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.