Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Taiwan Kengo/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
TEN INDONESIAN MIGRANT fishermen have sought to call attention to not being paid for fifteen months.
In a press conference earlier this month, the migrant fishermen sought to highlight how they have been denied wages by their employer. The ten migrant fishermen previously worked onboard the You Fu, a fishing vessel that operates out of a port in Liouciou Township in Pingtung County. To this extent, the fishermen were unaware that their family members had not been receiving remittance payments because their vessel does not have wi-fi.
The lack of wi-fi access for many migrant fishermen cuts them off from friends and family for months at a time. This isolation contributes to the stresses of work under conditions that are already harsh and hazardous and make it difficult to verify if their families have been paid.
Migrant fishermen carry out work under conditions that have been labeled modern slavery, seeing as despite working twenty or more hours a day, they sometimes do not receive pay and face the threat of physical violence on the high seas. Deep water fishing vessels often do not return to shore for years at a time.
Likewise, migrant fishermen are unable to report labor abuses that they face without wi-fi access. Although migrant workers in Taiwan are allowed to organize labor unions, seeing as they are at sea for months at a time, migrant fishermen are usually unable to contact their labor unions in the event of labor abuses without wi-fi access. As such, the right to organize has been criticized as just for show without wi-fi access by migrant worker advocates.
Photo credit: Koika/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 1.0
According to the Fisheries Agency, while there are more than 2,000 vessels in Taiwan’s fishing fleet, only 116 have wi-fi. Of those, only 92 give wi-fi access to members of the crew, rather than just the captain.
One of the migrant fishermen, Feri Rahardjo, stated that his aunt had died and his home was on the verge of being seized because of the lack of payments. Otherwise, fishermen highlighted that food deliveries to the fishing vessel were at delayed twice, resulting in that the fishermen only had instant noodles and fish bait to eat. Fishermen also stated that bedbugs prevented them from sleeping on the fishing vessel.
For its part, however, the employer of the fishermen has stated that they will be paid, claiming that the delayed payments were due to financial difficulties. One of the fishermen has already returned to Indonesia. The Fisheries Agency has stated that it will step in to pay if the employer does not.
The incident takes place ahead of an expected agreement between Indonesia and Taiwan aimed at strengthening protections for the more than 220,000 migrant fishermen in Taiwan. The new agreement would put responsibility for protecting migrant fishermen while at sea on brokers and employers, though they previously were not protected while at sea. Talks over the agreement had previously stalled, while a joint coalition of Taiwanese civil society groups and Indonesian labor unions aimed to add pressure to the Taiwanese government, particularly over the issue of Wifi access for migrant fishermen.
Either way, it is relatively rare for migrant fishermen involved in a labor dispute with their lawyer to be able to raise the issues with the Taiwanese public writ large, as a result of which migrant fishermen are not always provided the space to represent their own perspectives. Legislators including Hung Sun-han, Lin Shu-fen, and Puma Shen have joined calls that the migrant fishermen should be paid, with Shen calling for more inspections of fishing vessels to root out labor abuses.
It is to be seen how public pressure can be leveraged in order to push for improvements for the labor conditions of migrant fishermen. Taiwan has historically felt little incentive to improve labor practices unless it threatens Taiwan’s international reputation or access to markets, as with fish from Taiwan being listed on the list of goods produced by forced labor by the US Department of Labor, or issued a yellow card by the European Union.