“Extremely long” working hours, very low wages, and racist insults and verbal abuse were commonplace experiences of a group of migrant fishermen interviewed for a Maynooth University research study.
Over two-thirds of those interviewed said they would work between 15 and 20 hours a day, and pay was usually below the minimum wage, the study, which was funded by the International Transport Federation (ITF), found.
Over half of the 24 participants interviewed for the research said they had been subjected to “racial and verbal abuse”.
Just one-third of participants in the study reported feeling safe on a vessel, although some pointed out that fishing is “an inherently dangerous occupation”, the study found.
Five of the 24 participants reported being “satisfied overall” with their working situation, and the study identified their key challenge as uncertainty around their immigration status and lack of freedom to change employer or section.
The analysis by Dr Clíodhna Murphy, Dr David Doyle and Stephanie Thompson of Maynooth University’s law department drew on semi-structured interviews conducted with 24 male migrant workers in the Irish fishing industry.
Over half the participants had lived in Ireland for ten years or more. The interviewees were described as highly skilled fishers who collectively had over 200 years of fishing experience, the researchers note.
All but two of the interviewees who had been in Ireland since before 2016 “indicated that conditions in the sector had worsened overall since that time”, the study says.
The study says the Atypical Working Scheme (AWS) permission - under which the worker is contracted to an individual employer- and the necessity to renew this permission each year can be used by employers as a “means to threaten and exploit workers”.
Less than half of those interviewed recalled boats being inspected by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) or any other agency representative about work- related issues.
“ Fear of losing one’s job and work permit, along with language barriers, were key challenges for workers to engaging with employers or inspectors to seek better working conditions,”the authors state.
The study recommends reforms to the work permit system, including facilitating access for undocumented migrant fishers to the Department of Justice’s planned regularisation scheme.
It says applications should be allowed to vary Stamp 1 permission to Stamp 4 (as in line with section 4(7) of the Immigration Act 2004), and these applications should be expedited.
It recommends AWS permits should be granted for the sector, rather than tied to an individual employer, and the model contract used in this scheme should be reviewed and overhauled.
It says the WRC and the Department of Transport’s Marine Survey Office (MSO) should perform more outreach work and speak directly to migrant fishers in private “as a matter of course”.
It says inspectors monitoring workplace conditions should be accompanied by trained interpreters when interviewing migrant crew.
It recommends that legal barriers to claiming employment rights for undocumented workers should be removed , and an expanded role for NGOs to support workers making complaints should be considered.
It also says under-crewing of vessels should be investigated and pursued.
ITF fisheries campaign lead Michael O’Brien expressed concern about the report’s findings, and endorsed its recommendations.
He welcomed a statement from Minister of State with responsibility for law reform James Browne that the AWS scheme is to be reviewed.
“ Through various measures the migrant fishers have to be liberated from the exclusive relationship they are forced into with individual boat owners,”he said.
“ The impending migrant documentation scheme to be finalised by the Department of Justice, if it is sufficiently inclusive, could be the most direct means to achieve this,”he said.
Mr O’Brien said there were “worrying indications” that a new scheme would be “restrictive and contain anomalies that will serve to exclude most migrant fishers”, although Minister of State Jim Browne had said the scheme would offer a path to documentation for many fishers.
The ITF is undertaking a number of initiatives, including supporting judicial review proceedings to seek correct transposition into Irish law of the Working Time at Sea Directive EU 2017/159, in a bid to ensure complaints relating to illegally long hours at sea can be heard by the WRC and Labour Court.
The ITF says it is also holding discussion with the Ghanaian seafarer’s union MDU to explore what steps can be taken to “combat the activities of bogus recruitment agents in Ghana”.
It says these agents have been responsible for the trafficking of fishers to Ireland, north and south, in recent years.
The union says it aims to disseminate information to fishing communities in Ghana about “the pitfalls and dangers of coming to work in Ireland for exploitative employers”.