This week I was sent two different new voluntary labour certification standards for fishers. The Fairness, Integrity, Safety and Health (FISH) Standard for Crew and the Responsible Fishing Vessel Standard (RFVS).
so you come for a couple of hours and board and then give the vessels owner a piece of paper that says that my worker rights are uphold for the rest of teh year… yeah right.
I’m not going discuss the individual merits of each of them (I have more respect for the FISH one as there are people I know and respect involved in it, while I don't have much respect for the key people behind the other), but rather what my beef is with private certifications
It shouldn’t come as a surprise I have a very dim view on then for many of the same reasons I disagree with ecolabels or the food quality/safety ones
While not a full-time specialist on labour on board issues (very few people are), but I been involved in the issue through my work in the development of the FAO guidelines for social responsibility, and unlike most people doing this, I been a commercial fisherman my self.
Yet in case of the labour certifications, it gets a bit worst for me personally… I see this as the new “gravy train”... for more consultants in rich countries to make money out poor peoples problems without providing real solutions, only just a "service" to fellow rich people. No idea what would be the cost of certification, surely more than the 350 USD a month a deckhand makes on a Purse Seiner… and I’m sure the companies will not recover it from their profit… but as usual from maintenance and crew payments
Yes! flag and coastal states have a problem with labour issues onboard vessels they flag or fish in their waters, and these vessels are normally owned by countries that have enough money to have their vessels fishing in other countries (Distant Water Fishing Nations)... and don't be fooled to the fact that if a vessel flagged to Vanuatu, to Nauru (or even to the USA) is owned and crewed by people from that country.
In any case, if you have labour issues on those vessels as is well documented normally a small group of flag states and concerns usually citizen form cheap labour costs like Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, etc. For me, the most logical, democratic and cost-effective solution is to set up a programme to strengthen the institutions that are legally authorised to do that job in the country, standardise the systems, and controls under auditable standards and reward conformance in some way. In this case, we have an international convention ILO C188, that has obviously not been adopted by the most problematic flag states, even if those states are members of ILO… so the push to incorporate established internationally agreed standards should be at the flag state and support the capacity building and institutional strengthening necessary there.
What I would not do is to create a private parallel system without legal validity on top off (or to replace off) an already existing national system (there are no countries without labour and immigration departments). And that is what in my opinion private certifications do: they create a parallel system instead of supporting the organisations that are supposed to do the job.
As I said before, In my opinion, one of the biggest hurdles that we face in on this issue (as well as in sustainability) is that while we all want it, we don't what to pay for it and allow the underfunding of official institutions, pay labour, fisheries officers and fishers salaries that are way below mediocrity, but we expect excellence from all of them.
The private certification model was initially based on the ‘theory of change’, and the belief that a ‘market-based’ approach by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) frustrated with the perceived inability of regulators globally to mitigate problems will affect a change for the better.
Yet even after so many years, there is, in fact, limited empirical evidence that substantial changes in consumer demand for sustainable and ethical seafood have occurred. Producers are also directly affected because they incur the costs of complying with different programmes aligned to different importing retailers and market. Incentives for compliance also remain unclear, given that there is little evidence that price signals are seen by producers, or that any changes in demand have resulted in substantial improvements.
And it gets worse. Even if the origin of this movement is based on the assumption that fisheries and labour administrators (in particular those from developing countries) are not doing a good enough job, many times during my work with many fisheries administrations in the Pacific I have spent 2-3 days responding to the questions of the consultants that have come to ‘assess’ the fishery for certification… and it would be the same for these standards... so in effect, they come for data to the people and institutions that the ‘consumer’ does not trust!
That irony for me is mind-blowing. If you really want to help, why not just support the official institutions in the countries whose job and whole existence is to deal with those issues..
Having said so, I would not mind these standards existence if they were based on a model pushed by consumers that want extra guarantees and are happy to pay for them. In this case, consumer associations donate to standards developers, or the certification companies themselves source funds from consumers. So if a flag state or an operator wants to be certified, they apply and go through the process with absolutely no conflict of interest. The way now is that they are offering a service to a client, and when the client pays, they want the results… this is just too murky for me.
FAO tell us that over 70% of the seafood consumed in developed countries comes from developing countries. Partly this is because the fisheries in developed countries have either collapsed, can’t keep up with local demand and they can’t find fisherman to do the jobs cheaply. Yet all of the ecolabels, private labour certifications, retailers and most of the consumers that require them are based in developed countries. This has led me to say that I see the whole private certification scene as hypocrisy in the best-case scenario, or neo-colonialism in the worst-case scenario.
Furthermore, I have worked in the past with the developer of one of those standards … until recently the company was in charge of whitewashing FIP for the Tunago fleet in Vanuatu that included the infamous Tunago 61… enough said?
At least with the ecolabels, they developed some of the assessments points and standards, but these ones copy and paste the relevant guidelines and normative developed by international bodies (ILO, IMO,) for their own profit (since users of the certification pay to be assessed)… so does the owners of the certification scheme, intends to devolve part of their earnings to the referenced bodies that developed the work they are profiting from? Or at least to support the work of the official bodies at the flag and coastal states where the vessel in the UoC operates, that have statutory responsibility under ILO and IMO issues? Otherwise, the certification competes unfairly with usually the labour and maritime department in developing countries as it creates a separate body, and provides for certification holders to potentially say: why you ask me for that? I already have certification on this!
I recently read in a post from the MSC, with all the fanfare that an Australian Toothfish longliner has been certified to the Responsible Fishing Vessel Standard; “an initiative which aims to improve labour conditions and crew welfare”. I know the vessel operators and they are a good company, the vessels are flagged to Australia, even if Australia is not a signatory of ILO C188 (of which that standard is pretty much a copy and paste) yet. It has strong protections to fishers via the unions, and foreign crew have working visas... If those conditions are not present the vessels wouldn’t leave port, so it’s hard to see the improvement the standard made on the welfare of the crew... flag state responsibility is to be before private certifications.
Then you have the option to impose conditions as coastal state, NZ confronted with Indonesian crew abuse issues on board Korean flagged joint venture vessels fishing in NZ EEZ a few years ago, took the bold decision of only allow NZ flagged vessels that comply with NZ labour contracts, minimal NZ law remunerations and NZ working visas for foreign crew. The members of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Forum Agency included labour conditions based on ILO C188 as part of their harmonised licensing conditions to allow vessels on their waters, I wrote about this here.
Now check the list of countries that have ratified that convention, none of those countries have known issues with labour abuses on board, yet interesting the hypocrisy that most of retailers and consumers of the developed countries that require these private certifications are not signatories! I don't see the USA, Australia, NZ, Germany, etc… so why instead of fostering a parallel industry of lucrative certifications marred in a conflict of interest, demand that the flag sates catching the fish your are going to buy (including your own country) ratifies an agreement that countries as diverse as South Africa, Argentina and Bosnia Herzegovina manage to sign.
I also like to flag the powerful difference between the "human rights due diligence" approach that we worked within last year ("OECD framework") and the old school approach to seafood certification… as my friend Katrina Nakamura wrote
Not to dismiss good work, as it's great to see initiative from industry, but it is pertinent to share here that the concern is that certification old school style is a failed approach for protecting people from forced labour in the workplace -- a right that is universally in force and backed, as you know, by minimum requirements in the workplace. It can be hard to see the difference between a voluntary solely private-sector program to prevent forced labour and "human rights due diligence", which is the only approach outlined in the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, which of course responded to the widespread failure of social audits to prevent forced labour. The reason is a simple one. Old school certification has the effect of de-emphasizing and uncoupling the legal obligation of companies to respect rights in the workplace for all people, in ways that comply with the coupled duty of countries to uphold human rights which are universally in force.
The problem there is awarding a checkmark to large companies for satisfying their legal obligation in high-level policy alone, and for externalizing the surveillance function for working conditions to consultants and away from governments. Both of the 2 new standards out this past week are "old school" that way.
The fact is, human rights due diligence has landed. Europe is making it mandatory for imports and the US Department of Homeland Security is doing the same. DHS has halted trade on 4 seafood products over ties to forced labour so far and there is every reason to expect this will continue. Last week a major set of withhold release orders was issued for cotton goods and tomatoes made or processed in China. China makes 20% of US cotton so it's like halting trade.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/united-states-bans-cotton-and-tomato-products-xinjiang-citing-human-rights
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/cbp-begins-2021-with-expansive-new-8626788/
This strategy is going to put a fair amount of pressure on US importers and retailers this year over imports from China and, probably, Thailand, Vietnam, Ecuador and others which are cited by the US Departments of Labor and State for significant forced labour or illegal forms of child labour in seafood processing. Importers will need to show they have systems to trace conditions in facilities in regions that called out, and not only a policy and a code of conduct but a working chain of custody and due diligence to track conditions. There are good people involved in NFI's FISH standard and its timely. My hope is they will take up more of the full "human rights due diligence" agenda to release that pressure. That would land them ultimately right where the Hawaii longline fleet has with its crew management system and community-based grievance committee.