HONG KONG — On a scorching June day, Jason Lam waited at the Tsim Sha Tsui harbor front of this territory belonging to China. He was there to attend to the crew of New Imperial Star, a casino ship that has sat in Victoria Harbour for eight long months, abandoned by its owner. For more than 280 days the crew of 46 had not seen a penny of their wages, and today some of them were headed home, wads of U.S. dollar bills in hand in part thanks to Lam.
An inspector for the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), Lam works with some 150 colleagues based at the world’s major port cities, boarding merchant ships while they are docked to ensure the labor rights of the men and women on board are protected.
“When the crew is abandoned by the ship owner, they are not only just owed wages but also face the halt of fresh water, food and fuel supply,” Lam says.
The case of the New Imperial Star illustrates the challenges of safeguarding the rights of crew members in global maritime shipping, a centuries-old industry that still transports most of the world’s goods. Only in the past decade has a comprehensive international treaty passed that recognizes the rights of crew, men and women hailing from many countries in search of better pay and a possible better future back home.
Despite recently adopted safeguards, however, advocates and shipping analysts say crews are still vulnerable to being abandoned because of an industry susceptible to global political and economic shocks.
For inspectors like Lam, the job of protecting crew members’ rights is set to get harder, as the likelihood of abandonment grows as the global economy slows.
A murky industry offering long hours, low wages
In 2015, an estimated 1.65 million seafarers worked on cargo and passenger ships around the world, according to the Baltic and International Maritime Council, the world’s largest shipping association. The seafarers help move 90 percent of trade around the world, transporting everything from crude oil and iron ore to T-shirts and furniture.
The world of commercial maritime shipping operates in an opaque way, filled with ships owned by shell corporations and registered under “flags of convenience,” flags belonging to countries other than the ship’s owner. These vessels face minimal regulations, flying flags belonging to far-flung places such as Palau, Panama and Liberia, have low registration fees, pay little or no taxes and have the freedom to employ cheap labor.
The majority of the 225 abandoned ships reported to the International Labour Organization (ILO) since 2004 have flown flags of convenience.
Crew members typically spend six to nine months a year aboard a ship. Life on these ships, if managed by an unscrupulous owner, can mean low wages and poor on-board conditions, including inadequate food and clean drinking water. Crew live in close quarters and often under a military style regimentation, working in four-hour shifts with breaks of six to eight hours, seven days a week.
Although conditions on ships have vastly improved during the past century, crew workers — isolated, far from land and lacking knowledge about their rights — are still vulnerable to exploitation, according to industry observers. Frequent language barriers complicate their lives.
Flags of convenience countries often fail to adequately enforce what labor laws that exist, either because of a lack of resources, manpower or political will. Complicating enforcement of labor laws is the lack of a formal, mandatory mechanism to report cases of abandonment. The ILO, a United Nations agency, keeps records that are voluntarily submitted by groups such as the ITF.
Economic downturn spurs moves to protect workers
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the ILO recorded a surge of abandoned vessels. Since then the shipping industry has been grappling with a long downturn, brought by weak trade demand and an oversupply of ships. Lam is concerned that an uptick in abandonment might loom once again.
The Baltic Dry Index, a gauge of the freight cost to ship dry commodities such as iron ore and coal, sank to its lowest level in history this past January. In the container shipping sector — the transportation of finished and semi-finished industrial and consumer products — the slump has forced multi-billion-dollar companies to merge for survival.
“This year the abandonment cases and the wage issues are going up more than previous years, mainly because the shipping industry is going down,” says Lam.
Global political turmoil also could dramatically trigger shipping companies to abandon more vessels and crew. “When I was in Dubai during the second Gulf War, there were 13 ships abandoned on one day. Between 2003 and 2007 in the Middle East, I must have dealt with 30 to 35 cases,” says Rev. Stephen Miller, director of East Asia at The Mission to Seafarers, a London-based non-profit organization.
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To deal with these problems, the ILO established the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) in 2006 to protect seafarers’ rights. It was drafted through negotiations among governments, ship owners and unions. As of July, 77 countries that represent 91 percent of the world gross tonnage of ships have ratified the convention.
Amendments passed in 2014 are designed to address the issue of abandonment and will come into force next January in places that have signed the accords. Among the provisions is a clear definition of an abandoned ship.
“This is an important mark as it could put an early stop to the issue,” says Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association and spokesman of the Maritime Employers’ Group at the ILO.
Protecting workers remains problematic
The MLC’s amendments also exert what Bowring says is “an onerous system” on ship owners and the flag states of commercial vessels. For example, ship owners are required to put down an amount of financial security with the flag administration such as insurance, which can be directly claimed by the crew in the event of abandonment. Had such a mechanism been in place, the crew of the New Imperial may not have gone for so long without wages.
But even with the MLC in place, as with many international treaties, the problem is one of enforcement.
“A convention is only as good as the state that is inspecting and implementing it,” says Miller of The Mission to Seafarers. “Even now there are ships being abandoned in the Middle East, in India, and it will always happen in places where there’s no regulation or proper inspection because that’s where the bottom feeders go.”
Miller says the combination of deteriorating cargo vessels, ship owners who may be unaware of their international responsibilities and registrations under flag states keep him worried.
“When you got a crew of 20 people halfway around the world not being paid for six months, who’s going to look after them,” asks Miller. “Is it left just to The Mission? Is it just left to a kind person? This is a professional business and it’s a professional liability of that business.”
The New Imperial Star fit into such a perfect storm. The ship owner, a group of individual investors belonging to a British Virgin Islands-registered company, bought the 33-year-old ship from the secondhand market three years ago in hopes to make a quick gain from operating casinos on the high seas.
Eventually, the investors became cash-strapped when the global economy took a turn for the worst and when China began to crack down on corruption and gambling. The investors, whose identities remain unknown, chose to abandon the ship and the 46 crew on board.
The vessel lingered in Hong Kong because the crew did not immediately seek legal action since the owners promised wages would be coming.
Even before working aboard the Star, the crew were no strangers to exploitation. “I have paid for my job before,” says Olek, a Ukrainian seaman aboard the ship who did not wish to give his real name.
The same can be said for the Burmese crew, who spoke of debts to pay back home. “I’m in debt to the agency for about $1,000,” says Mg Yin Mg, one of the housekeeping staff on the ship.
Two weeks after seeing off the first of the New Imperial Star’s crew to head home, Lam sits in the Merchant Service Club, recalling the events of the past few months. He’s calm and looks content. Another three crewmen have been allowed back home, with some $4,000 in pay thanks to three transportation unions who have fronted the money with guarantees of repayment once the court sells off the ship.
Not all cases resolve — albeit slowly — like the New Imperial Star. There are cases in mainland China that also get thrown his way. “They don’t have unions up there to help them,” Lam says.
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And while he sees a key role for the government, Lam believes that unions and charities are more flexible and agile in initially handling abandonment and wage dispute cases.
“The government should do more, but the government cannot do everything,” he says. “We only turn to the government for help when we cannot resolve the cases on our own.”
Reporters include Yiyi Zhen, Christy Choi, Kevin Lau and Ei Ei San.
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