A survey produced by the International Labour Organization (ILO) identified several ongoing issues for migrant workers in the seafood and fishing sectors of Asian countries, which the group claims highlights the need for international labor protections.
“Important advances have been achieved in increasing adherence to international labor standards in the fishing and seafood processing industries in recent years,” EU Ambassador to Thailand Luisa Ragher said in a release. “However, as the findings of this report clearly show, ensuring decent work for migrant workers is a regional challenge and much more needs to be done.”
The report, titled “Towards fair seas,” found that 13 percent of migrant workers were subject to forced labor. That was much more common with workers in the fishing sector, where roughly 20 percent of migrant workers were subject to forced labor, compared to 0.4 percent of those in the seafood processing sector.
“I could not leave my job because they kept my salary,” an unidentified male Vietnamese fisher who worked in Taiwan told the authors of the report. “They only paid me USD 100 (EUR 85) per month and I was told the rest of my wages would not be provided until the contract was completed. Some of the other fishers asked to receive their salary so they could change boats, but the vessel owner always refused to pay them. I really wanted to leave because the working conditions were terrible, but I knew I would not receive my wages if I did.”
The level of forced labor among migrants varied between countries, with China being the highest at 67 percent. The survey reported that 41 percent of migrants in Taiwan were subject to forced labor, 15 percent in Thailand, 8 percent in Japan, and 7 percent in South Korea. The report’s authors suggested that the higher rates in China and Taiwan was due to the fact that migrant workers in those countries were more likely to work in the commercial fishing sector, while those in other countries were more likely to work in the seafood processing sector.
“Among migrant fishers in China, a much larger portion reported multiple indications of a threat or menace of penalty,” the survey noted. “Given the severity of many of the indicators experienced by fishers in China, including physical violence, harassment and humiliation, and withholding of wages for several months, there is a very high likelihood that these migrant workers had indeed been employed under conditions of forced labor.”
The survey also found different rates of forced labor among different nationalities of forced laborers, with 30 percent of migrant workers from Indonesia subject to forced labor, followed by 8 percent from Myanmar, 8 percent from Cambodia, and 1 percent from Vietnam.
Among commercial fishing ventures, longline fishing had the highest present of forced labor at 24 percent, followed by 17 percent for purse seine fishing, and 15 percent for trawling. More than a third of migrant laborers working on fishing vessels that went out to sea for six months or more experienced forced labor.
In addition to forced labor, the survey identified several substantial challenges for workers in the region’s seafood and fishing industries, including high recruitment costs, inadequate wage protection, long hours, occupational injuries, barriers to freedom of association, and blocked access to social protection.
“Decent work deficits in the fishing and seafood processing sector reflect structural weaknesses in how labor and migration are governed across the region. Addressing these challenges requires coordinated action by governments, employers and workers to ensure accountability throughout the supply chain,” ILO Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific Tuomo Poutiainen said in a release.
The report recommended ratifying and fully implementing international labor standards on recruitment and forced labor to support minimum working conditions for migrant laborers. The ILO also recommended securing fundamental rights for migrant workers to form trade unions to bargain collectively for better wages and conditions.
The survey was produced through the ILO’s Ship to Shore Rights South-East Asia program, which is funded by the European Union and executed in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
