Internationally, New Zealand is regarded as having a world-class fishing industry. Yet, for over three decades, forced labour has been a key element of the New Zealand foreign chartered vessel business model (see box). In early 2011, Indonesian crew aboard two South Korean vessels—Shin Ji and Oyang75 - fishing in New Zealand’s waters walked off their vessels citing physical, psychological, and sexual abuse by their Korean officers as well as the non-payment of wages.
The industrial action taken by these crew members became the flashpoint for a sequence of events that would challenge the governance of New Zealand’s foreign charter vessel fishing sector. Crew members from other South Korean fishing vessels subsequently engaged in industrial action.
The identification of forced labour conditions aboard South Korean vessels fishing in New Zealand’s waters attracted attention from international media, foreign governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The United States Department of State’s “Trafficking in Persons Report 2011” identified New Zealand as a destination country for forced labour in the fishing industry.
In 2011, 27 foreign trawlers were chartered to fish on behalf of New Zealand quota holders in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Twelve of these vessels belonged to South Korean companies.
The 27 vessels were crewed by approximately 2,000 foreign workers, comprising Chinese, Indonesian, Filipino, Ukrainian and Vietnamese nationals. Foreign crew have, in fact, been working on foreign charter vessels in New Zealand waters since 1979, and the events of 2011 were not the first incidence of forced and exploitative labour aboard foreign charter vessels.
In the mid-1990s, accusations were made in Parliament that “what is happening on those ships is nothing short of slavery, and it will continue”. Indeed, over the next 15 years, there were“numerous documented cases of crew members not being paid, being underpaid, having their wages eaten up by agency fees, and being verbally and physically abused”.
Despite efforts introduced in 2006 to address the problem—albeit soft regulation in the form of a Code of Practice—forced labour within the foreign charter vessel sector continued.
We began our research into fishing industry business practices in 2008. In 2009 we identified some unusual features of the foreign charter vessel business model. However, it was not until 2011, when the crew members engaged in industrial action, that we began in-depth research into forced labour practices.
Ongoing research
Our research in this area is ongoing and, in so doing, we respond to the International Transport Workers Federation call to “raise the profile of the human element of these global industries”. To date, we have interviewed around 300 key informants, mostly crew from 12 foreign charter fishing vessels but also industry personnel. The majority were serving crew, but others had returned home to Indonesia. Some were deserters and hiding from authorities.
We discuss below how the crew obtained work aboard South Korean fishing vessels and became victims of forced labour, before describing the slave-like conditions aboard these vessels. We conclude the article by observing that slavery in the fishing industry is a global problem with bio-sustainability and socioeconomic implications for all nations.
The majority of the Indonesian crew working aboard Korean fishing vessels came from the Tegal region in Central Java, an area characterized by low levels of education, high unemployment and poverty. They are recruited through family contacts and other crew, through recruiting brokers, or directly by manning (recruitment) agents who advertise in local newspapers.
In order to secure work, the fishermen are required to pay the manning agent an application fee of between five to 10 mn Indonesian rupiah ($550 to $1100) as well as sign over collateral, which can include land and house titles, education certificates, motorbike titles as well as additional sums of money.
Collateral requirement is expressly prohibited under International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions 9 and 17, which require the ship owner to pay the agent.
One Jakarta-based manning agent justified the collateral thus: “If the crew run away, Korean agents will claim costs such as air fares from the Indonesian agents and that’s why we need security. It’s hard for us to sell their houses, but with motorbikes they are easy to sell.” Manning agents also used a bargaining system for prime positions aboard certain fishing vessels. Such positions were given to whoever paid the highest fee.
The manning agents used multiple contracts to recruit crew. The three versions of employment contracts—Indonesian, New Zealand and South Korean—were all significantly different. The Indonesia crew were employed under the Indonesian contract, which clearly specified the fishermen’s base salary as between $240 and $500 a month, depending on their qualifications, level of experience and rank. This was well below New Zealand minimum wage entitlements of NZ$15 an hour at 42 hours a week minimum.
The Indonesian contract also detailed the required level of compliance by the crew towards the officers—crew must remain “completely submissive and obedient”. Significantly, the contract also included a clause setting out the crew’s liability if they break the contract even if seeking refuge from abuse. For example, crew would forfeit their retained wages and be subject to fines between $2,000-$10,000. The New Zealand and Korean versions of the contracts, which the crew were unaware of, were used to meet regulatory requirements in the respective countries.
Moreover, the Indonesian and Korean versions of the contract were unknown to New Zealand officials. The majority of crew interviewees had no recollection of signing either the New Zealand and/or Korean versions of the contract, though, in some instances, they did recall signing documents in another language. In other instances, the signatures on the contract were forged.
Wages were paid through manning agents (often a subcontracted network of linked agents based in Korea and Indonesia), each of whom took a deduction for dubious insurance and operational fees. The families did not receive the first three to six months of pay as this was retained by the manning agents as part of their fee.
Agents also retained part of the wages to be paid to the fishermen after completion of their contract—in some instances, the retained portion of the wages may be held for up to two years or not paid at all.
On average, crew worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week for the duration of their one- or two-year contract. One interviewee recounted working a 53-hour shift while others described working long shifts to the point they begged for a break or fell asleep while working. In some instances, crew members deliberately dumped fish overboard in order to reduce the amount of processing so they could take a break. They were regularly required to sign false timesheets, regardless of the hours worked, and they did so out of fear of abuse and blacklisting.
Our findings revealed unrelenting and violent subjugation of Indonesian crews aboard the majority of Korean foreign charter vessels, including inhumane punishments and the beating of crew members by the officers for often unprovoked reasons. “While eating lunch, the bosun put a rice sack over my head and punched the back of my head until I had trouble breathing,” said one interviewee.
One crew member newly arrived aboard the vessel was required, after his shift had finished on deck, to work below deck to help size fish. Untrained, he asked a fellow crew member to explain how to do this. For talking, his mouth was taped over with packing tape by the factory manager. Crew members aboard many South Korean fishing vessels were subject to indecent assaults, unwanted touching and groping as well as incidents of repeated rape.
Aboard one vessel, an Indonesian crew member reported being repeatedly raped by a South Korean officer. When asked why he never complained, he said “no one would listen”. Another crew member suffered the sexual abuse in order to save his friends from the same treatment. He recounted: “I was angry, I was embarrassed but he is the master of the boat and I was powerless”. He returned home before his contract was complete because he could no longer endure the sexual abuse. For breaking his contract, he was fined 15 mn rupiah ($1536) by the manning agent.
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