total value (calculated at award): £69.9 million

      value per year: £8.8 million – or roughly £25,000 per bed

      Dungavel

      contracted to GEO, 2011-19

      current number of beds: 249

      total value: £45.2 million

      value per year: £5.65 million – or roughly £23,000 per bed

      Morton Hall

      Run by Her Majesty’s Prison Service (HMPS).
      Notes

      i- COMPASS stands for “Commercial and Operational Managers Procuring Asylum Support Services”. The contracts were awarded in 2012, and are due to end in 2019. See our G4S company Profile for more detail.

      ii- GEO’s only other UK business is the 50/50 joint venture GEOAmey, which runs prisoner transport for the Ministry of Justice in England and Wales. But this income is treated separately, and does not feature on the GEO Group UK accounts.

      iii- Both years are knocked down by “administrative expenses” of £24.19 million (£21.51 million). Final pre-tax profits then become £10.25 million, or 3% (£12.07 million, or 3.6%, in 2015). After tax, Care and Justice booked £7.93 million, or 2.4% (£9.16 million, or 2.8% in 2015).

      iv- To calculate this we also subtracted the estimated COMPASS revenue of £109 million from the overall revenue of £335.4 million, to give an adjusted non-COMPASS revenue of £226.4 million. And we also subtracted it from the cost of sales (excluding non-specific items) of £290.2 million, to give adjusted cost of sales of £181.2 million. This leaves a £45.2 million gross profit.

      v- For example, we cannot be sure that G4S has receive the full value of the contracts in annual payments – it might be, e.g., that payments were reduced due to penalties for poor performance, although this has not been made public. This would make the actual profit rates lower than our estimates. However, they would still be very considerable. And no records of any such penalties have been published, to our knowledge.


      https://corporatewatch.org/detention-centre-profits-20-and-up-for-the-migration-prison-bosses
      #business