03/06/2025

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | JUNE 3, 2025

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Trade barriers, delivery delays hamper airline growth o Trump’s sweeping tariffs fuel slowdown fears, squeezing US consumer spending on travel

Workers’ rights in ‘free fall’ globally: ITUC report PARIS: Workers’ rights around the world are “in free fall”, with widespread attempts to hamstring collective bargaining and attacks on trade union representatives, the world’s largest trade union organisation said yesterday. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) found a “profound deterioration” in workers’ rights in its annual rights index published yesterday, based on 97 indicators laid out by the United Nations and international treaties. Workers’ rights, which the report measured in 151 countries, particularly declined in Europe and the Americas – with the worst results for the two regions since the index was launched in 2014. In total, 87% of countries violated the right to strike and 80% violated the right to collective bargaining, the ITUC said. “The right to collective bargaining was restricted in 80% of countries (121),“ the ITUC said. In France, for example, “nearly four in every 10 collective agreements were imposed unilaterally by employers, without union representation”. The report also said outlined “persecution” against union leaders. “In France, more than 1,000 union leaders and members of the Confederation generale du travail (CGT) were facing criminal charges and disciplinary measures for their roles in mass protests against pension reforms,“ it said. The ITUC gives each country a maximum score of one and a minimum score of five for their respect for workers’ rights such as the right to strike, demonstrate and participate in negotiations. Only seven countries – including Germany, Sweden and Norway – were awarded the maximum score, compared to 18 a decade ago. Italy and Argentina saw their scores drop in 2025. “If this pace of decline continues, in 10 years there will be no country left in the world with the highest rating for its respect for workers’ rights,“ ITUC head Luc Triangle said in a statement. In 2025, Europe experienced the sharpest decline of any region in the world over the past 10 years. The ITUC also said trade unionists or workers were killed in five countries in 2025: South Africa, Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru. And Nigeria joined the list of the 10 worst countries for workers’ rights for the first time. Only a handful of countries saw an improvement in workers’ rights. – AFP Human fact-checking has long been a flashpoint in a hyperpolarised political climate, particularly in the US, where conservative advocates maintain it suppresses free speech and censors right-wing content – something professional fact-checkers vehemently reject. AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking programme including in Asia, Latin America, and the European Union. The quality and accuracy of AI chatbots vary based on their training and programming, raising concerns about political influence or control. Musk’s xAI recently blamed an “unauthorised modification” for causing Grok to generate unsolicited posts referencing“white genocide”in South Africa. “We have seen the way AI assistants can either fabricate results or give biased answers after human coders specifically change their instructions,“ Angie Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, told AFP. Researchers have repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of “Community Notes” in combating falsehoods.

persist in 2025 and possibly to the end of the decade,” IATA said in the update to its industry outlook. Tim Clark, president of the world’s largest international airline, Dubai’s Emirates, said on Sunday that the pandemic was no longer an acceptable excuse for delivery delays and challenged planemakers to take responsibility. Similar frustration was voiced by Saudi budget carrier flyadeal. “Delays are becoming inexcusable. Transparency, to be frank, is lacking, and we’re getting agitated. How else can we plan? I mean it is just going beyond a joke now,” flyadeal CEO Steven Greenway told Reuters. US planemaker Boeing is trying to stabilise and ramp up production after a quality crisis and a labour strike slowed output last year. Last week, sources told Reuters that Europe’s Airbus has been warning airlines it faces another three years of delivery delays. Tata Group’s Air India is in talks with Airbus and Boeing for a major new aircraft order including some 200 extra single-aisle planes, topping up a mammoth deal in 2023 as the former state carrier pursues a multi-billion dollar revamp, Reuters reported on Sunday.

NEW DELHI: The head of a global airlines industry body said yesterday that growing trade barriers risked damaging the economy and the air travel sector, and “unacceptable” plane delivery delays were frustrating growth plans at a time of record passenger numbers. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) shaved a key forecast for 2025 industry-wide profits, blaming trade tensions and declining consumer confidence. “Like all forms of connectivity, flying makes the world more prosperous,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said at the group’s annual meeting in New Delhi. “That stands in contrast to isolationism, trade barriers and the fragmentation of the multilateral rules-based system. These destroy wealth and lower living standards,” he said. Sweeping tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump have stoked fears of an economic slowdown and squeezed discretionary spending, prompting many consumers especially in the US to delay or scale back travel plans. They also threaten a decades-old pact between more than 30 countries to eliminate duties on aircraft and their parts. While Walsh said there was no indication aircraft prices had increased due to tariffs, he said airlines would resist any attempt by aerospace manufacturers to raise prices and called for governments to “keep aerospace out of trade wars”. IATA represents some 300 airlines accounting for more than 80% of global traffic. On environmental sustainability, Walsh said progress was not what it should be at this point in time. He criticised energy firms for not producing enough sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which is made from waste oil and biomass and costs more than conventional jet fuel. IATA has increasingly been warning that airlines will struggle to meet their sustainability goals, but Walsh said the aviation industry was still aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050 based mainly on a gradual switch to SAF. WASHINGTON: As misinformation exploded during India’s four-day conflict with Pakistan, social media users turned to an AI chatbot for verification – only to encounter more falsehoods, underscoring its unreliability as a fact-checking tool. With tech platforms reducing human fact checkers, users are increasingly relying on AI powered chatbots – including xAI’s Grok, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini – in search of reliable information. “Hey @Grok, is this true?” has become a common query on Elon Musk’s platform X, where the AI assistant is built in, reflecting the growing trend of seeking instant debunks on social media. But the responses are often themselves riddled with misinformation. Grok – now under renewed scrutiny for inserting “white genocide,“ a far-right conspiracy theory, into unrelated queries – wrongly identified old video footage from Sudan’s Khartoum airport as a missile strike on Pakistan’s Nur Khan airbase during the country’s recent

More people are flying than ever before after a post-pandemic passenger market recovery, but airline growth is being hampered by extended plane delivery delays and supply chain bottlenecks driving up maintenance and repair time. Walsh called predictions of aircraft delivery delays throughout this decade “off-the-chart unacceptable”. He said the airline industry was evaluating legal options over the delays, but it preferred to work with manufacturers collaboratively. “The manufacturing sector is failing badly,” he said. IATA said the number of deliveries scheduled for 2025 was 26% less than what was promised a year ago, although at 1,692 this would be the highest number of new planes since 2018. “Further downward revisions are likely, given that supply chain issues are expected to

IATA highlights economic and environmental challenges as airlines struggle with supply chain issues, fuel costs, and shifting trade dynamics, despite strong passenger demand. – PEXELS PIX Hey chatbot, is this true? AI fact-checks may spread false info

speculative answers instead.” When AFP fact-checkers in Uruguay asked Gemini about an AI-generated image of a woman, it not only confirmed its authenticity but fabricated details about her identity and where the image was likely taken. Grok recently labeled a purported video of a giant anaconda swimming in the Amazon River as “genuine,“ even citing credible-sounding scientific expeditions to support its false claim. In reality, the video was AI-generated, AFP fact-checkers in Latin America reported, noting that many users cited Grok’s assessment as evidence the clip was real. Such findings have raised concerns as surveys show that online users are increasingly shifting from traditional search engines to AI chatbots for information gathering and verification. The shift also comes as Meta announced earlier this year it was ending its third-party fact checking programme in the US, turning over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as “Community Notes,“ popularised by X.

conflict with India. Unrelated footage of a building on fire in Nepal was misidentified as “likely” showing Pakistan’s military response to Indian strikes. “The growing reliance on Grok as a fact checker comes as X and other major tech companies have scaled back investments in human fact-checkers,“ McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard, told AFP. “Our research has repeatedly found that AI chatbots are not reliable sources for news and information, particularly when it comes to breaking news,“ she warned. NewsGuard’s research found that 10 leading chatbots were prone to repeating falsehoods, including Russian disinformation narratives and false or misleading claims related to the recent Australian election. In a recent study of eight AI search tools, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that chatbots were “generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn’t answer accurately, offering incorrect or