A federal judge has ruled (AP story) that Jamie Leigh Jones, who was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by fellow Halliburton/KBR contractors at Camp Hope in Baghdad, "can take her claims to trial" rather than, as Halliburton lawyers claimed her employment contract required, going through often-biased third-party arbitration. Our previous blog on Jones' plight. Our previous blog on arbitration reform.

In an unrelated AP story today Defense contractor creates a Caribbean tax haven on how government contractors including KBR use off-shore tax havens to avoid paying income and even payroll taxes, U.S. PIRG staff attorney John Krieger notes the practice is both unpatriotic and unfair to employees:

Krieger ... said companies with overseas outposts have lower overall expenses and therefore an unfair advantage when competing for work against American businesses that don't. "It's purely disgraceful for them to pretend to be foreign companies to avoid their very basic responsibilities like Medicare and Social Security," Krieger says. "The whole spirit of open competition has been completely lost."