Groningen shipyard puts 40 eastern European workers on staff contracts

DutchNews, July 9, 2018

Photo: Pattje shipyard

A shipyard in Groningen province has given 40 of its Polish and Romanian employees fixed contracts, ensuring that all its workers receive equal pay. 

The metalworkers at Pattje shipyard in Waterhuizen will be put on the payroll with immediate effect and receive considerably higher salaries, Albert Kuiper of the FNV metal workers union told the Financieele Dagblad on Monday. 

The eastern Europeans work at the Pattje yard as welders, steel fixers and pipe fitters. The Poles and Romanians make up more than half of Pattje’s 70-strong workforce. 

Earlier, another Waterhuizen-based yard, Groningen Shipyard, made a similar deal with the FNV. Kuiper said the position of the northern shipyards is stronger now that all employees are on equal footing. 

The eastern Europeans have all been employed at the yard for some time on various types of contract. Most worked 56-hour weeks at lower pay and less competitive conditions than their Dutch colleagues. 

Kuiper said they will now work 38 hours a week with a maximum of 10 hours of overtime. They will receive an additional €50 a month as compensation and be on full pay if they are sick. 

The FNV is in talks with Pattje management to establish a training school at the yard. The union is continuing similar talks with other Dutch shipyards. 

Pattje builds inland waterway tankers, coasters, bunkering vessels, work ships and dredgers. The company is about to enter the river cruise ship market.

Thai seafood giant commits to major fishing reforms

Yahoo – AFP, July 11, 2017

Greenpeace activists stand inside a large mock-up of a canned tuna in front of the Thai
Union headquarters in Bangkok on October 29, 2015 (AFP Photo/NICOLAS ASFOURI)

Thai Union, one of the world's largest seafood conglomerates, said Tuesday it will overhaul its fishing practices to protect against labour abuses and unsustainable trawling, a move hailed by Greenpeace as "huge progress".

The Thai food giant -- which owns major global brands such as Chicken of the Sea, John West and Petit Navire -- has long been a bete noire to those campaigning against overfishing and abusive working conditions on boats.

But on Tuesday it released a joint statement with Greenpeace announcing a series of reforms that both said should encourage other seafood behemoths to follow suit.

"This marks huge progress for our oceans and marine life and for the rights of people working in the seafood industry," Greenpeace International Executive Director Bunny McDiarmid said in the statement.

"Now is the time for other companies to step up, and show similar leadership."

Among the commitments Thai Union has made is to cut the number of fish aggregating devices (FADs) it uses by 50 percent by 2020 and reduce longline fishing.

FADs, which float on the surface to attract fish, and longlines are effective ways of catching large hauls of lucrative fish like tuna.

But they often result in reams of other animals being caught, including endangered sharks and turtles.

The reforms will also target working conditions on board Thai Union boats and those of its suppliers including an extended moratorium on "transshipping".

Transshipping is a method many fishing giants use to keep trawlers at sea as long as possible, often for years at a time.

Catches are transferred to refrigerated transport vessels at sea, saving the time and fuel costs of returning to port.

While economically efficient, environmental groups have long warned that transshipping allows trawlers to hide illegal catches and often leads to slavery-like conditions for many of the low-paid fishermen who spend years onboard their boats.

Thai Union have also agreed to allow independent observers or digital tracking devices onto all their longline boats and will meet with Greenpeace every six months to assess implementation.

In the joint statement, CEO Thiraphong Chansiri said his company "has fully embraced its role as a leader for positive change as one of the largest seafood companies in the world."

Thai Union posted worldwide sales of $3.8 billion in 2016 and is targeting $8 billion revenue by 2020.

Thailand is the world's third largest seafood exporter but the industry has been dogged by allegations of rights abuses and cheap labour in its fishing fleets and many food processing factories.

The sector is mainly staffed by poor migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The European Union has threatened to ban all its seafood products unless the military government tackles rampant illegal fishing among its fleets.

Scores of Seafood Slaves in Indonesia, Officials Turned Blind Eye: Report

Jakarta Globe, Tri Listiyarini, Apr 05, 2015

Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti says she will closely monitor
 fishing companies operating in Indonesia to prevent slave labor. (Reuters
Photo/Tim Wimborne)

Jakarta. Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti pledged to closely monitor fishing companies operating in Indonesia after a year-long Associated Press investigation revealed at least one Indonesian firm — and likely many more — using slave labor.

Susi said she was disturbed to learn Pusaka Benjina Resources had been keeping 327 workers, mainly from Myanmar, working in captivity without pay, on pain of torture or even death.

Her office has since shut down the company, based in Benjina, in Maluku’s Aru Islands district.

“We will launch an investigation; we will sanction [those involved],” the minister said on the sidelines of her visit to a fishing village in Pangandaran, West Java.

“In Benjina, even though the victims are foreigners, Indonesia felt it must take action because [the case] happened within Indonesia’s jurisdiction,” she said.

Susi said her office quickly inspected other fishing companies operating in Benjina and found 1,185 fishermen working there, mostly from Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, in slave-like conditions.

The minister said there was rampant evidence that other firms in the area were using slave labor — and had been for years.

With the help of sympathetic locals, the AP interviewed the Myanmar workers, who said they were forced to work 22 hours a day, whipped with toxic stingray tails, denied any pay, and barred from returning to their home country or tell anyone about their plight. Some were put in cages.

The director general for monitoring maritime resources, Asep Burhanuddin,  said the ministry formed a task force with the local prosecutors, immigration offices, the Indonesian Navy and National Police.

On Friday, days after the story broke, task force officials deployed to Benjina for a crackdown.

“We were able to confirm that there are slavery practices [at PBR],” Asep told Detik on Sunday. “Some were electrocuted for the tiniest mistake like falling to sleep. This is inhumane.”

The workers, some of whom have been slaves for nine years, were taken to the Tual, some 100 kilometers west of Aru Islands, where they were repatriated.

Company officials have been charged with human trafficking and violating the Manpower Law while the task force investigates who else may have been involved.

Slavery in prawn trade: shoppers urged to boycott seafood sourced unethically

Marine Stewardship Council, Greenpeace and Marine Conservation Society say retailers must be called to account

The Guardian, Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent, 11 June 2014

The Marine Conservation Society warns that current labelling may not help
consumers identify sustainable and ethical sources of seafood. Photograph: CHT

Environmental campaigners and human rights groups have said the revelations of slavery in the prawn supply chain are a wake-up call for consumers. They are urging shoppers to boycott cheap Thai prawns and other imported seafood if supermarkets can not guarantee the goods have been sourced ethically.

The Marine Stewardship Council, which backs a labelling scheme to help shoppers buy fish ethically, said the other option was to buy cold-water prawns fished from the north Atlantic – which accounts for about a third of all prawns eaten in the UK – or Dublin Bay prawns from the Irish Sea.

An MSC spokesman said: "This is undoubtedly an extremely serious and important issue. We condemn the practices described in the Guardian investigation."

The Marine Conservation Society which advises consumers on fish to eat and fish to avoid on ethical grounds, urged consumers to try to find out, before buying, whether supermarkets were engaged with improvement projects in Thailand or the rest of south-east Asia. It said, however, that labelling was limited in its scope and might not help.

Willie Mackenzie, Greenpeace's oceans campaigner, said: "Cheap seafood trashes oceans and ruins lives. The Guardian's investigation exposing slavery in the seafood industry should be a worldwide wake-up call to retailers and consumers.

"Forced labour and human rights abuses are not just issues in tropical prawn farming, they are unseen factors in other fishing too. UK retailers are in many ways the best in the world on sourcing seafood responsibly, but there is clearly a lot more to do."

The six-month Guardian investigation established a trail between prawn products sold by US, British and European retailers and violent slave labour. The investigation found that the world's largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned by slaves.

Supermarkets which have sourced cheap Thai "king" prawns supplied by CP Foods include the world's top four retailers – Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco – along with big UK supermarket chains Morrisons, the Co-op, Aldi UK, and Iceland.

Retailers refrained on Wednesday from adding to their earlier statements condemning slavery and human trafficking.

A spokeswoman for the charity Compassion in World Farming said: "Consumers should take the advice of the Environmental Justice Foundation; ask retailers about their supply chain, and when buying fish look for the Marine Stewardship Council logo to ensure wild-caught fish is sustainable.

"Consumers should also be aware that there are no animal welfare standards for prawns, while there are also questions of the long-term sustainabiliy of feeding fish meal to prawns, which takes away from the global food basket, rather than adding to it."

Owen Espley, economic justice campaigner at the anti-poverty charity War on Want, said: "This investigation shows how UK retailers are profiting from appalling labour rights violations within their supply chains. British [firms] need to come clean about their sourcing and ensure action is taken to protect all workers from such abuses. The time is long overdue for British ministers to step in where retailers' voluntary initiatives have failed and ensure that all companies take action to address the exploitation throughout their supply chains."

The chef and Guardian writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who investigated Thai prawns for his Fish Fight series for Channel 4, said that CP Foods and UK retailers had "to use their buying power and political influence to clean up Thailand's fisheries, and fast".

Related Article:

US may blacklist Thailand after prawn trade slavery revelations