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“The level of agreement on fundamental issues that we encountered across the course of our stay was nothing short of remarkable. While there may be some disagreement on how widespread labor abuse is in the industry, no one dismisses its existence altogether, and everyone agrees that something – and, importantly, something new – must be done…”
“We were immensely impressed with the open minds and vision of the Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association and the POs that we met. Rather than close ranks and turn a blind eye to concerns raised by those outside the industry, they have fully engaged and quickly realized the benefits to the fishing industry from embracing the challenges of creating a bespoke, UK fishing industry scheme.”
In late September, 2022, The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Standards Council joined forces with the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and the University of Nottingham Rights Lab in a groundbreaking collaboration to bring the gold standard for protecting human rights in global supply chains — the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model — to the UK fishing industry. Their goal: To build and launch a pilot program, based on the CIW’s Fair Food Program, with fishers, vessel owners, and retail seafood buyers to address generations of labor abuse on the high seas.
As counterintuitive as it might seem at first, there are indeed many parallels that can be drawn between working conditions in the UK fishing industry today and those found in the tomato fields of Florida before the advent of the Fair Food Program. CIW Co-founder Greg Asbed joined the exploratory FFP delegation to the UK, and on Dec 12, the industry journal Fishing News published an op/ed by Greg laying out the broad areas of agreement among the key players in a possible adaptation of the FFP to the UK fishing context, and highlighting the exciting potential for urgently needed, transformative change in the industry.
Check out an excerpt from the op/ed below and click here to read it in full [[link removed]] :
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From Florida to Fraserburgh: Can the Fair Food Programme Inspire a ‘Fair Fish Programme?’
In late September, I was part of a team from the Florida-based Fair Food Programme (FFP) who visited the UK to hear from fishermen and vessel owners and a wide variety of others about the crewing and welfare situation in the UK fishing industry.
Our hosts, the International Transport Workers’ Federation, organized meetings with the fishing industry across UK ports to discuss ways in which fishing vessel owners could possibly adapt our work in Florida to the fishing industry context, and see if this could help address the increasingly high-profile issues relating to crew welfare in certain sectors of the UK fishing industry.
The level of agreement on fundamental issues that we encountered across the course of our stay was nothing short of remarkable. While there may be some disagreement on how widespread labor abuse is in the industry, no one dismisses its existence altogether, and everyone agrees that something – and, importantly, something new – must be done. On that point, all agree.
All agree as well that workers lack a meaningful voice in the industry, a problem that has grown as the number of foreign crew has increased in the fleet. We found a strong consensus around the idea that any human rights initiative must include real consequences for those employers who fail to comply with its standards if it is to have any hope of success in the fishing industry.
Stakeholders of all stripes told us that without significant consequences – in combination with meaningful rewards for those who treat their workers well – those employers who oppose real change won’t take the programme seriously, while those who are inclined toward progress will soon lose any incentive to comply when they see that they are playing on an uneven pitch.
Fortunately, those last key points of agreement – on the need for workers to have a real voice in the industry, and the need for any successful programme to have meaningful consequences for violations, together with market benefits for compliance – are the fundamental pillars of the FFP.
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
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