The Invisible Fleet: How Global Elites Profit from Maritime Labour Exploitation

By Andrew Mwangura

Email, thecoastnewspaper@gmail.com

An Editorial on the Systemic Exploitation of the World’s Maritime Workforce

The world’s economy floats on the backs of nearly 1.9 million seafarers who navigate the vast oceans to deliver 90% of global trade.

Yet these essential workers—the invisible backbone of international commerce—remain among the most exploited laborers on Earth, victims of a system designed to maximize profits for global elites while minimizing protections for those who make their wealth possible.

Anatomy of Global Greed

From the marble halls of American corporate boardrooms to the opulent palaces of Gulf monarchies, from the corrupt corridors of power in developing nations to the sterile offices of international shipping conglomerates, a pattern emerges with startling clarity: those with the most power care least about those who create their wealth.

In the United States, oligarchs who have captured regulatory agencies and political institutions pursue relentless tax cuts while remaining willfully blind to the suffering their policies perpetuate.

The same American corporations that benefit from cheap maritime labor actively lobby against living wages for Black and Latino workers at home, viewing human dignity as an impediment to quarterly profits.

Their indifference extends far beyond national borders—these same executives sleep soundly knowing that the seafarers transporting their goods work in conditions that would be illegal on American soil.

The Gulf monarchies present perhaps the most brazen example of this callous disregard for human welfare.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have built glittering cities on the broken backs of migrant workers, including seafarers who service their massive port operations.

These nations treat employees as disposable commodities, confiscating passports, withholding wages, and subjecting workers to conditions that international human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned as modern slavery. Yet the oil wealth continues to flow, and the exploitation continues unabated.

In Kenya and across Africa, corrupt political elites collaborate in this global system of exploitation. While ordinary Kenyans—the Wananchi—struggle with basic necessities, their leaders enrich themselves by facilitating the very systems that keep their countrymen impoverished. 

Politicians who should be advocating for better conditions for Kenyan seafarers instead line their pockets with kickbacks from shipping companies that promise to maintain the status quo of cheap labor and minimal oversight.

Human Cost of Maritime Commerce

The statistics tell a story of systematic marginalization. The Philippines, with a population of 100 million, supplies 20 percent of the world’s seafarers, while India, despite having 1.3 billion people, provides only seven percent. 

Approximately 578,600 seafarers were deployed from the Philippines in 2023, many earning wages that would be considered poverty-level in the countries whose goods they transport.

These workers from the Global South face a double burden: exploitation at sea and economic desperation at home.

They work grueling schedules—often 10-12 months at sea with minimal shore leave—while earning wages that pale in comparison to their Western counterparts performing identical duties.

The very countries that benefit most from maritime trade provide the fewest protections for the workers who make that trade possible.

The 2006 Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) was supposed to address these inequities by establishing international standards for working conditions, wages, rest periods, and food quality. Yet nearly two decades later, the convention remains more aspiration than reality for millions of seafarers.

Flag-of-convenience registrations allow ship owners to circumvent regulations by registering vessels in countries with minimal oversight, creating a race to the bottom that consistently favours capital over labor.

Complicity of Weakness

Labor unions and governments in seafarer-supplying countries find themselves caught in a devastating paradox. 

They cannot be too forceful in demanding better conditions lest they be branded as “difficult” and see opportunities diverted to more “cooperative” nations.

This fear-based compliance creates a system where workers’ advocates become unwitting accomplices to their own members’ exploitation.

American unions, once powerful advocates for worker rights, have been systematically weakened and vilified, labeled as “too demanding” by the same corporate interests that have captured American democracy.

This domestic war on organized labor has international implications, as weakened worker movements cannot effectively challenge global exploitation patterns.

The bottom end of the shipping market—where margins are thinnest and oversight weakest—operates on a business model that depends entirely on cheap labor and regulatory arbitrage. 

When these operations fail, as they inevitably do, it is the seafarers and other vulnerable creditors who bear the cost, not the executives who profited from the unsustainable model.

Labor-Supplying Nations

Governments of seafarer-supplying countries in the Global South must break free from the race-to-the-bottom mentality that has trapped their workers in cycles of exploitation.

Concrete actions should include:

Establishing Minimum Wage Floors: Countries should refuse to allow their nationals to work for wages below internationally established minimums, even if this means temporary reduction in deployment numbers. Short-term pain is necessary to break long-term exploitation patterns.

Creating Worker Protection Agencies: Independent agencies with sufficient funding and authority should monitor working conditions, investigate complaints, and impose sanctions on employers who violate labor standards.

Implementing Mandatory Insurance and Bonds: Shipping companies employing workers from these nations should be required to post substantial bonds guaranteeing wage payment and repatriation costs, with insurance covering medical emergencies and workplace injuries.

Developing Collective Bargaining Power: Countries should coordinate their labor policies to prevent being played against each other by international shipping interests, potentially through regional maritime worker protection agreements.

Investing in Education and Skills Development: Rather than competing solely on low wages, nations should invest in advanced maritime training to position their workers for higher-skilled, better-compensated roles.

Recommendations

The OECD, UAE, and BIMCO must move beyond voluntary guidelines and aspirational statements to concrete enforcement mechanisms:

OECD Action: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development should expand its due diligence guidelines to explicitly cover maritime labor practices, requiring member companies to demonstrate compliance with international labor standards throughout their supply chains. Non-compliance should result in trade sanctions and exclusion from government contracts.

UAE Leadership: As a major maritime hub, the UAE has the power to set regional standards. It should implement and enforce strict labor protections for all maritime workers in its ports, regardless of vessel flag, and use its influence to pressure other Gulf states to follow suit.

BIMCO Reform: The Baltic and International Maritime Council should reform its standard contracts to include enforceable labor protection clauses and establish an independent monitoring system with real consequences for violations. Industry self-regulation has failed; external accountability is essential.

Breaking Cycle of Complicity

The current system persists because it serves the interests of global elites while fragmenting opposition. American oligarchs benefit from cheap transportation costs; Gulf monarchies profit from port operations built on exploited labor; corrupt politicians in developing nations take their cut of the profits; and international organizations provide cover through ineffective voluntary programs.

Breaking this cycle requires recognizing that maritime labor exploitation is not an unfortunate byproduct of global trade—it is a foundational feature of the current system.

The same mindset that allows American billionaires to demand tax cuts while workers struggle, that enables Gulf royalty to build playgrounds for the wealthy on the graves of migrant workers, and that permits African leaders to enrich themselves while their people suffer, also sustains the maritime industry’s exploitation of seafarers.

Fundamental Change

The 1.9 million seafarers who keep global commerce moving deserve more than symbolic gestures and voluntary compliance programs.

They deserve living wages, safe working conditions, reasonable schedules, and the dignity that should be the birthright of every worker. Achieving this requires confronting the fundamental power imbalances that characterise our global economic system.

Until American oligarchs face real consequences for their greed, until Gulf monarchies are held accountable for their treatment of workers, until corrupt politicians in developing nations are removed from power, and until international organizations develop enforcement mechanisms with actual teeth, the exploitation will continue.

The choice is clear: we can continue to allow global elites to profit from a system built on exploitation, or we can demand a maritime industry that serves both commerce and human dignity.

The invisible fleet that carries our world’s goods should no longer remain invisible to our sense of justice.

The time for empty rhetoric has passed. The seafarers who brave storms at sea should not have to weather the storm of global indifference as well. Their fight for dignity is our fight for a more just world—and it is a fight we cannot afford to lose.

The writer is a policy analyst specializing in Maritime governance and blue economy development.