Maritime Union welcomes US Government report “spotlight” on New Zealand fishing industry practices

The Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2012 was released today by US Sec­re­tary of State Hilary Clin­ton.

The State Depart­ment report iden­ti­fies areas of strong con­cern for human traf­fick­ing in New Zealand includ­ing the use of over­seas labour in the fish­ing indus­try.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood con­grat­u­lat­ed the hard hit­ting nature of the report, which was a “major embar­rass­ment” for the New Zealand Gov­ern­ment and fish­ing indus­try.

“This report con­firms and vin­di­cates the stance of the Mar­itime Union that the dereg­u­lat­ed indus­try and exploita­tion of over­seas labour has been a stain on New Zealand’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

“The Mar­itime Union has been push­ing for action on this issue for a decade.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the dam­age to New Zealand’s glob­al rep­u­ta­tion was hard to quan­ti­fy.

“The blame must be put at the foot of the cow­boy oper­a­tors in the indus­try, and suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­men­t’s who soft ped­alled the issue and only took belat­ed action when forced to. The les­son being they can’t afford to sweep these dirty lit­tle secrets under the car­pet any­more.”

New Zealand was now in posi­tion of dam­age con­trol, he says.

The Gov­ern­ment had now basi­cal­ly admit­ted the for­eign crews issue in fish­ing was a “dis­as­ter zone” and the recent­ly announced plan to phase out for­eign char­ter ves­sels in the indus­try reflect­ed this.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand, as an affil­i­ate of the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion (ITF), has act­ed on a reg­u­lar basis to assist for­eign crew mem­bers in dis­tress by rep­re­sent­ing their inter­ests.

“This is sim­ply some­thing we do because in many cas­es these work­ers were being exploit­ed and abused, and had nowhere else to go. In many cas­es the Mar­itime Union and ITF have gained sub­stan­tial back pay owed and orga­nized safe repa­tri­a­tion for crews to their coun­try of ori­gin.”

The Mar­itime Union was approached by State Depart­ment offi­cials vis­it­ing New Zealand in 2011, includ­ing State Depart­ment Ambas­sador at Large Luis Cde­Ba­ca.

Mr Fleet­wood says the Mar­itime Union was impressed by the thor­ough­ness of the vis­it­ing del­e­ga­tion who were pro­vid­ed with a full brief­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion of the Union’s expe­ri­ences.

The intro­duc­tion to the State Depart­ment report promi­nent­ly fea­tures an adver­tise­ment that appeared in the Ota­go Dai­ly Times on 5 June 2007 offer­ing a $1000 boun­ty for infor­ma­tion on a ship jump­ing Indone­sian fish­ing crew mem­ber.

The adver­tise­ment is com­pared in the State Depart­ment Report to adver­tise­ments that appeared in the Unit­ed States in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry for escaped slaves.