The mission of the National Labor Committee is to help defend the human rights of workers in the global economy. The NLC investigates and exposes human and labor rights abuses committed by U.S. companies producing goods in the developing world. The NLC spearheads public education, research and popular campaigns to empower U.S. citizens to support the efforts for workers around the world to protect their rights.
One such campaign involves the tragic industry of ship-breaking, which involves salvaging materials from decommissioned ships. Enormous old tanker ships are taken apart under the most hazardous conditions in the country of Bangladesh. Child laborers are among the 30,000 Bangladeshi ship-breaking workers whose plight continues to be ignored by G20 nations.
A new report, “Where Ships and Workers Go to Die: Ship-breaking in Bangladesh & the Failure of Global Institutions to Protect Workers Rights” documents the plight of workers who dismantle ships of the G20, toiling 12 hours a day, seven days a week, under primitive conditions for wages of just 22 to 32 cents an hour—doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
A worker is seriously injured every day and on average a worker is killed every three weeks. On September 5, 2009, two workers were burned to death and three others severely burned when sparks from a blowtorch ignited a gas tank, which exploded engulfing them in flames. A 13-year-old child was killed on his first day of work on July 14, 2008, when a large iron plate fell from a ship, striking him on the head.
Each ship contains some 15,000 pounds of asbestos and 10 to 100 tons of lead paint. Workers are exposed on a daily basis to mercury, arsenic, dioxins, PCBs and carcinogenic fumes. Helpers, often children, go barefoot or wear flip flops while using hammers to break apart the asbestos inside the ships, which they carry out and dump on the sand.
Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee challenged the G20 ministers to take up the issue: “The G-20 leaders, along with global institutions participating in the [Pittsburgh] Summit that direct world trade, must be held accountable for having miserably failed workers across the developing world, who continue to be injured, cheated, maimed, paralyzed and killed on a daily basis.”
The shipbreaking workers lack even the most rudimentary protective gear. Cutters, who use blowtorches to cut the ships apart, wear sunglasses rather than protective goggles, wrap dirty bandannas around their nose and mouth since they are not given respiratory masks, and wear two shirts rather than a welders vest hoping that the sparks will not burn through to their skin—which happens every day. The workers live in misery, with six workers sharing each small room, often sleeping directly on the dirty concrete floor. No one has a mattress. A worker told Kernaghan, “We are fighting with death always. This is not work. This is a place of punishment and death.”
“The workers are very clear on two points,” Kernaghan said, “that they will die early, and that there have been no improvements whatsoever over the last 30 years with respect to worker rights or health and safety. It does not have to be this way! Every child worker could be sent back to school for $750 a year—including a living stipend to replace their wages. For less than $350 a year, every worker could be provided safety gear—which would save lives. The G-20 nations, which dominate world shipping, must guarantee respect for the legal rights of workers and must remove all toxic materials from their ships before they are sent to Bangladesh for scrapping.”