Longtime Working People listeners will be familiar with Max and Mel’s extended work discussing the supply chain, the workers who keep that system running day in and day out, and the dangerous and exploitative working conditions that many workers labor under. Our global economy relies on these workers to stay running–and bosses around the world use this pressure as a cudgel against the workers. For today’s episode of Working People, we’re zooming out and taking a look at the global supply chain with Judy Gearhart, research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University and host of the Labor Link Podcast, a podcast about “the brave individuals organizing the workers who make our stuff.” With decades of experience collaborating with organizers and rights advocates supporting worker struggles in the Global South, Judy is uniquely positioned to bring the stories of these workers forth to her listeners. Additional links/info: Check out the Labor Link podcast here. Labor Link Podcast, “S2E4 – Hariyanto Suwarno (Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union) and Charli Fritzner (Greenpeace USA)” Mel Buer, “Corporate billionaires are wrecking the supply chain. Just look at the railroads.” Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh, “UPS and the Logistics Revolution” Permanent links: Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube hannel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music: Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Mel BuerPost-Production: Jules Taylor Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Speaker 1 (00:17): Hi, I’m Judy Gerhardt. I’m a research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University at the School for International Service, and I host a podcast called the Labor Link Podcast, which is about workers organizing and global supply chains. Speaker 2 (00:33): Hello everyone. It’s your host, Mel er, and welcome back to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks that you’d like us to talk to. (01:18)And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. Long time TRNN supporters will be familiar with my previous work on the US supply chain and the integral role that railroad workers played in maintaining the network of goods and services that keep our country running as we learned in 2022. Without the workers, these networks don’t run. Bottlenecks happen and the national and global economy can grind to a stuttering halt. If you haven’t read my previous coverage on it, then please check it out at the link in our show notes on today’s episode of Working People, we’re going beyond the borders of the US and trending our focus on the international workers who keep the world’s global economy running. (02:04)This is likely going to become a series of interviews with workers from all over the world, but I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. So to start this conversation, I thought it would be important to bring on someone who’s been doing the important work of giving a platform to the workers who make these global industries run. I want to talk to her about her life and research and dig into the important work that she’s doing now. As always, it’s my goal to give you our listeners the context you need as we pull back the curtain on contemporary labor organizing both in this country and worldwide. So with us today to help us get that conversation rolling is Judy Gerhart, research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University and host of the Labor Link Podcast, a podcast about the brave individuals organizing the workers who make our stuff with decades of experience collaborating with organizers and rights advocates, supporting worker struggles in the global south, Judy is uniquely positioned to bring the stories of these workers forth, her listeners from their website. (03:01)The Labor Link Podcast touches on many aspects of the global economy, trade policy, international development programs, corporate accountability, and the international human rights norms meant to protect workers from abuse. The first Labor Link podcast series featured organizers leveraging transnational campaigns to build power. And this second series is on Fisher driven solutions to the seafood industry, featuring interviews with Fisher organizers from around the world who are overcoming challenges and using creative strategies to advance fisher’s rights in the global fishing industry. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Judy. I’m really excited to have this conversation. Speaker 1 (03:37): Thank you so much, Mel. I really appreciate you and Max having me on. Speaker 2 (03:41): So to start off our conversation, I first wanted to give our listeners a chance to get to know a little bit more about you and your work, your career. How did the last couple decades of organizing nonprofit work bring you to this current research? Speaker 1 (03:55): Wow. So I have been working, I think I started about 30 years ago actually doing organizing work in Mexico and I got to know a lot of amazing people who were organizing women in the export processing factories, the macula ladora in northern Mexico. And really that was the beginning. I mean, I went to Mexico knowing that I wanted to work on economic rights. I had done that college study abroad in France when Miran, the socialists were in power, and I had been going to college in Philadelphia where it had the highest per capita homelessness rate. So that had gotten me all thinking, okay, I need to understand economic rights. And when I went to Mexico and met people who were organizing workers and the workers themselves, I fell in love with the movement. I fell in love with these people who are, they’re trying to do good in the world, but they’re also trying to build power for the people who don’t have it. And I really found their campaigns and their struggle compelling. Speaker 2 (05:09): So what did you end up doing after you finished that work in Mexico? Where did you go next? Speaker 1 (05:17): So it’s a little bit of a meandering story. So I went to grad school and I went and worked for the United Nations. I went to back to Honduras and worked for the International Labor Organization and for unicef, and I realized that international instruments are blunt end instruments. There was a lot of campaigning at the time about child labor in the Honduran export factories. You’ll remember maybe some people will remember the Kathy Lee Gifford scandal. That happened because there were 14 year olds making clothing for her. And being in Honduras at the time, I was really aware of the complexities of what was happening because you had 50% of kids in school got through elementary school, and by the time they were 13 or 14, if they hadn’t finished elementary school, they couldn’t go on to middle school. So they had to work. And our international campaigns ended up pushing a lot of 15 to eight to 17, 15 to 16, 17 year olds out of the workforce because all the global brands said no more child labor. (06:25)And then you had this sort of moment of struggle. And for me it meant I could see the power of the international mechanisms, but I also knew that we needed to figure out a way to connect with workers on the ground and what kind of remedy they needed. I then landed back in New York and I got a job with Social Accountability International, working on workplace standard, voluntary workplace standard, the basis for social audits. And in the beginning I thought, this is great because at the time you had a lot of companies putting out codes of conduct that didn’t include freedom of association and collective bargaining didn’t include a living wage. So I was part of a group of people trying to convert international human rights norms into language that was atory for companies basically saying, you should do this, you should do that. This is what it means for what you need to do in your supply chain. (07:25)And because it included those core rights, I found it compelling and I thought we could use it as an education instrument, which we did. We did a lot of worker training, we had a lot of trade unions. We partnered with the apparel unions globally, and we used that tool to help them in their negotiations and collective bargaining. But I ran into a bit of a wall at some point because the social auditing was, it was a voluntary mechanism. They reported the results of the audit, but not enough of the details. So it was confidential like so many of these initiatives. And at the time I started realizing I was not going to be able to change those core flaws in the social auditing and the voluntary compliance mechanisms. I was lucky enough to become the executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, and then I spent 10 years working with amazing organizers and campaigners around the world and doing worker tours supporting, I was part of the team of people who helped negotiate the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which is a binding first of its kind transparent agreement. It’s basically a collective bargaining agreement between transnational apparel brands and the Bangladeshi unions and global unions. And that brought me to today where I’m really trying to figure out how do we take those amazing organizers and share their stories with other people so that they themselves can influence policy and also academic thinking to the extent I’m not a real academic, but to the extent that I’m part of the academy at this point. Speaker 2 (09:13): So the work that you do with the research center then is really kind of doing these interviews, talking to these workers, gathering this information and trying to present it to not just academic audiences, but translate this into potential policy objectives for the various organizations that you work with. Is that kind of a good understanding of the kind of work that you’re doing now? Speaker 1 (09:36): Yeah. Everything we do is trying to bridge between the global policy trade or corporate policies and what the workers on the ground are actually doing. I work with some great colleagues at the accountability research center who they work with health rights advocates in Guatemala or on education reform in the Philippines. Their work is a lot about community driven government accountability, and it was a perfect place for me to land with worker driven corporate accountability, this idea that we need to enable the workers and the organizers on the ground to influence the policies that are affecting them. Speaker 2 (10:21): I think this is kind of a good segue to really get into what your current focus is with the Labor Network or Labor Link podcast rather. Your first, or your series, I should say that you worked on was about these transnational campaigns to build power. Before we get into your current work with the Fishers in the fishing industry, was there anything that surprised you as you were interviewing these workers about the campaigns they were engaged in or about the workers themselves? Speaker 1 (10:53): So I think the thing that first surprised me is when I started working more heavily on research for arc, I was doing a lot of long form interviews, and when I first sat down to write the report that I had gotten a grant to write, I pulled the transcripts, which I guess many academics do all over the world, but I read the transcripts. I’m like, there’s so much smarter than me. What they have to say is so much more powerful. And that’s where I started saying, wait a minute, how do I figure out a way to put this out? So through the Labor Radio podcast cust Network, I met Evan Matthew Pap, who helped me with the first series through Evan. I met Jules who’s helping me with, who’s producing the second series, and it made it somewhat possible. I really hats off to what you do at working people. (11:50)It’s a lot of work. The thing I guess that surprised me, if anything, other than just this realization that I need to find a way to get their voices heard was the things I discovered about people I’d been working with for years. So the first four people I interviewed, I had known for anywhere from six to 12 years at the time, and I had helped them with worker tours. And when I was the director of the International Labor Rights Forum, we had given awards to their organizations for the organizing work they were doing. So that’s why I had wanted to start with them. But it was really taking that time to do the long form interview that I learned things like the organizer from Myanmar from the Migrant Worker Rights Network in Myanmar. He was an activist from Myanmar, and I compare him and I think the show notes, he’s basically like this Mother Jones character in my head because he comes from Myanmar shows up in Thailand, and he’s just trying to make a living. He’s escaping because he was at risk of losing his life or getting jailed in Myanmar. And so then he goes to Thailand and pretty much immediately starts organizing. And one of the big issues in Thailand is migrant workers can’t form a union. They can join a union, but they can’t form a union. But that didn’t deter haw. (13:20)And he and another expat who also had escaped cente, they started seeking out the trade unions and SA Karn, who’s another one of the first interviewees, so Sait Karn from the state Employee Relations Committee is a visionary. I mean, he basically said, okay, I may be maybe representing primarily Thai workers from public sector jobs, but we’ve got to help migrants. And he did, and he supported the Migrant Worker Rights Network and he did a lot of other things to try and bridge that gap, which is something I think the US at the time I met SA was really still beginning and improving upon, but it certainly took us a moment to try and bridge between traditional organized labor and migrant workers, and I think the movement’s better for it. Speaker 2 (14:17): Right. There are a couple things I wanted to just kind of touch on before we move forward. Really first, to share solidarity with you as a podcast host and a researcher and the realization that you come to that, the people that you interview really are the experts in the industries that they work in. And the job is kind of interviewees to really kind of set and open up a space where these folks, these workers can talk about the experiences that they live every day, whether it be the working conditions, the organizing that they do. And that’s sometimes a tough job. A lot of folks really get uncomfortable when the mic turns on. It’s oftentimes pretty difficult to get folks to feel like they can really talk authoritatively on the experiences that they have because they ask. The same question that we ask often is, how am I a representative for this? (15:17)Am I supposed to be here talking about this? And the reality is, yes, working people, a lot of the work that Real News does, what we do is we try to create this space where we recognize that the workers that we talk to are the experts and that they are the ones who are bringing this experience forward for our audience to understand. And that’s a tough job. And so I don’t want you to feel like you’re not doing a good job. I think it’s a really unique position to be in, and it’s a very privileged position to be able to bring these folks forward and provide this platform. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that work that you do and that it’s really important. Speaker 1 (16:00): Matt, Mel, back at you. I mean, I really appreciate what you all do, and I would be thrilled if you ever want to interview, I’d be happy to facilitate the conversations in the context. It’s really true what you’re saying. I mean, so Tola Moon from Cambodia, who’s one of the first people I interviewed, I mean, there are many of us in the international community who see Tola as this really incredibly brilliant strategist, and he’s very low key. And his organization, the Center for the Alliance of Human Rights and Labor is currently under threat that the Cambodian government might shut them down for an analytic report that they put out about a program being run called Better Factories Cambodia by the International Labor Organization and by the International Finance Corporation. And it’s an analytic report. They’re not trash talking. They did their research and anyway, so much respect. And whenever I interview him, he ends it by saying, thank you so much. It’s always so inspiring to talk to you. I’m thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me. You’re so much more inspiring than anything I’ve ever done. I’m just some small town kid who’s fascinated by (17:24)What other people do, Speaker 2 (17:25): Right? I mean, that’s the same thing here. Folks are like, oh, you’re so cool. You do all this great work. And it’s like, oh man, if you could listen to yourself, I hope you listen back to this episode and understand how intelligent and charismatic and hopeful these workers are. And the thing about work, about wage work in any context at any place in the world in this system is that it is designed to make you feel inferior, to make you feel like you don’t belong or that your contribution doesn’t matter and that you’re just another nut and bolt in this giant machine. And that’s it. The reality is that workers in every context are whole people who care a lot about what they do, who care a lot about the contributions that they have, particularly in the global supply chain. I had this experience when I was talking to railroad workers is that from an outside perspective, you wouldn’t think that folks would be able to feel like they can rise above the drudgery, I suppose. (18:33)But the reality is, whether it’s railroad workers, whether it’s farm workers in Southern California, in central California, there is this pride in the work that you do and the contribution that you have to keeping the world running. And that’s something that bosses really don’t believe is a reality, which I feel like is kind of like an ace in the hole for us when we’re organizing, is to say, when you assign and really believe in the dignity of your work and you assert your dignity as a worker, you kind of throw ’em back on their heels a little bit. As the organizing continues, there’s such a rich tapestry of how we interact with the jobs that we do, and it’s really beautiful to kind of be in a space and begin to sort of peel back those layers in conversation as we do as podcast hosts and researchers, and to see the moments click where I guests really start to believe what they’re saying, not that they didn’t believe it before, but that they’re coming to this better realization as they’re trying to tell strangers in our audience about the work that they do. That yeah, it is important. There’s no piece of it that is not, and that is a really gratifying piece of what I do and what you do, I’m sure as a host, facilitating these conversations. So Speaker 1 (19:59): Yeah, I will say the last one I should shout out from the first series who I didn’t mention yet, is my dear friend Ana actor from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. And she is, I mean, she definitely is an amazing speaker. She’s actually quite well known now, amazing organizer. In fifth grade, her dad got sick and she went to work in the apparel factories. And what that woman has done with the fifth grade education, she is just continued to self-educate herself. She just is brilliant. I mean, her capacities on so many levels, and then her ability to inspire is just, it’s pretty incredible. And I have to think about more women leaders to include, although in the phishing sector, I have to get to the processing sector. That’s my next hope, because right now we don’t have a lot of women in live capture phishing. Speaker 2 (21:03): Yeah. Well, that’s a good segue actually. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about this second series. You have four episodes out, I believe, right? (21:13)Yeah. Hey, that’s amazing given the breadth of work that you’re doing. So this is focusing on Fisher organizers and the advancement of workers’ rights in both large and small scale fishing industries from around the world. I believe your last episode, you were talking to fishers in Indonesia, if I’m not mistaken, maybe a good way to kind of orient our listeners in this research and with these workers. Can you share a little bit about the conditions that they’re currently laboring under? I know that’s a broad loaded question, but can we kind of give them a little bit of context into what the sort of both large and small scale global fishing industry looks like? I imagine a lot of our American listeners may think of global fisheries and may immediately go to, I don’t know, deadliest catch or something, a very unique American sort of fishery that maybe doesn’t look the same elsewhere. So let’s start there. Speaker 1 (22:21): Okay. So global fisheries, the majority of them are at capacitor overfished, and they are environmentally, there’s a struggle to make them sustainable. And the environmental, so environmental advocates around the world have been working on this for a long time. However, in 2014, actually even before that, there were some small exposes, but in 2014, major media outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian and the AP came out with a series of stories about forced labor on the Thai fleet. And then there were also stories appearing about forced labor on the Chinese fleet, the Taiwanese fleet vessels showing up in South Africa in Australia, Indonesian migrant fishers just walking off the vessel saying, we’ve been slaves on that vessel help us, or other vessels that were pulled aside for illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, IUU fishing, which to the environmentalists, to their credit, have been working for a long time on illegal unreported, unregulated fishing. (23:38)And that has brought some cases in where fishing vessels were detained for fishing illegally, and then the forced labor was discovered. So the story that I have from Hatto from SBMI in Indonesia, the largest migrant worker union in Indonesia, they were asked to go and help the fishers who were stranded in South Africa. And then what they discovered is the Indonesian government, the way the laws were set up, they couldn’t get these fishers, the support they needed. And so then that begat a whole body of work for them. But globally, starting around 2014 with all of these exposes, the one in South Africa, the ones on the Thai fleet, there were other cases all around Southeast Asia, the global community started to mobilize, and they really started reacting to forced labor on these vessels. It is horrific. I mean, there are stories of fishers stranded at sea for 15 years. (24:52)That’s probably one of the outside timeframes, but there are others who are out there for more. And then of course there are others who don’t come back who are killed at sea or they die from an illness at sea, and then their body is buried at sea, which is something that’s very traumatic for a lot of these people. For the Indonesians, it’s very traumatic, particularly I talked about that with Hato. And the campaigns that have surged from there have focused a lot on forced labor and illegal fishing, and it really brought a lot more work to support fishers and migrant fishers. I want to stop there. So in case you want to ask another question, but there’s so much work to be done just to address that forced labor. However, the thing I got from talking with people like or SA Karn, is we can rescue forced labor victims for decades to come, but it’ll never stop happening until we organize the fishers, until we enable them to stand up to the captain, we enable them to get remedy when they’re not paid, and we enable them to build the social movement that challenges these laws. Speaker 2 (26:17): That’s kind of where I was headed in my own thinking. You talk about these exposes in 2014 on that are trying to tackle one issue and pulling back and peeling away layers of what seems to me to be a wholly systemic industry-wide practice of forced labor, the industry in this region and elsewhere. And that in itself feels like an overwhelming sort of experience in its breadth, in its scope in how many fishermen past, present, future may be affected by this. And so I think a good question to ask then is as this organizing has been happening, more concerted organizing has been happening over the last 10 years or so, have there been some campaigns that you’ve spoken with fishers about that they consider to be successes or effective or moving the needle and in a good direction in terms of these organizing objectives? Speaker 1 (27:28): Yeah, so I think the first couple interviews I did are with the International Transport Workers Federation and the Fisher Rights Network in Thailand. So the ITF has been helping to set up at port and at multiple ports in Thailand fisher organizations. And so the Fisher Rights Network is growing. Again, as I said, they’re not able to form a union technically, but that doesn’t keep them from forming basically a worker center and from pursuing negotiations with the employers. What’s happening a lot in this space is you have a lot of funding and a lot of people with goodwill who are focused on the forced labor. And it’s important work. If you have been forced to be at sea for two years and you haven’t been paid, or if you have a family member stranded at sea and you just want to get them back, it’s crucial work, right? It’s absolutely crucial, Speaker 2 (28:37): But it doesn’t stop there. We need Speaker 1 (28:38): To talk about the also the and the also and right, so I’m not saying yeah, but I’m saying also and right, we need that work, but that work needs to connect in. And you have a lot of NGOs that do that work that don’t necessarily connect in. So there are some efforts now to connect these pieces together. And I think with migrant fishers, it’s a challenge to learn how to organize. They don’t come from organizing backgrounds for the most part except for the exceptions of the people who are leading some of these efforts. And so how do you bring this consciousness of what it means to organize what it means to work with your fellow fishers? I hope that you’ll get to talk directly with John Harto from the ITF who’s been organizing now going on a decade in Thailand, not quite a decade, but to hear it through his perspective as a former teamster, as an American, it’s quite moving. (29:42)But the bravery of these fishers who continue to organize, and I don’t want to tell the story that he tells, but to hear him tell the story of the fisher that inspires him every day is just, it’s pretty jaw dropping because the guy should have died at sea and he didn’t, and he continues to organize, but that one fisher is standing up to his boss and continuing to organize. That’s what the movement’s built on. And I think, Mel, I’m not a trade unionist from history. I’ve always been on the NGO side, although I’ve always been in solidarity with and supporting worker organizing, and I’ve definitely been very deeply involved in worker centers and Latin America, but I think a lot of people beyond the labor movement don’t fully appreciate what it takes to organize the day in the day out and what it means to have your momentum crushed by a fake solution. And that’s what’s happening a lot in global supply chain solutions. So yes, absolutely, we want to get remedy for fishers who have been victims of forced labor. Yes, we want to rescue victims of forced labor, but we need to build from there to the next step of enabling fishers to defend each other. Speaker 2 (31:16): Right? Well, the industry moves on because the workers are going to be participating in the industry as folks begin to really truly put up that fence that says that forced labor is not the way forward. So then what are the rights of the workers now that they are getting paid now that they have some movement now that they can get off these boats? It moves beyond that and creates a new culture of worker dignity in these industries. And I agree. My experience in union organizing prior to this current job where I actually am a card carrying member of CWA News Guild now was organizing in the IWW as a freelance journalist. And for folks who aren’t union organizers or maybe have never worked in any sort of quote organizing group, whether that’s political organizing, whether that’s union organizing, whether that’s, oh, I don’t know, community meetings, quite a bit of it is, what’s a good way to put it, bureaucratic drudgery sometimes. (32:27)It’s a lot of really hopeful, really optimistic, really intelligent, really passionate people butting heads often, at least in the West. And there’s a lot of people on the outside of these organizing groups who really don’t want to see you succeed and will do really horrible things to make your job 10 times harder because what’s that really? Well-known Stokely Carmichael quote in, for example, in order for non-violence to happen, your opponent must have a heart. Essentially. We’re coming up against corporations, we’re coming up against nonprofits even I’m lucky to be at one where folks walk the walk and talk the talk, but that’s not always the case where individuals in positions of power really don’t want to share that power with a workforce. And so organizing is really difficult to try and get the folks who sign your paychecks, who create these conditions in your workplace to see you as a human being is extraordinarily difficult, which is always surprising. (33:36)And to also bring people in who have never experienced collective organization before and empower them to make decisions and to participate and to activate them and to keep them activated and to keep their spirits up and to do all of this in order to continue to push forward in what is a marathon, a long game is very difficult. And I cannot imagine what it’s like to be in an industry that I has its baseline as the complete and utter dehumanization of its workers, forcing them into situations for 15 years, forced slave labor, and then to pull these individuals out of this enforced culture of oppression, empower them, and then continue to empower them to assert themselves and the dignity of their work collectively. It’s got to be unreal, both in just the scope and difficulty of it, but also in the sort of payoff. And I can imagine that there’s some serious euphoria of the winds that happen that keep individuals moving forward, right? It’s got to be life affirming, truly, to see that needle move a little bit year after year, Speaker 1 (35:03): Even just to build community in migrant communities that are moving a lot. I mean, these are not stable work teams, (35:15)So how do you build community? So you talked about layers earlier, Mel, and I think we could talk about the layers of fear factor that happen whenever you’re organizing and you know that your boss doesn’t want you to organize, you feel threatened, but add to that the layer that your identity papers being held by the captain of your vessel. And so you’ve come into port and you’re allowed to leave the vessel, but if you leave the vessel, they don’t give you your papers and then they might report you if you don’t come back. So you have to get back on that vessel, add to that, that you’re indebted to the captain because you didn’t pay the recruiter that brought you over, but instead there’s money coming out of your paycheck that’s reimbursing the vessel owner for you getting over to get that job. I mean, the payment for a job is just another whole crazy level of abuse that happens in this industry. (36:18)And then add to that, your language inability in the country you’re in as a migrant, it just keeps adding on. And I’ll say, you said earlier that it’s become systemic. I mean, that’s absolutely true. So Indonesian migrants and they migrant fishers are disproportionately made up of Indonesian migrant fishers, at least all the cases that come in of forced labor and abuse. And the Indonesians that I have spoken with and the organizers I’ve spoken with, it’s standard procedure for them to go abroad, sign a two year contract. So they sign a two year contract on a Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese fleet generally, and then they’re supposed to get paid electronically, and that money’s supposed to go to their family or to them, however they set it up, but then they’re at sea and they don’t have access to wifi, and they have no way to see if they got paid. They have no way to communicate with their families. So our friends at Global Labor Justice, they’re supporting a campaign with Taiwan. The Indonesian fishers in Taiwan got together and started a campaign called Wifi for Fishers now, and they have slogans like No wifi, no wife, because imagine you’re gone for two years. Your wife didn’t get any money, didn’t hear from you, (37:43)You Speaker 2 (37:44): Don’t know. Might assume you’re dead. Yeah, Speaker 1 (37:46): Yeah. And so they really, they’re trying to figure out a lot of these vessels. They have digital tracking, they have satellite, they have the capacity to provide the wifi. In fact, there are even places where they get into range of wifi access and the captain will take their phones away. They don’t want them to communicate. So the fact that they’re on a two year contract, the fact that there’s transshipment at sea so that the fish get off, but the fishers don’t, and then often they will pull into a port and they can’t use port services because they’re not legal, they’re not allowed to go, their documents are held back. So it’s not like they can get off at port and go run to the embassy and say, I need help. I’m being trapped. I mean, that just, it’s not that easy. Speaker 2 (38:40): One comparison that I keep coming up in as we’re talking about this, particularly about migrant status, about language barriers, about the barriers to really free movement on these boats, you hear a lot of the same concerns from organizers who are working with United Farm workers and the migrant farm workers who are working in farms in Southern and central California in Arizona along the border, a lot of them will cross the border without the appropriate visa paperwork. They’re taken advantage of by the farms that hire them. They’re housed in these often cramped, scary conditions in the middle of the desert or wherever they’re being housed. They’re subjected to extreme heat. And the farms themselves, if they’re unorganized, because some of the farms are organized and do have a relationship with UFW as a union will really kind of give and take however much they want because there’s no consequences. (39:57)Oftentimes the government’s not going to step in a way that’s useful a lot of times because the individuals who could investigate these claims, the agencies are underfunded deliberately or otherwise. There’s just not enough people to go around to show up at these places to investigate these issues. I imagine that a lot of this is the same because you’re in the middle of the ocean and even if you get claims about workplace conditions and being abysmal or abuses happening on these boats, it’s likely pretty freaking difficult for these governments to step in international waters. So you have all of these complications. So the point I’m trying to make is what it comes down to is the workers themselves that they are the ones who are collectively able to address, call out these issues, address these issues, force consequences for these issues. And that is no small feat when you’re talking about fleets of boats in the middle of the ocean Speaker 1 (41:00): And the distant water fleet is so hard to police and regulate, and increasingly countries don’t allow foreign vessels in their waters, but that doesn’t mean they’re not overfishing. So the Indonesian fishers, I have an interview coming up with aren’t on from salute in North s Lui, and he talks about organizing at port, both for fishers on the Indonesian domestic fleet and the Indonesians going abroad on the distant water fleet. And Indonesia, a number of years ago, said, no more foreign vessels in our waters. But now you have a domestic fleet that pays even worse, but the conditions are terrible. They’re not well financed. They’re overfishing still the same waters that were, they booted out the Korean fishers to try and let their fish recuperate, but they didn’t. They basically continue to overfish. So it’s really a struggle. And then you have the fishers who would, because you can make so little money on the domestic fleet, they’re willing to take that risk of going abroad for two years and not being in contact with anyone. But listening to you now, Mel, I’m thinking we need to find a way to, first, with all the organizing that’s happening now, enable the fishers to sit down and reimagine how this could be. If we could imagine a world where migrant fishers, whenever the vessel comes into port and the ITF is saying it should be every three months, you should be coming into port at minimum. (42:37)And if those fissures in whatever port they’re at are able to access communications and support, it could be a completely different world. It is doable, but it takes an amount of coordination because you’ve got whatever country is flying the flag of the vessel, and there’s abuse of the flag registrations, which the ITF has a great campaign on flags of convenience, it’s worth looking at. But then you also have the port that the vessel comes into, and then you have the market state. That’s generally the US and Japan and Europe where we have some Speaker 2 (43:14): Influence, Speaker 1 (43:15): But we haven’t really been exerting it yet. There was a big campaign of global buyers and retailers saying, supporting the employer pays principle. And we looked into that. I worked with some students last year and did some research on the employer pays principle and companies support it. They support the principle, but they have no way to implement it, and they’re not financing it. So basically the buyer or the retailer, it’s just like in the global apparel supply chains, they’re saying to the vessels they buy from, go do this, but they’re not helping finance it. They’re not going to be steady buyers from those vessels that change their policies. They’re not really taking responsibility for bega the change in the sector. Speaker 2 (44:07): Well, there’s no incentive for that. There’s no incentive for it. There’s no consequences for not doing it, right. Speaker 1 (44:14): There’s only organizing pressure really. I mean, we can talk consumers, but it’s not penetrating in the way that we need it to. Speaker 2 (44:21): Right? Well, this is the sort of idealist, internationalist, anarchist in me, God forbid, hopefully some of my listeners don’t get mad at me for this, but it’s like, what would be great if we could just get rid of all of these borders that make this shit impossible? Pardon my language. Maybe a truly international community would benefit greatly from not having extra border barriers that make this impossible for individuals to stop off somewhere, contact family, I don’t know, get justice for the abuses they suffer in the middle of the ocean. That’s an extremely reductive idealist position for me to take. But when you hear these kinds of problems, you’re like, why? A lot of these could be solved with the air quotes, relatively simple solutions, right? Speaker 1 (45:15): I don’t know, Mel, I’m with you. I mean, capital’s treat across borders. They’re very unfettered. I mean, there are some regulations and some things they need to go through. We could do something if you were to treat migration equally to the people migration to capital, if you created regulations that were as facilitative, things would shift and change. Yes, it’s idealist, but 30 years ago I was working on Latin America and the impact of the US drug trade in Latin American and on human rights, and I never could have imagined we’d see the day that we’re in now with marijuana being legal, if somebody doesn’t rethink migration in a more radical way, I don’t know that we’re going to get there. So keep rethinking it. I’m way out of my depth and all the different repercussions. I mean, not so out of Speaker 3 (46:20): My depth, Speaker 1 (46:21): But I mean we would need another five hours to even start to hash out all the different repercussions because there’s a big cultural element to how do you mix different peoples and cultures and over time, and that is a segue to something I do want to mention is I’ve been doing this work starting on the egregious abuses of forced labor, but always with this eye too. We can’t just stay there. That’s like just looking at the tip of the iceberg, because the causal factors are really the inability of the fishers to have a voice, to organize, to bargain collectively. The phenomenal amount of discrimination they suffer day in and day out because as migrants, and at the same time, we can’t look at the seafood industry only through the lens of the distant water fleet. What I would hate to see is buyers and retailers finally addressing this piece, the tip of the iceberg, and not addressing the causal factors or the rest of the seafood industry. Speaker 2 (47:30): They would treat it as like a checked box. We’ve done our due diligence. Look at this Speaker 1 (47:35): Amazing work we did in this one piece, because I will tell you the future episodes I’m hoping to do with Fisher organizers. I’m looking at organizing in coastal fishing in Africa and Latin America, and there you’ve got a lot of tensions coming up between the industrial fleet and the coastal fishers who are really largely fishing for food security. So much of the global movement, the mechanisms we have as a global movement are trade related. And if you only look at what can I change using trade policy or global corporate policy, you’re going to miss this other layer. And with the seafood industry, these two butt up against each other, so you have the industrial fleet that’s further off the coast, that’s mostly is more likely to be doing export. And so we have mechanisms and policies that we can bring to bear on countries to change how that industrial fleet’s governed, Speaker 3 (48:38): But Speaker 1 (48:39): We need to also be looking at that coastal fleet because those coastal fishers, they’re managing the waters, the fisheries, they’re really providing it’s food security. What they’re doing, and this is where I really get to the cultural rights. Sorry, it was a long segue. It was long. It’s okay. But when you talk to coastal fishers, this is not just about livelihood and food security. This is a way of life for centuries for a lot of these people. And I think a lot of people think, oh, we just have to fish last along the coast. It’s like, well, maybe there’s got to be a different path because this is their way of life and we’re really threatening something much more profound than what we would be threatening if we’re curbing the industrial vision. Speaker 2 (49:31): Right? Important conversations and important nuance to this entire topic. I’m actually really looking forward to future episodes that you do, and I think this is kind of a great place where we can kind of close out our conversation. Can you share with our listeners where they can find your work? We’re going to be putting links to the Labor Link podcast in our show notes. Are there maybe one or two representative episodes of the last two seasons that you think our audience would be interested in or an episode that’s a good maybe primer for the second series that any of our interested audience members can kind of start with? Speaker 1 (50:14): Yeah. I think for the Fisher Driven solutions this current season, start with the first one with John Harto. As much as I’m really working to enable people to listen to the Fisher organizers, I think John will really get everybody thinking about what these fishers brave they are. This is really choosing among my children here now that’s D, listen to it all. Yeah, (50:48)They’re all fun stories. I mean, because then it segues to the Fisher Rights Network where they’re really, I mean, these guys are really, they have to be so crafty because like we talked about the fear factors, these trying to organize when and build trust with people who are so fearful. It’s phenomenal work that they’re doing. And then of course, Hoya, who’s also from Central and Cambodia organizing migrant fishers in Thailand from the Cambodians, and he’s got a fascinating story to tell. He was originally there as a Buddhist monk, and then he left and started organizing migrants. It’s just another amazing story. And then the one that is really fun and most recent is, and people should check this out, so it’s with Harto from SBMI in Indonesia, and there’s a little piece in there with Charlie Fritz from Greenpeace, and they’re talking about a film called Before You Eat that they produce with Greenpeace that really, if you want visuals on this stuff, check out before you eat or check out Outlaw Ocean. But okay, here I am promoting everybody else but my own show, and given that we share a producer, I better get on with it. (52:09)So the way to find the Labor Link podcast, we are on Spotify and we also set up a website, so maybe it’s easier for some people. Labor Link podcast.org. You can find us through the Labor Radio Podcast network and on Spotify, and also go to labor link podcast.org. Speaker 2 (52:31): Cool. Cool, cool. Yeah, we’ll put all of those links in the show notes so that folks can check out Judy’s work and stay up to date on what’s happening. The process of putting together a podcast is extremely difficult. We make it seem easy, but it’s definitely not. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, and one of those things is really promoting episodes that folks see them. So we’ll be adding a bunch of links to those episodes because they are incredible conversations, and you absolutely will find something interesting and impactful in what you’re listening to. And this will be my final note before we get to the closing paragraph here, but one thing that I learned in the research that I did for the National Supply Chain Network as it relates to railroaders, is that things that seem boring on their face really are pretty intricate, interesting and precarious when it comes to the supply chains, both nationally and internationally. You might go a little crazy going down that rabbit hole to realize just how precarious global supply chain networks actually are. I’m sure folks can remember the ever given Suez Canal disaster and how that completely choked up the global supply chain almost immediately, right Speaker 1 (53:53): In the middle of the pandemic. Speaker 2 (53:54): Yes. And how long it took to recover from that. Just one small piece can kind of knock the card pyramid down. So if you find that your knee-jerk reactions to say, oh, that boring stuff, then peel back a little bit of the onion there and take some time to look into it because it becomes endlessly fascinating, infuriating, enraging, and ultimately, you begin to see these sort of moments and spaces for productive and transformative organizing when you start to understand these systems. So that’ll be my final little note here. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Judy, please come back anytime. Let’s link up and continue talking and talking with folks and send me all the interviews that you can. I can’t wait to speak to the folks that you speak to. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on. Speaker 1 (54:53): Yeah, thank you so much, Mel, and thank you for the show that you all produce. I really appreciate it. Speaker 2 (54:57): Yeah, yeah. I appreciate the work that you do as well. And as always, I want to thank you all our listeners for listening, and thank you so much for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons. And please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so that you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel er and with much love and solidarity, I’ll see you next time.