Where Ships — and workers — go to die

Shocking video from the National Labor Committee on one of the hidden costs of globalization: the human toll of “shipbreaking” on workers in Bangladesh.

What is shipbreaking? Well, in a globalized economy, vast oceans often separate the point where a good is produced from the point where it is consumed. To move those goods across the oceans, armadas of ships are required.

When times are good, those ships are busy sailing from port to port, their cargo holds full. But when times aren’t good, the ships aren’t needed anymore. And that leaves their owners with the question of what, exactly, to do with them, since a massive cargo ship is an expensive beast to operate. The answer is shipbreaking — breaking down a vessel and reclaiming all the valuable materials that went into constructing it, so they can be re-sold in order to recoup some of the owner’s investment.

So what’s the problem? Well, like everything else, the shipbreaking business has been globalized. In the old days, ships were broken down at shipyards, where workers had access to protective gear and the environmental impact of ripping out things like asbestos firewalls could be contained. Today, though, to save a few dollars, ship owners are skipping the yards and disposing of their ships by literally beaching them in Bangladesh — where they are torn apart by armies of workers whose only protective gear is a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses.

The NLC’s Charles Kernaghan went to those Bangladeshi beaches and reports back that “if there is a hell on earth, this is it”:

The shipbreakers do some of the most dangerous jobs in the world, toiling 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for wages of just 22 to 32 cents an hour, handling and breathing in dangerous toxic waste with no safeguards whatsoever and under conditions that violate every local and international labor law. Injuries happen every day—some are paralyzed for life—and a worker dies every three or four weeks. No one helps them. The workers say a dog means more to the business owner than a human being.