Allison Gill is the legal director of Global Labor Justice, an NGO that works transnationally to advance policies and laws that protect decent work, strengthen freedom of association and workers’ ability to advocate for their rights, and hold corporations accountable for labor rights violations in their supply chains.
She is a human rights lawyer, researcher, and advocate who has conducted numerous field investigations into human and labor rights abuse, including in the seafood sector.
On 12 March, four Indonesian fishers filed a lawsuit against Bumble Bee detailing egregious allegations of forced labor and abuse of workers on vessels that supply albacore to the U.S. market. The complaint details the harrowing stories of the men who left their villages to work on distant-water longline fishing vessels, based on promises of good jobs to provide for their families.
Instead, they suffered physical violence, excessive working hours, coercion, debt bondage, extreme isolation, hazardous working conditions and a lack of medical care on vessels included in Bumble Bee’s “trusted network.” The case is a landmark effort by workers to seek accountability from a corporation that profited from their abuse. It also lays out how the industry uses fishery improvement projects (FIPs) to gain Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, often billed as the ”gold standard” for sustainable seafood, to improve market access for their products.
This lawsuit follows repeated U.S. import bans based on forced labor as well as actions to recognize the overlap between illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices and forced labor. These are anticipated to continue under the current U.S. administration’s public commitments to combat unfair trade practices, which include forced labor and human trafficking. New E.U. due diligence requirements and a ban on forced labor goods also tighten the seafood industry’s access to the largest common market.
The details of the lawsuit might be shocking to consumers who rely on canned tuna as an inexpensive lunch staple, but not to anyone who knows anything about the distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets that supply much of the world’s albacore. These supply chains are rife with serious labor rights violations, including forced labor. These violations are often structural, deeply embedded in a business model that relies on fishers – often migrant workers on tied visas – made vulnerable to exploitation by governance systems that deprive them of fundamental labor law protections. Industry actors at the top of the supply chain evade responsibility through opaque supply chains and participation in ineffective voluntary initiatives and weak certification schemes.
Increasingly cognizant of these risks, many companies rely on audits, voluntary initiatives, and certification schemes like MSC to provide cover. In reality, however, MSC and the FIPs used as an on-ramp to certification allow companies to conceal labor abuses in their supply chains.
Recent research has unveiled incidents of forced labor and abusive working conditions on vessels within MSC-certified fisheries. The lawsuit alleges that the FIPs allow companies like Bumble Bee to set and enforce fishing practices, including social policies, ostensibly to improve sustainability and gain market access while, in reality, allowing rampant forced labor of fishers to occur unchecked by the program’s “training and inspections.”
Industry actors must take concrete action to protect workers and eliminate forced labor and other labor abuses from their supply chains. A critical first step is to ensure that all fishers have access to free, accessible, mandatory Wi-Fi while at sea so they have a means to contact their unions, or other support organizations, to ensure they can effectively exercise their fundamental labor rights.
Freedom of association – the ability of workers to take collective action without interference or retaliation – is the best way for workers to monitor and change their own conditions and works when anchored by commitments to prioritize sourcing where supply chain agreements ensure this to fishers.
One foundational component to ensure freedom of association on the high seas is access to Wi-Fi. Technological advances have made it both possible and affordable to install Wi-Fi on board DWF vessels to combat isolation at sea, empower fishers, and prevent and enable grievance reporting. Regulation and legal obligations make it essential for companies that wish to avoid Bumble Bee’s fate to do so.
The Wi-Fi NOW for Fishers’ Rights campaign that Global Labor Justice hosts together with FOSPI-PMFU, a union of migrant fishers in Taiwan, and labor and human rights allies, has called for the provision of free, accessible, and mandatory Wi-Fi on board DWF vessels as means for fishers to access and protect their labor rights.
Our campaign has introduced Model Operational Guidelines, developed based on the input and experiences of fishers, that lay out how to implement meaningful Wi-Fi access to protect labor rights.
Companies that are serious about ending forced labor in their seafood supply chains should invest in sourcing from fleets that have binding agreements with workers and their organizations to implement Wi-Fi according to these standards and use their market leverage to ensure the agreements are carried out.
The Bumble Bee lawsuit further exposes an industry at a crossroads. Its allegations describe broadly accepted practices across the industry and put every company sourcing tuna on notice that it needs to take real action to prevent and remediate forced labor in its supply chain.
The seafood buyers, suppliers, and retailers descending on Boston on Sunday to attend Seafood Expo North America may breathe a sigh of relief that they escaped scrutiny – this time – and continue with fig leaf efforts including ecolabels, voluntary initiatives, checklists, audits, apps, or certification schemes.
But, the real solution requires engaging with fishers’ unions in supply chain agreements. These agreements have worked in other sectors to prevent and remediate forced labor and create decent working conditions.
Now, it’s time for the seafood industry to follow their example and implement real change.
