Maritime Union says it’s time to connect the dots on Flag of Convenience fishing

The Mari­time Uni­on has wel­comed New Zea­l­and sign­ing up to an inter­na­tion­al crack­down on illeg­al fish­ing – which also provides a clear oppor­tun­ity to solve the abuse and exploit­a­tion of mari­time work­ers.

Fish­er­ies min­is­ters from Aus­tralia, Bri­tain, Canada, Chile, Nam­i­bia and New Zea­l­and have agreed to a plan which will mean glob­al track­ing of fish­ing ves­sels, as well as an online data­base of their names, loc­a­tion and his­tory, to help uncov­er illeg­al fish­ing.

Mari­time Uni­on Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Tre­vor Han­son says the plan means that “half of the prob­lem” is being ser­i­ously addressed.

“The next step is to ensure fish­ing work­ers – and all sea­farers of whatever coun­try of ori­gin – are being paid a decent wage and work­ing under decent con­di­tions.”

He says the glob­al track­ing sys­tem could be widened out to all ship­ping, to ensure work­ers were not being abused or exploited.

“Dereg­u­la­tion has failed. The glob­al mari­time free mar­ket has failed. It will require co-ordin­ated inter­na­tion­al action to clean up the mono­pol­ist­ic, unac­count­able mess of Flag of Con­veni­ence ship­ping.”

Mr Han­son says a 2005 report from the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment, the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF), and the glob­al con­ser­va­tion organ­iz­a­tion WWF, had revealed the pil­la­ging of threatened fish stocks, human rights abuses and glob­al pir­ate fish­ing oper­a­tions were all linked prob­lems.

“It is time to con­nect the dots between illeg­al fish­ing oper­a­tions and coun­tries that offer cheap regis­tra­tion ser­vices, or Flags of Con­veni­ence (FOC), to fish­ing ves­sels.”

He says the cur­rent moves by Gov­ern­ment’s around the world vin­dic­ate the Mari­time Uni­on’s strong stance on both work­ers rights and envir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion.