Cargo owners must take responsibility for ship operators which break labour laws

Maxime Felder

Cargo owners must take some blame for bad working conditions for seafarers, according to the ITF.  On Thursday 20 Filipino seamen were found in a ship off Australia with no food. They had not been paid since September. The International Transport Workers’ Federation said that the cargo owners must take some responsibility. “The Australian cargo owners, those that make profits selling their cargo to international markets, have to take responsibility for this,” said national co-ordinator Dean Summers.

“You can’t just put your cargo on the crappiest, cheapest ship, that doesn’t feed and doesn’t pay it’s seafarers and say it’s not your responsibility. So we’re looking for the cargo owner and we’ll be holding them up to some responsibility in this as well.”

The ship was operated by Japan’s Keymax company, which had previously faced accusations of  its ships breaking labour laws.