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Globalization’s downside
On sloping beaches in south Asia, most of the world’s ships are taken apart by hand, surrendering their once proud prows to the torches and hammers of a horde of local workers. Bought for nearly nothing, the ships quickly become piles of scrap and removables, feeding local economies. Recent ILO initiatives are looking for ways of improving working conditions for the shipbreakers. The ILO’s Sanja Göhre visited Bangladesh to survey the beaches and found a growing industry beset by high risks, low pay and emerging issues.
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh - Across 20 kilometres of Chittagong's coastline, an array of tankers rests in the shallow waters in various stages of destruction. Built horizontally from the bottom up, these ships are now being taken apart vertically from the top down, leaving strange shapes: one side fully intact, the other gaping open, a whole section gone.
Once the pride of the industrialized world's shipyards and ship owners, these vessels are now the bottom of globalization. Bought on the world market for between US$120 and US$185 per ton, they are being "recycled" (as the shipyard owners want the work to be called) to satisfy local demand for scrap steel.
Before Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and Viet Nam became the world's ship breakers, ships were either sunk or taken apart where they were built: in industrialized countries. But high costs and environmental restrictions drove ship owners to look elsewhere for a way of disposing these vessels. South Asian countries stepped in with a solution that also feeds the local economies. Before ship breaking, Bangladesh, for example, imported all of its scrap steel. Today the wrecked ships satisfy 80 per cent of its needs.
"All development activities of a country depend on the infrastructure of a country, and for infrastructure iron and steel plays an important role," says Mohamed Rahman, the President of the Shipbreakers Association of Bangladesh in an interview. "In Bangladesh, ship recycling is very important".
But scrap steel is not the only value imported from the gaping bowels of these ships. Lining the streets close to the shipbreaking yards are various shops selling anything from bathtubs and toilets to boilers and generators removed from the ships after they are beached. The shipyard owners estimate around 200,000 Bangladeshis benefit indirectly from this business conducted on their shores. In India, the biggest shipbreaking nation, the figure is half a million.
Benefits for some, disasters for others
Local businesses and others say the annual breaking of some 700 ships benefits the five nations (India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and Viet Nam) where the work takes place these days. But critics claim these countries have become dump sites for the industrialized world; an environmental disaster and an example of poor, often highly dangerous working conditions.
"Ship breaking on the beaches in Asian countries, of course, represents the downside of globalization," says ILO expert Paul Bailey. "After industrialized countries of the western world are through using their ships, they get scrapped on beaches without drydock facilities or safety measures for workers. The challenge facing us is how this can be done in a safer manner. It will never be perfect but improvements can be made."
Indeed, there is much room for improvement in this dangerous and back-breaking work. Over severalmonths (an average ship will take up to six months to be recycled) younger and older men, armed only with gas torches and their bare hands, take the vessels apart in an almost ritual manner.
The potential for accidents is everywhere, from falling steel plates to frayed winch ropes which can snap and remove a limb or a head. Explosions claim the highest toll, caused by leftover gas or other explosive substances ignited by cutting activities. Compulsory gas-free certificates have been introduced in all shipbreaking countries to curb this problem, but some officials are stricter than others. In Chittagong, shipyard owners talk of a simple eyewash test only or cold weather conditions that belie the existence of gas which expands once the beaches heat up.
Gas cutters often work with no protective goggles, leg or arm protection. Armies of steel-plate carriers trample barefoot across debris-littered shipyards, small squares of cloth between their shoulders and their heavy loads. Singers, often paid as much as the gas cutters who rank as the highest-skilled and highestpaid in the yard, keep the carriers moving through rhythmic song.
No respite off the job
Living conditions offer no respite. Many workers, often far away from their homes in poorer rural districts, stay in villages close by or live in rough structures erected by shipyard owners. A loft made from steel plates taken from ships allows workers to sleep in rows next to each other. A ladder connects them to the ground floor where most of the cooking is done and personal belongings are kept.
Most yards lack toilets and all workers share water for cooking, cleaning and drinking, from one tube-well sunk into the yard. The only divide between work and home is a brick wall. The sound of banging and cutting is forever present to those trying to call it a night.
"These people have no place to sleep. They sleep on the ground, in the same place they have to eat, sleep, live life," Nazrul Khan said in an interview in his office. The Executive Director of the Bangladesh Institute for Labour Studies, which recently brought out a report on the working and living conditions in Chittagong shipyards, adds: "I would not say they are like slaves, slaves can leave, but the conditions under which they are working is like slavery because they have no rights to say anything, to bargain, to establish an organization of their own."
According to Khan, trade unions are not allowed in the shipbreaking yards, and some workers who have tried to speak up have either been beaten or have lost their jobs.
Shipyard owners see it differently. Mohamed Mohsin, Managing Director of the Peace, Happiness and Prosperity (PHP) Shipbreaking and Re-cycling Industries, used to collect bolts in his father's shipyard to sell. His father thought of this scheme to get his son interested in his own growing business, and today he runs the company
"To be honest, trade unions did try to come here," he says. "The trade unions only come up with the demands, they don't do the work."
Mohsin's reality is a tough business with low profit margins and a need for cross-subsidization from some of his other businesses. He blames high taxes, customs and excise duties standing at 25 per cent of the ship's sale value as crippling employers like him, and calls for some of the tax money to be reinvested into the shipbreaking yards in the form of hospitals, proper accommodations, and a fire brigade.
The government's response? "If someone starts a business, he definitely has to come up with some capital. Banks are there, so he can take a loan. So [he] should not face any problems. It's not that they are not making any profit. So if he earns [a] profit he has to invest also," says Salamoth Ullah, Chief Inspector in the Ministry of Labour and Employment from his Dhaka office.
For workers, few options
In the meantime, workers have few options. In the most densely populated country in the world, they are only too grateful to have a job, no matter what the cost to their health and safety. But if local conditions are not conducive to wide-scale improvement, what is the international contribution to changing the nature of shipbreaking in south Asia?
Ship owners say: there is not much we can do. "Our responsibility is a principal one, raising the profile and the understanding of the issue," says the Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Shipping, Chris Horrocks, in his London office. “We are now aware of the problem, but there’s a limit to what we can do; we can only cajole and encourage within the ship-owning industry. If regulation will come it will come, but from the owners’ point of view it will clearly stop short of facilities and conditions.”
Who then will ultimately be responsible? Projections by maritime magazine, Lloyd’s List, foresee the number of scrapable ships tripling in the coming years, as vessels built during the 1970s become obsolete and unseaworthy, and single-hull vessels are banned. The increasing number of ships to be scrapped will intensify the pressure on shipbreaking yards to work faster as more boats come ashore. Yet there may also be a positive side to this race against rust; more boats may mean more pressure to improve working conditions as the industry expands.
“Now, only four five countries do the job,” says Shipbreakers Association head Rahman. “We are not only breaking the ships, we are saving you...If you consider the global context, then we are doing a very big job. Otherwise like the Titanic, [they will] have to be sunk to the ocean floor.”
ILO expert Paul Bailey says a global solution will involve all stakeholders. “Although the problem might seem insurmountable, there are a number of practical measures which can be taken, including providing training for the workers, safety equipment and hygienic living quarters. Workers alone will not be able to solve the problem. We need a global partnership of shipowners, shipbreakers, employers, trade unions and, of course, government inspectors who will see that these standards are enforced. This is yet again a test for globalization and decent work.”
See Media Shelf for information on a recent ILO video production on the subject.