March 10, 2020 — A report issued Tuesday by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization credits Thailand with improving working conditions in the fishing and seafood processing industry, but says that serious abuses including forced labor remain.
The report is a follow-up to one published in 2018, and compares the workers situations from earlier surveys to one conducted last year.
Thailand’s seafood sector accounts for billions of dollars in export earnings annually and employ more than 350,000 workers.
However, the industry began facing the threat of trade sanctions from Western nations after media exposure in 2014 of poor working conditions and especially the exploitation of ‘fishing slaves’ — forced labor.
In response, Thailand’s government began instituting reform measures, most effectively by strengthening its legal, policy and regulatory framework, the report says.
But the measures have failed to substantially cut the use of forced labor, it says. Extrapolating from the 2019 survey of workers, it estimates that 14% of those engaged in fishing and 7% of those in seafood processing were subject to some form of forced labor.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times