Saving Seafood

Shrimp from Thailand Removed from Labor Department’s Forced Labor List

September 9, 2024 — The Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it had removed shrimp from Thailand from the list of prohibited products linked to forced labor, according to a September 5 notice published in the Federal Register.  

The official list, “Prohibition of Acquisition of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor” (E.O. List), was updated after the DOL said it had received proper information from multiple sources that indicated the use of forced labor had dwindled significantly. 

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Indian shrimp added to US list of goods likely made with forced labor

September 6, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has added shrimp manufactured in India to the 2024 “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.”

The DOL publishes the list biennially, and the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) maintains the list to raise public awareness of child labor and forced labor around the world. ILAB said the list is not intended to be punitive and serves as a means of raising the issue, potentially fostering collaboration and engagement with foreign governments to curtail the issue of forced and child labor.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

More women are casting their net into the salmon fishing industry

July 1, 2023 — Venturing into deep, often treacherous waters. Winching ropes in gale-force winds. Leaning into waves that whip over the bows of their boats. Commercial fishermen face extraordinary on-the-job hazards. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor ranked their profession the second deadliest, behind logging.

Many assume this tough and dangerous profession is a man’s job. That notion is reinforced by the popular TV series The Deadliest Catch, where crabbers brave winter winds in icy waters, or movies like The Perfect Storm, in which fishermen face a monster storm after leaving their women behind.

But winds of change are brewing. A generation of women is heading out to sea, defying age-old taboos about women being bad luck aboard fishing boats. They are entering the field not only as deckhands and crewmates, but as fishing-boat captains and marine engineers. People readying their boats for the summer fishing season at Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle clearly illustrate this trend.

Breaking into a man’s industry isn’t easy, but “in large part, the industry is welcoming to women,” says Captain Allison Demmert, preparing her boat dockside at Fishermen’s Terminal. Allison is gearing up for the Alaska salmon season on the 58-foot  F/V Chirikof  (named for the Russian navigator who explored the Northwest coast of North America).

Having captained the F/V Ultimo, moored one dock over, with four women out of a crew of five aboard, this year she will co-skipper their purse seiner with her father Captain Guy Demmert and a crew of two men and two women.

Born into an Alaskan family that has fished salmon for generations, she expanded her hands-on training with a maritime-engineering education. Mastering credentials like “advanced firefighting,” she’s in charge of “navigation, route planning and vessel maneuvering in all kinds of weather.” It’s a job that calls for “stamina, agility and above all, calm.”

Read the full article at Crosscut

Asian countries feature on US Labor Department report for child, forced labor

October 3, 2022 — Taiwan and Thailand both feature prominently on the new edition of a U.S. Department of Labor report on child and forced labor, which identifies abuses in both countries’ seafood sectors.

Released 28 September, 2022, the “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor,” dinged Taiwan and Thailand for alleged use of forced labor in their fishing sectors, while Thailand also received mention for alleged use of child and forced labor in its shrimp-processing industry.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US includes Taiwan on forced labor list due to fishing industry abuses

October 1, 2020 — The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released its 2020 “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor,” and has included Taiwan for the first time for its issues related to forced labor in the fishing industry.

The inclusion comes after 19 NGOs and businesses urged the DOL to include the nation on its list after discoveries of forced labor on fishing vessels in Southeast Asia. A damning Greenpeace report accused 13 foreign distant-water fishing vessels of using forced labor.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Southern Shrimp Alliance wants Labor Department agency to close slave labor loophole

January 16, 2020 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance is requesting the U.S. Department of Labor to revise policies the trade group claims allow certain seafood imports to avoid being associated with child and forced labor practices.

SSA Executive Director John Williams sent the letter to the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs on Monday 13 January. For more than a decade, the bureau has been responsible for producing a list of products that are produced through exploitative labor practices. That does include some seafood products, like shrimp harvested in such countries as Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

HONOLULU CIVIL BEAT: Inquiry, Intervention Needed Now In Fishing Exploitation

September 20, 2016 — A human rights outrage that has quietly simmered below the public consciousness in recent years exploded on the national scene just days ago when the Associated Press disclosed near slavery conditions for foreign workers on American fishing boats in Honolulu and San Francisco.

A six-month investigation by Pulitzer Prize winners Martha Mendoza and Maggie Mason corroborated what has been known by senior U.S. officials and the Hawaii restaurant industry, among others, for years: U.S. flagged boats employ undocumented men, confining them to the ships sometimes for years because they lack the required visas to permit them to come ashore.

They’re paid as little as 70 cents an hour and often work 20 hours a day at backbreaking, sometimes dangerous tasks with the approval of the U.S. government but none of its legal protections.

As Civil Beat’s Washington, D.C., columnist Kirsten Downey reported Friday, the report has prompted the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate, with U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pushing for immediate action to provide protections for the workers. Congressional candidate Colleen Hanabusa called for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate, as well — it is home to the Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to the AP report, Sen. Mazie Hirono sought to provide some help through legislation that would permit the fishers to fly into the United States. That would expand the transit visas already allowed the men, who are permitted to fly home from the Honolulu airport, despite technically never having legally entered the United States. But even that modest assistance did not pass.

Hanabusa and Schatz both made the point that, thus far, the matter consists of media findings that must be officially investigated. That’s of course necessary and appropriate, as well as long overdue.

Read the full editorial at the Honolulu Civil Beat

HAWAII: US Labor Dept. To Look At Fish Fleet Conditions

September 19th, 2016 — The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating reports of abusive labor conditions affecting foreign workers on American fishing vessels in Hawaii, Civil Beat has learned.

A Labor Department official said the agency is “deeply disturbed” by news reports about the long hours, low wages and inhumane living conditions suffered by up to 700 workers from Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. The official said the agency was reaching out to other U.S  government agencies to try to figure out what to do about it.

“The Department of Labor is committed to ensuring that workers are treated with respect, fairness, and dignity,” said Labor Department spokesperson Jason Surbey in an emailed statement.

A widely published report by the Associated Press found that some workers are held in prison-like captivity at the piers of Honolulu and San Francisco when the ships are being unloaded. When at sea, the AP reported, they work up to 20 hours a day at wages as low as 70 cents an hour.

Some officials in Hawaii were apparently aware of the issues to some extent because many state and federal agencies share jurisdiction over the fishing industry on issues of employment, business licensing, regulatory oversight and coastline protection.

Kathryn Xian, executive director of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, said she became aware of the labor abuses and physical confinement of the workers in early 2014, when she was contacted by a family member of a fisherman who felt trapped by his employer. She said she subsequently learned of “egregious” employment conditions in the fleet.

Gavin Gibbon, a spokesperson for the National Fisheries Institute trade group, said the employment practices on the vessels as described in the report are “entirely unacceptable.”

He said visa programs allow for migratory and seasonal workers “but in no cases do they allow for abuses of the kind the Associated Press has described.”

Read full story from Civil Beat

FISHY BUSINESS: Lack of fairness, parity at play in at-sea monitors

January 11, 2016 — The New England coast has been synonymous with fishing for over 400 years. Throughout those years, fishing as a occupation has been known for its dangers, independence and ingenuity to overcome challenges. These traits remain, especially the danger.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, New England ground fishermen are 37 times more likely to die on the job than a police officer. When compared to the average American worker, the New England ground fisherman is 171 times more likely to be killed on the job.

It is sadly ironic that the U.S. government is likely to put the final nail in the coffin of the industry. As this column outlined in October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s insistence that ground fishermen fund the at-sea monitoring program is likely to put many of the fishing small businesses out of business. According to NOAA’s own report, the $710 per-day fee that the fishermen would need to fund to pay for the program will make 59 percent of the fishing enterprises unprofitable. So the men and women who literally risk life and limb to bring us fresh, local, sustainable seafood not only have the physical risks associated with their profession, but also the business risk of being driven out of business by NOAA’s unlawful regulation.

Read the full story from the Scituate Mariner

Gov. Baker, Mass. Congressional delegation urge Obama to fund fishing safety programs

December 21, 2015 — Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and the state’s congressional delegation are urging President Barack Obama to include funding for fishing safety training and safety research grant programs in his next federal budget.

In a Dec. 18 letter to Obama, Baker and the entire Massachusetts delegation pointed out that, based on U.S. Department of Labor statistics compiled by Bloomberg Business, Nnortheast groundfishermen are 37 times more likely to die on the job than police officers and 171 times more likely to die on the job than the average U.S. worker.

“If our school teachers died on the job at the same rate as our fishermen in Massachusetts, we would lose 400 public school teachers each year,” they wrote to the president.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times