Workers' organisation key to safety at sea
The causes of the tragic capsizing of the cruise liner Costa Concordia will hopefully soon be found. But seafarers and their unions around the world have been warning about the safety standards on board ships for years. By those accounts ships at greatest risk are those that sail under a "flag of convenience" (the practice of registering a merchant ship in a sovereign state different from that of the ship's owners). This avoids complying with the more stringent safety and training regulations imposed on ships registered in more economically developed countries. However as Andrew Linington of...