Labour in the time of COVID-19

3 August 2021

If there is one key observation to make about the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that the narratives that emerged at the outbreak are practically unrecognisable today. China’s handling of the pandemic was initially criticised and considered emblematic of an incompetent government as well as the harbinger of a serious failure in its political system. Comparisons to Chernobyl were in abundant supply.

Now, one year later, China’s leadership has all but taken a literal victory lap to celebrate the success of its quarantine measures, while other countries with supposedly less opaque political systems are still struggling to contain the virus within their borders.

On a different tack, Singapore was once the poster child for effectively containing COVID-19. That changed when an outbreak started in Singapore’s oft-ignored migrant worker dormitories. Some 300,000 migrants, integral to certain sectors of the Singaporean economy, were not just exposed to the virus, but completely left out of planning and safety measures the rest of society enjoyed.

To put forward one final example, the race for a vaccine at COVID’s height saw multiple countries compete for influence on the world stage via ‘vaccine diplomacy’ — to be the first country with a viable cure and the most generous in donating it to others. China and its Sinovac appeared to be in pole position, gifting millions of vaccine doses to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, among others. However, as the efficacy of Sinovac has faltered, and countries are increasingly procuring non-Chinese vaccines, the narrative has decidedly shifted yet again.

The time for introspection should not wait for the COVID narrative to shift once more. After all, the crew change crisis is still not over: the world has just entered its 30th month of leaving its seafarers out at sea.

In summary, the speed with which the many stories of COVID-19 have changed would make a professional driver faint. Some interesting events of the pandemic will almost certainly be lost to time as the world gears up for the long, slow recovery ahead — people may forget who the first head of state to die during the pandemic was, and they might not remember the strangeness of the US government fighting with its own Food and Drug Administration over hydroxychloroquine.

Yet all these events happened, and it will be the task of historians and keen observers to examine them in closer detail as the pandemic lingers into the coming year. One story that cannot be allowed to get lost amid the tumult is the crew change crisis, and how COVID exposed some of the most unsustainable labour practices currently in existence.

The crew change crisis

Virtually all (over 90 per cent) of global trade travels over water. Maritime traffic and strategic waterways are the lifeblood of the world economy — and doubly so for certain countries in South and Southeast Asia where economic growth is tied to their development and social stability. But none of that trade is possible without workers operating the massive ships responsible for delivering goods all around the world, and it took a pandemic to show just how vulnerable this human backbone of maritime trade actually is.

For nearly two years, hundreds of thousands of seafarers were stranded at sea, unable to disembark even after they had finished their work contracts. Some were continuously denied safe harbour. Some even mutinied under the stress of sailing for months on end. All were, in every sense of the word, trapped. This was dubbed the ‘crew change crisis,’ and it is an ongoing problem with dire humanitarian consequences.

A disproportionate number of these seafarers come from South and Southeast Asia, reflecting where maritime trade has moved in the past 20 years: most trade, supply chains, and manufacturing lines begin or end in Asia. Trade flows to and from this critical region on a scale several magnitudes beyond the US, and the ships facilitating this trade are increasingly staffed by seafarers from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and China. Despite their vital role in the global economy, seafarers faced several problems even before the pandemic started.

Most container ships are operated by relatively thin crews — the staff of some of the largest cargo vessels in the world count less than 30 people. Preference for cutting costs has ensured that crews contain no dedicated medical personnel and very few medically-trained officers. This is useful if one wants to ship goods at the lowest cost possible, but bad if any sort of crisis — like a pandemic — occurs.

Another problem is the demands of modern-day shipping. Cargo ships are getting larger and larger, and port infrastructure is not keeping pace. Seafarers are operating under ever-more stressful conditions and given very little room for error in meeting the time-tables set by current shipping demand. The world economy may enjoy an unheard-of level of prosperity thanks to modern shipping, but that shipping is increasingly reliant on developing countries’ people and ports.

Finally, the most obvious problem is that even though seafarers had certain guarantees and safety measures written into their work contracts, both their employers and national governments roundly ignored the sanctity of those contracts. The Maritime Labour Convention explicitly spells out the rights of seafarers, and the International Labour Organisation, as well as the International Transport Workers’ Federation, did well in calling attention to violations. Yet, under COVID conditions, the convention and its advocacy appeared to matter very little.

An explanation for this could be states’ perceived obligation to their own citizens overriding any sense of responsibility for non-citizen seafarers hovering just offshore. It could also be from a simple understanding that violating the Labour Convention would have no consequences. Regardless, the lesson is the same: COVID has revealed that the arteries of sea trade are more vulnerable than ever before, and the rules governing maritime trade are profoundly inadequate in the face of increasing crises. Trade tensions and the securitisation of key waterways will pile on in the coming years, compounding the issue.

The crisis continues

If countries continue to rely on maritime trade to fuel their economies (as they should), the crew change crisis offers something of a reckoning on just who is shouldering the burden of ensuring those goods flow: it is primarily understaffed, undertrained, and underrepresented seafarers from developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. And in the aftermath of these seafarers’ plight, states would do well to find enforceable solutions under international law that hold both private companies and individual countries responsible in the future for the welfare of these crews.

It is a daunting problem-set, not least because the general trend for thirty years has been to go bigger, faster, and cheaper with all shipping. But increased protectionism and economic nationalism around the world ought to permit a more critical look at how global trade works — and if it is in everyone’s benefit for exploitative labour practices to continue. International fora, especially, ought to have more buy-in from states whose economies are pinned to seaborne trade and safe, free waterways.

The time for introspection should not wait for the COVID narrative to shift once more. After all, the crew change crisis is still not over: the world has just entered its 30th month of leaving its seafarers out at sea, with no safe harbour for them to find.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Drake Long is a Young Leader, Pacific Forum. Image credit: Wikipedia.