Now when they leave after three months and a day you have to start paying them holiday Mr Fuller said

Now when they leave after three months and a day, you have to start paying them holiday,” Mr Fuller said.His comments came as Fuller unveiled an 8.2 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to pounds 7.1m in the half year to 25 September, in line with analysts’ estimates. Turnover rose by 16 per cent to pounds 71.4m.Fuller’s sales of cask beers rose by 2 per cent in the period, against a decline of 9 per cent in the broader market. The minimum wage of pounds 3.60 an hour was introduced in April.”Backpackers just want to earn a bit of money to go round Europe. Anthony Fuller, the chairman, said the laws, which amounted to “tax by the back door”, had cut 4.25 per cent from his group’s interim profits.
“A housewife who was just working in the evenings to save up for Christmas was happy with the old going rate of pounds 3.40 or pounds 3.50 an hour …

The purpose of the minimum wage was to help people in sweatshops, so the principle is obviously right But it has backfired on part-time workers,” Mr Fuller said. FULLER, SMITH & Turner, the 154-year-old London brewer, yesterday launched a fierce attack on the national minimum wage and working time directive, saying the legislation was cutting into the company’s profits. Mr Gonzalez actually attended the one meeting held between the two sides. “That was like shooting the soldier who emerges from the trench waving the white flag,” said Mr Madariaga bitterly “It was a provocation.”. RUSSIAN SOLDIERS opened fire at close range on a column of Chechen refugees yesterday, killing 40 and wounding many others.

Julen de Madariaga is a founder of Eta who served long prison sentences and years of exile before becoming disenchanted with the means – though not the aims – of the organisation.”It claims to speak for the Basque people, but really it’s cut off from Basque reality, locked in an ivory tower. Their leaders are clandestine, living abroad: it’s hard enough for security reasons to meet their own comrades, let alone keep in touch with what ordinary Basques are thinking and feeling. They cannot see that we long for peace,” Mr Madariaga said yesterday.Madrid sees Eta as an enemy to be vanquished, not an opponent with whom eventually to reach a settlement.Two Eta leaders arrested in recent months – Belen Gonzalez and Jokim Etxevarria – were the organisation’s contacts with government representatives. Everything’s uncertain, but we’re trying to get the process back on course.”Those close to Eta’s thinking are pessimistic. We haven’t given up hope yet,” said a spokesman for Elkarri, a non-party conciliation group that helped broker last year’s truce “We think Eta wanted to put itself back in the picture. The conservative Basque Nationalist Party offered to help the pro-Eta Herri Batasuna party (HB) to achieve Basque sovereignty – an unprecedented concession to Eta’s main demand.”There is still time We are trying to stop the clock.

On the eve of a public holiday marking Spain’s 1978 democratic constitution – which many Basques have never accepted – Spaniards waited, in fear and sadness, for the first new attack.
Moderate Basque nationalists tried to recover the momentum of the stalled peace process, appealing to Eta to reconsider its decision, which was announced last weekend. THOUSANDS OF Spaniards protested yesterday against the decision of the separatist organisation Eta to end its 14-month ceasefire. Crowds gathered in town centres throughout the country to mark the end of the truce with five minutes’ silence. “We think eight people are still missing and hope they are still alive. We worked through last night with great determination and we will do that again tonight.”Looking at the remains of the apartment building, it was hard to believe anyone could still be alive underneath. But late yesterday morning the site fell silent as rescue workers equipped with sonar detection devices went to work, checking the rubble for signs of life.. But surgeons had to amputate her legs to pull her free and her condition was critical.”This is a disaster for the area,” said state official Doctor Josef Sodar, in charge of co-ordinating the rescue work.