|
Ship crews sail into stormy political
weather
By Miren Gutiérrez
Rome, Italy, Nov. 30 (IPS) — Sailors are 1.2 million people,
about the population of Estonia. These sailors handle 80 percent of
world trade — the fuel we burn, the food we eat. And increasingly,
they are treated like criminals.
“Ask around and you’ll be told about the effects of the security
regimes introduced [by the United States] after the attacks on the World
Trade Center in 2001,” David Cockroft, general secretary of the
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) told IPS in an emailed
interview.
From the deportation of a seafarer for walking to a phone booth to the
denial of shore leave and the posting of armed guards on gangways, Cockroft
says he is getting reports of an excess of security-driven zeal in the
United States.
US security concerns are “understandable” but treating seafarers
“with, at best, suspicion” is not the way to protect the country
against terrorism or prevent it at sea, he said..
There have been other problems at sea. On 10 to 15 percent of vessels
many workers face poor safety conditions, excessive hours, unpaid wages,
starvation diets, rapes, and beatings, according to the widely quoted
report ‘Ships, Slaves, and Competition’ produced in 2001.
Many of the sailors affected are Muslims. ITF says it is coming across
more and more cases of Muslim crews being targeted by security measures
in the United States.
Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines account for 72 percent of sailors
worldwide, “particularly in the supply of ratings [enlisted personnel],”
Cockroft says. The 30 developed countries within the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) account for most of the
rest.
There were 404,000 officers and 823,000 ratings at the last industry
estimate in 2000.
Now Pakistani trade unions, for example, complain that jobs are shrinking
for their members because they are seen as security risks.
Scandinavian parcels tanker operator Jo Tankers is replacing the Indonesian
crew members it had used for years with Filipino crew members because
it believed that “to continue to use Muslim seafarers would attract
delays and costly enhanced security oversight,” Cockroft said.
Jo Tankers said it would lay off more than 100 Indonesian workers “because
of new US security rules on seafarers,” according to an article
published by ‘American Shipper’ in August last year.
“We regret that the increased security regulations, particularly
in the USA, have had very negative effects on our crew changes and crew
planning,” a Jo Tankers spokesman was quoted as saying. He said
vessels entering US ports with Indonesian seafarers on board have been
subject to “increased investigations, armed port security guards...
prohibited shore leave and... difficulties in visa applications.”
The reason behind these measures is the “al-Qaida fleet.”
The Washington Post published an article in December 2002 quoting an
official as saying that 15 cargo freighters were controlled by al-Qaida
“or could be used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives,
bombs, money or commodities over the high seas.”
It was reported also that explosives used in the East African embassy
bombings in 1998 had been delivered by an al-Qaida-linked freighter.
According to the information offered, the US intelligence system could
track some of the suspect ships by satellite or surveillance planes,
and with the help of allied navies. But occasionally they lost the trail
of the vessels, which are frequently given new names, repainted or re-registered
under shell companies and fake owners.
Ship ownership today is virtually impenetrable if the owner wishes to
remain anonymous, ITF says.
“Whether the ‘al-Qaida fleet’ continues to exist or whether
it ever did is a matter of conjecture... certainly the search for those
vessels involved some vigorous inspections that turned up some suspicious
vessels and cast useful light onto the kind of shady practices that
too often escape detection at sea,” Cockroft said.
A foe common to security and sailors’ rights is the controversial
‘flags of convenience’ (FOC) system, he said. These are flags
carried by ships registered in places like Panama, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines or Liberia to avoid rigorous checks on crews and cargoes.
Convenience has led to the registration of 42 percent of Japanese vessels
under the Panama registry. More than 9,000 ships of more than 500 gross
tons are registered there.
The registry in Tonga, a group of tiny islands in the south Pacific
announced that it would close its ship registry after eight Pakistanis
jumped ship in Trieste, Italy, in 2002 from a Tonga-registered boat
run by a company called Nova. They misleadingly claimed to be crew,
and were found to carry fake documents. US officials linked them with
al-Qaida. A similar incident occurred in August last year aboard another
Nova-owned ship.
Since the incidents with the Tonga-registered boats there has been a
series of boardings of both Tongan and Comoros Islands’ ships in
the Mediterranean. Several naval forces are monitoring and inspecting
vessels in the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and the Arabian
Sea.
“Seafarers who are employed on FOC ships are often denied their
basic human and trade union rights since FOC registers do not enforce
minimum social standards,” ITF says. “This is what makes the
flag so attractive to ship-owners. The home countries of the crew can
do little to protect them because the rules that apply on board are
often those of the country of registration.”
ITF has warned of irregular labor practices in more than 20 registries.
A total of 28 countries provide FOCs, ITF says.
Argentina: factories without bosses or
state support
By Marcela Valente
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nov. 29 (IPS) — “We have
gas masks, slingshots, and stones to defend ourselves,” said an
employee at a worker-run tile factory in Argentina that is facing the
threat of being shut down, because local authorities want the machinery
seized to collect on a debt left unpaid by the former owners.
The case of Fasinpat (Fábrica Sin Patrones or Factory Without
Bosses) illustrates the total lack of state support for workers who
have refused to sit back and watch the factories where they worked for
decades deteriorate into huge rundown warehouses with broken windows
and rusty machinery peering out from the weeds of a ghost town.
The phenomenon of bankrupt companies being taken over and reopened by
their employees began to emerge in Argentina in the second half of the
1990s, but really took off in the wake of the late 2001 economic meltdown.
“We represent 170 companies that maintain jobs for more than 10,000
people,” Eduardo Murúa, the president of the National Movement
of Recuperated Companies, told IPS.
In late 2001, the financial system collapsed after capital flight left
Argentina, Latin America’s number three economy, with virtually
no foreign currency. Factories stopped producing due to the lack of
imported components and parts and the severe contraction of the domestic
market.
Over the next two years, more than half of the population of 37 million
slid into poverty, and unemployment climbed above the 20 percent mark.
Against that dismal backdrop, and despite the growing magnitude of the
movement through which workers have been salvaging companies and jobs,
state support has only been seen in isolated measures, and there is
no comprehensive public policy towards the sector, said Murúa.
In some districts, the workers running factories that were abandoned
by their owners have successfully pressed for statutes and laws, passed
by city councils and provincial legislatures, that have enabled them
to run the companies legally.
And in other cases, like Fasinpat in the southern Argentine province
of Neuquén, authorities have even taken action against the workers.
Up to 2001, the factory was known as Zanón, a leader in the tile
industry. But due to poor management, the firm’s debt piled up
to more than $100 million owed to the provincial government, state-owned
banks, and the World Bank, and in 2001 the owners decided to close the
factory down.
But 260 of the employees refused to let the company collapse, and continued
producing tiles, at 20 percent of the factory’s capacity. Shortly
afterwards, when the volume of tiles produced had doubled and exporting
part of the output began to look like a possibility, the workers called
in another 220 former employees.
However, the right-wing provincial government of Governor Jorge Sobisch
launched an offensive against the factory, taking legal action to demand
repayment of more than three million dollars in debt contracted by Zanón
with the provincial government.
According to the latest legal ruling, the debt is to be covered by selling
off the machinery with which the workers are manufacturing tiles.
The legal battle has led to five attempts to evict the workers from
the plant. But the 480 workers and their families, with the support
of several thousand local residents, have blocked every eviction attempt.
In a telephone conversation with IPS, Alejandro López, the secretary
of the Fasinpat workers union, said that for three years the workers
have been asking the judge handling the case to expropriate the factory
on behalf of the state.
Unlike other “recuperated” companies that turn into cooperatives,
Fasinpat wants the factory to be nationalized, and run by the workers.
But because the workers realize that a solution of this kind could take
time, they would agree to become a cooperative temporarily.
“We have discussed it in assembly,” said López. “We
are prepared to defend the factory any way we can. We have purchased
gas masks, and have slingshots and stones. We have also reinforced the
number of guards posted round-the-clock at the edges of the factory
grounds, and we have organized a phone network.”
Murúa, meanwhile, told IPS about his meeting with President Néstor
Kirchner a month ago.
In the meeting, he pressed for the passage of a law that would allow
the state to expropriate and nationalize firms that had gone under,
in order to give the employees the option of keeping the companies open.
Murúa also asked the center-left Kirchner for a one-time subsidy
payment equivalent to 5,000 dollars per job, which would give the workers
access to financing, since the legal vacuum in which companies like
Fasinpat are caught up makes it impossible to secure bank loans.
“If we had that capital, we could bring in more employees, and
begin to export products,” said Murúa, who pointed out that
all of the worker-managed companies have prospered. “Sixty percent
[of the firms] have taken on more personnel, and in many cases the employees
earn more than they did before,” he added.
According to Murúa, Kirchner regarded the creation of such a
fund as feasible, and ordered the Ministry of Social Action to study
the idea. However, the president saw the proposal for new legislation
on state expropriation of factories as a much more complicated issue.
“We met 26 days ago. I am counting the days, to see if the government
comes through,” said the head of the National Movement of Recuperated
Companies.
“This is not a passing phenomenon or merely a consequence of the
crisis,” said Murúa. “The movement of worker-managed
businesses will continue to expand and become stronger, even if the
economy grows, because unfortunately there are many small companies
in trouble that will continue to go under.”
|
