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Financial Times: “The scheme gives workers a key role in establishing, monitoring and enforcing their own employment rights.”
“Unlike many voluntary corporate social responsibility schemes, the pilot programme is based on legally binding agreements between employers and buyers that incentivise adherence and are audited by an independent council.”
Press Release: Europe’s first Worker-Driven Social Responsibility pilot launched in UK- quotes from key partners:
Chris Williams, International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) fisheries expert: “ This pilot project gives migrant fishers working on some of these vessels a chance for greater protection and improved conditions at work, as well as the ability to shape their own working conditions, despite the continued use of seafarer’s transit visa to recruit them. We hope this pilot will be successful and expand over time to ensure all workers, regardless of their nationality or immigration status, are paid fairly and treated with respect for the difficult work they do .”
Mike Park OBE, Chief Executive of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association Limited: “It is important that the welfare and well-being of all crew operating on UK fishing vessels is protected to the highest standards possible, that is why we are excited by the potential this initiative delivers. Having visited the Fair Food Programme and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in their place of operation in the tomato fields of Florida, I have great hope that we can replicate the same supporting network here in the UK for all fishermen and fisherwomen.”
Julia Black, Chair of the Seafood Ethics Action Alliance & Group Ethics & Social Sustainability Senior Manager at Hilton Foods: “The development of a worker-driven social responsibility pilot within a UK fishery is an exciting marker for our industry. As a pre-competitive collaboration of UK retailers and seafood businesses, we work to ensure respect for human rights our global seafood supply chains. We are interested to see this powerful methodology in action in Scotland to improve experiences of fishers in the UK. We are encouraged by the different stakeholders working together to forge this groundbreaking partnership.”
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is pleased to announce the official launch of a new Worker-driven Social Responsibility program for workers in the historic UK seafood industry!
The program is modeled after the groundbreaking Fair Food Program, the world’s first WSR program, and the launch of the pilot this spring in northeast Scotland in collaboration with the Scottish White Fish Producers Association (SWFPA) comes after nearly two years of careful planning and discussion [[link removed]] with the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), fishers’ human rights expert Dr. Jess Sparks with Tufts University, the UK-based human rights organization Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), and the Seafood Ethics Action Alliance (SEA Alliance), who together form a powerful and unique partnership of worker organizations, human and labor rights experts, suppliers, and corporate buyers.
The pilot program is being launched for an initial period of two years, and is then planned to expand to protect thousands more fishers in Scotland and beyond.
Thirty years ago when farmworkers came together in Immokalee in protest against inhumane working conditions and poverty wages in Florida’s fields, their efforts marked the birth of a new kind of model for protecting human rights in corporate supply chains, a model today know as Worker-driven Social Responsibility, or WSR. It is an approach forged by workers themselves, rooted in their lived experience and monitored and enforced by thousands of workers every day in every corner of the workplace, backed by the purchasing power of the major buyers of the products they harvest, assemble, or, with today’s news, pull from the sea.
And as detailed investigations [[link removed]] by the Financial Times reveal — as well countless studies and reports published by human rights experts, including project partner Dr. Jess Sparks [[link removed]] of Tufts University — the working conditions of fishers in the UK are all too similar to those farmworkers faced in the US before the Fair Food Program, and require the same kind of enforceable protections offered by WSR programs like the FFP. This pilot program will not only provide a meaningful way for fishers to report issues and safeguard their rights and dignity at sea, it will also reduce risk and increase sustainability for vessel owners and food retailers along the length of the entire supply chain.
To learn more about the pilot program, read an excerpt of the Financial Times’ coverage [[link removed]] of it below. You can read the article in its entirety on our website, as well as a press release on the launch from FLEX!
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UK seafood industry cracks down on exploitation of overseas crew
Two-year scheme sets new standards for pay and working conditions on British boats
By Antonia Cundy – January 9, 2024
The UK seafood sector has launched Europe’s first “worker-driven” scheme to tackle the exploitation of migrant crew on British fishing boats by setting minimum standards for pay and working conditions.
The two-year pilot will be run by labour rights groups in partnership with the Seafood Ethics Action Alliance (SEA Alliance), a consumer group whose members represent 95 per cent of the UK seafood market and include Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Whitby Seafoods.
The scheme gives workers a key role in establishing, monitoring and enforcing their own employment rights. It aims to address a lack of labour legislation for crew created by an immigration “loophole” that denies those who work in international waters the protection of UK employment law.
Chris Williams, fisheries expert at the ITF, said the project gives migrant fishers “a chance for greater protection and improved conditions at work, as well as the ability to shape their own working conditions”.
The attempt to clean up labour standards comes after criticism of the seafood industry’s systemic dependence on low-paid migrant crew and a series of labour abuse scandals that have rocked the sector in recent years.
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
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