Open letter to PM Prayut on recruiting prisoners for the fishing industry

     We write today on behalf of 45 regional and international human rights and labour associations to express our deep concern about a pilot project proposed by the Labour Ministry to recruit prisoners to work on Thai fishing vessels. As outlined to date, this project poses a serious threat to the human rights of prisoners, and use of their labour will violate international human rights standards and codes of conduct of many international companies. The project will also likely fail to address the fundamental causes of the labour shortage that fuels trafficking in Thailand’s fishing industry.
If implemented, this initiative could strengthen arguments that the Thai government is unwilling to take serious steps to address human trafficking on fishing boats and could threaten any possible upgrade of Thailand’s Tier 3 rank in the forthcoming 2015 US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report rankings.
As you may be aware, the fishing industry plays a vital part in Thailand’s economy. From January to May in 2014 alone, fishery production accounted for exports worth Bt89,596 million (based on the export 704,658 tonnes of seafood products).
The fishing industry employs upwards of 300,000 people, 90 per cent of whom are migrant labourers.
The vast majority of those working on fishing boats are not legally registered and are highly vulnerable to abuse. A string of stories throughout 2014 in news outlets including the BBC, Reuters and the Guardian exposed horrific working conditions including human trafficking, debt bondage, physical abuse, murder, non-payment of wages, confinement and 20-hour working days on some Thai fishing boats. These brutal and inhumane working conditions are the most significant reason why there is a prevailing labour shortage in the fishing industry.
Simply replacing vulnerable migrant workers with released prisoners will not solve the abusive working conditions and many other problems present in the Thai fishing industry. While the Labour Ministry has made assurances that prisoners will only be voluntarily recruited for this project, this does not diminish the fact that people in prison are often subject to coercion from prison authorities, and that it will be extremely difficult to ensure that those being sent to fishing boats are actually volunteering to do so.
The Labour Ministry has also repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot effectively monitor conditions of work and timely payment of wages on Thai fishing vessels, and has done little to effectively rectify this regulatory deficiency. Thus, the Thai government is not in a position to fulfil the ministry’s claims that prisoners placed on these ships will be treated in line with Thai labour law, nor can it provide reasonable assurances that these prisoners will not end up in conditions of forced labour.
Furthermore, prison labour for commercial, for-profit purposes is a violation of international norms and standards. Under the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the UN as guidance, prison labour must be of a vocational nature, not used as punishment, and prisoners should be allowed to choose the type of work they wish to perform. The work must not be driven by financial motives, and no prisoner should be forced to work for private entities. In addition, International Labour Organisation Convention No 29 on Forced Labour, which Thailand has ratified, states that prison labour for private entities may be only undertaken by consent of the prisoner. Though the details of the plan proposed by the Labour Ministry have not been made public, it would apparently violate these rights standards given the lack of choices for prisoners to work other than on fishing boats, and the clear for-profit motives of Thai fishing boat owners.
The reputation of the Thai fishing industry is already suffering from critical coverage by the international media. International and Thai companies buying Thai seafood have had to increase their scrutiny over their purchases of seafood originating in Thailand to try and avoid buying products produced by forced labour, and some international companies have already decided simply not to source seafood from Thailand rather than deal with that risk.
This ill-advised and rights-threatening programme to place prisoners on fishing boats will significantly add to the bad reputation of Thailand’s seafood products.
Major Western retailers are unlikely to want to purchase products sourced or made with prison labour and can be expected to order their purchasing agents to avoid any products from boats tainted by this prison work programme. Negative publicity may taint the entire fishing industry further, beyond those vessels with prisoners working on board.
If this programme goes forward, we will raise our concerns with the United States Department of State as it considers how to assess Thailand’s performance on trafficking in persons (TIP) in the coming months. As you know, abuses in the seafood industry were one of the primary reasons Thailand was downgraded in the State Department’s annual TIP report to Tier 3 in 2014. This prison labour programme will be another black mark on Thailand’s record, indicating Thailand is failing to tackle abuses and forced labour in the Thai fishing fleets.
The Thai government should recognise the only way to address the labour shortage on Thai fishing vessels is to make enforcement of labour laws on fishing boats a priority and improve conditions so that the sector can attract workers to voluntarily work on the boats. Such a policy and course of action would provide positive outcomes for all stakeholders: fishermen are assured their rights will be respected, Thai industry can count on a steady supply of workers, and Western seafood buyers can rest assured that their supply chain is not blighted by forced labour. The Thai government should realise that the prison labour scheme will lead in precisely the opposite direction of these possible positive outcomes.
In conclusion, the Thai government should immediately and unequivocally end any further consideration of a policy to place prisoners as workers on Thai fishing fleets, and terminate all steps by the Labour Ministry and the Justice Ministry to implement such a pilot programme.

(Signatories include Human Rights Watch, International Trade Union Confederation, Greenpeace, US Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, Thai Human Rights and Development Foundation.)