Bangladesh has set up a panel to raise the minimum wage for more than three million garment workers, a minister said Sunday, after a series of disasters highlighted the poor conditions they endure. "We've set up a minimum wage board for the garment sector. We did it in view of the workers' demand to hike their salaries," textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique told AFP. A typical Bangladeshi garment worker takes home less than $40 a month, a wage that Pope Francis has condemned as akin to slave labour.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Bangladesh's government plans to raise the minimum wage for garment workers after the deaths of more than 1,100 people in the collapse of a factory building focused attention on the textile industry's dismal pay and hazardous working conditions. A new minimum wage board will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiky said Sunday. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals. The wage board will include representatives of factory owners, workers and the government, he said.

By Edward Krudy NEW YORK (Reuters) - For Niagara Falls, a city in New York staring at the prospect of insolvency in the face of a weak local economy and soaring employee costs, diverting money earmarked for pensions to cover short-term spending needs seemed like the only option. "We don't like doing it, so this is sort of a last ditch strategy for us," Mayor Paul Dyster told Reuters in an interview. Postponing pension payments was the way to avoid cutting back on town services, he said.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - A national push for paid sick days is poised to score a significant victory, with lawmakers in the nation's largest city set to vote on requiring businesses to provide the benefit to an estimated 1 million workers who don't have it now. The City Council was expected to OK that Wednesday, while also approving unpaid sick time for another roughly 300,000 workers. A mayoral veto is expected, but so is an override.