Is the seafood you eat the product of slave labor? (by Skinner)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2012/february/fisheries.html

Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism explores a disturbing connection


E. Benjamin Skinner (not that skinner)
Feb. 21, 2012

A six-month investigation by E. Benjamin Skinner, a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, has uncovered disturbing links between the use of forced labor in New Zealand fisheries and the food that may wind up on plates of American consumers.

Skinner’s report—“Fishing as Slaves on the High Seas”—was published online this week by Bloomberg Businessweek; the article also will appear in the Feb. 24 issue of the print magazine.

Skinner interviewed fishermen in New Zealand and Indonesia who described to him a variety of working conditions, including debt bondage, they found impossible to escape. Working on vessels jointly operated by Korean owners, but chartered by New Zealand companies, the fishermen told Skinner that they were paid far below what New Zealand law required, and that their contracts were false and their timesheets were doctored. Some also experienced abuse, intimidation and sexual violence on board the ships, as described in the Bloomberg Businessweek story. Skinner reported that the Indonesian version of their contracts provided no rights to the worker, and warned that a crew member and his family would owe nearly $3,500 if he left. “Such coerced labor is modern-day slavery, as the United Nations defines the crime,” the article states.

Because the United States imports 86 percent of its seafood—an estimated $14.7 billion worth of fish a year—it is not altogether surprising that some of the ill-gotten catch may have ended up here. According to the Bloomberg Businessweek story, two major corporations, Walmart and Safeway, have announced investigations into the allegations of possible slave labor in the supply chain of one of its fish suppliers.

FULL story at link.