Bhopal: Thirty years on -- and still seeking justice

(The Atlantic - Focus)

BHOPAL (India) -- History's worst industrial disaster happened on the night of December 2, 1984. That night, toxic gas had leaked from a factory run by Union Carbide India Ltd spreading fumes over a large residential area in Bhopal. The media in Spain and many other countries have reflected on the fact that justice has never been served for the people of Bhopal who suffered so very badly from the disaster. The Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, yesterday published a personal article on the subject. Pictures of the results are numerous, but a very good selection appears in The Atlantic. The fact that Union Carbide was taken over by another US company, Dow Chemical, largely, it was intimated, as a shield against multi-million dollar legal claims, makes no difference to the victims, mainly a relatively uneducated, non-powerful, almost-invisible population. It is also true that at the time, the Indian government held a non-controlling 49% interest in Union Carbide. Yet it has never lifted a financial finger to help its own countrymen, women and children.

New collective bargaining negotiations set the longest official daily working hours in 12 years

Salary increases stay the same as last year: 0.56%

MADRID -- Negotiations between unions and the employers' collectives have not recovered since the introduction of controversial new labour laws by the PP government. Official statistics show that there were 1,319 agreements signed over the first nine months of the year, only 100 more than last year and the worst since the crisis began. One of the principal inducements aimed at renewing the contracts was the so-called 'ultra-activity' clause in the law that kept current existing but outdated contracts, until a new one had been negotiated. Experts point out that the daily working hours rose by 30 annual hours for 2014, or 1,756 hours, compared to the same period last year, and the longest since 2002. Negotiations centred on new contracts starting on January 1, 2015, have fixed the annual working hours at 1,825, according to the Ministry of Employment. The Autonomous Communities with the longest work day: