Author: News Room

Ustec calls off the strikes until Thursday, pending consultation with teachers in Catalonia

The majority educational unions, Ustec and Aspepc (which account for 50% representation) have decided to call off the strikes planned from Monday to Thursday, which were focused each day in a different province. However, they maintain the call for Friday, which affects all of Catalonia, pending the result of the consultation that will be carried out to find out whether or not the teachers endorse the pre-agreement reached on Friday with the Department of Education. However, CGT and the Intersindical (they add up to 12% representation), which withdrew from the pre-agreement with Education on Friday, do maintain the strikes. The…

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From ‘Operation Kitchen’ to Leire Díez: the sewers feed off each other

Sewers and plumbers. Two terms perhaps not so foreign to politics, but that until a few years ago were unknown to the majority of citizens. Its function requires it. Its protagonists move in the shadows, scratching for scraps of information that may be useful for the partisan interests they defend. They work in a gray area, but sometimes they cross the red line and set off alarm bells in Justice, as happened with the PP’s alleged maneuvers to boycott judicial investigations into Gürtel. and the so-called Bárcenas paperswhich were exposed with Operation Kitchen, which is being tried these days. Now,…

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Barcelona registers the lowest birth rate since the Civil War

The birth rate continues to fall in Barcelona. The reading of the registry as of January 1 of this year shows that in 2025 it was the second lowest since 1900: 11,012 children were born, 1.3% compared to the previous year. The first was 1939, the last of the Civil War (about 9,000), when the city’s population was around one million people. The decline has been sustained since the late 70s of last year, with a slight rebound in the first decade of this century. On the other hand, deaths in 2025 were 14,557, 1% less. The drop in the…

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Legal pitfalls in workation – human resources management

If you want to enjoy the sun and beach in summer, you don’t necessarily have to take time off. At least not if a work assignment has been agreed with the employer. “Workation” – i.e. the fusion of work (“work”) and vacation (“vacation”) has gained in popularity since the increasing emergence of mobile work during Corona times. What may sound tempting to many who do not necessarily have to do their job on site in the company, however, involves a number of legal pitfalls. These arise, among other things, from the fact that the framework conditions for workation are not…

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AI proves itself in applicant selection

An international team of researchers evaluated more than 3,000 real applications in cooperation with one of the “world’s leading recruitment platforms”. The results show that human recruiters show several cognitive biases, while these patterns do not occur or occur less in AI. Overall, compared to experienced recruiters, the AI ​​was able to better assess in the long term who is likely to be successful for the advertised positions. The study was designed to evaluate a total of 3,296 real applications in the US for three tech job categories: programmer, web designer and content creator. Specifically, it was about asynchronous interviews,…

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‘Out of focus’: An eye-watering exhibition

Unfocused, which arrives at the CaixaFòrum Barcelona (until September 27) after being seen in Madrid, is undoubtedly an exhibition to rub your eyes, not only because of the astonishment caused by some works that are a hymn to the blurry, the imprecise and the “failed photo”, but because of the uncomfortable feeling that you have throughout the tour that you are not seeing well. And that’s what it’s about: generating that doubt, that imbalance and that discomfort in your gaze as a way for you to rethink and question notions about art and the representation of reality. The exhibition, the…

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Agreement between unions and Education to end strikes in Catalonia

White smoke, finally. After 16 days and eight meetings, unions and the Department of Education have reached a preliminary agreement on salaries and global improvements in classroom conditions, which will allow teachers to earn 400 euros more per month within four years and more than 6,000 new staff of teachers and educational staff in this period. This puts an end to one of the conflicts that the Government of Salvador Illa has been facing for three months and puts an end to strikes that have filled the streets and emptied the classrooms, but which have also worn down the Government…

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Schmalzl becomes the new Stepstone CEO: Current changes in the HR consultant market

In the past few weeks there have been interesting chair changes in the world of HR consultants and service providers. Here we present the most important ones. Sebastian Dettmers (Foto: Stepstone) The Stepstone Group has appointed Christian Schmalzl as its new Chief Executive Officer. Schmalzl will take up his position on September 1, 2026 and succeeds Sebastian Dettmers, who is leaving the company after 15 years. Dettmers has been CEO since January 2020 and previously served as Managing Director for Germany from 2011; Under his leadership, Stepstone developed from a European job exchange into an HR technology group with activities…

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