Posted on 08/18/2024 6:05:51 PM PDT by RandFan
Dozens of workers from around the world may have been trafficked into the UK to work for a small family-owned Scottish fishing firm, a BBC investigation has revealed.
Thirty-five men from the Philippines, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka were recognised as victims of modern slavery by the Home Office after being referred to it between 2012 and 2020.
The workers were employed by TN Trawlers and its sister companies, owned by the Nicholson family, based in the small town of Annan on the southern coast of Scotland.
The TN Group denied any allegation of modern slavery or human trafficking and said its workers were well treated and well paid.
The company was the focus of two long-running criminal investigations but no cases of human trafficking or modern slavery have come to trial, although some of the men waited years to give evidence.
While TN Trawlers’ lead director, Thomas Nicholson, was under active investigation, TN Group companies continued recruiting new employees from across the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
An Open door immigration policy doesn't help.
Just like the USA 🇺🇸.
The Left opens the door to everyone in terms of immigration
And then complains about Modern day slavery
You can’t have it both ways!
…But, boy howdy, do they try!
I’m going to assume that there wasn’t actual slavery going, just the hard conditions that go with the life of a fishing boat.
Scotland’s northern coast parallels Alaska’s coastline and they probably fishing for the same type of fish and crab. In the Alaskan fishing business, they go out for a month or 6 weeks once a year. During that month or 6 weeks, it’s 24/day with few break because they have to get everything right away.
It’s unbelieveably hard and demanding, but for a limited time.
Fishing in other parts of the world are not nearly as demanding as fishing in the northern latitudes.
If they were paid their fair share of the fishing boat proceeds and had the same conditions as what is a norm on a fishing boat, it’s not slavery. It’s just hard.
I know a couple of guys who have done fishing boats and it’s one of the most difficult lines of work to do. You have 4-6 weeks to earn your year’s income and you sleep maybe a total of 3 hours/day during this time for the entire time. You eat on the fly and it’s back breaking work for every minute you are out there. It’s a period of unbelieveable misery for the entire time.
The attraction is that you work for a month and you get the rest of the year off, which is why some guys do it.
Having said what I said, it seems that they were not compensated like those on fishing boat are typically compensated, so I have no problem with punishing the company.
My comments were contingent on the fishermen getting the same pay that typically goes with a fishing boat.
I don’t think a fish farm, farmed salmon? Is going to have anything like those unrelenting conditions. It should be steady, paced work.
Oops. I read firm as farm.
They are working trawlers, which scrapes the sea bed with nets. It sounds like a typical fishing boat that I know about.
It’s not a fish farm. From the article.
These dredgers, built in the 1970s and 80s, work by towing metal nets along the seabed. They scrape up shellfish, as well as stones and bycatch – the other marine life which gets caught in the nets. Deckhands throw back the stones and pack the scallops in ice below deck.
I’m cognizant of that detail. But once you’re on the boat, there is no getting off. Not all people are prepared for the conditions that exist and a fishing boat cannnot lose hundreds thousands of dollars, because they had a nanny boy on board.
In my opinion, if you are a foreign national that decided to work on a fishing boat, there should be some allowance for the fishing boat to not have to abide by the labour board because the conditions on the boat, as a norm, cannot abide by the labour board.
As long as it can be demonstrated that the fishing boat was clear on what would be faced.
yeah, sure... pity for the migrants
Did those Scottish boats, during the off season, go to Philippines, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka, raid the shores and take the people at gunpoint to work their boats??
No?
Then it isn’t slavery.
Do they know what chum is?
Jonty, your assumption is wrong if you read the article:
“Experienced fisherman Joel Quince was 28 when he landed at Heathrow Airport in 2012, thrilled to have secured a job as a deckhand with TN trawlers.
Joel had a young family back home in the Philippines, thousands of miles away. He had been expecting to earn a good income working in the UK. He was to be paid $1,012 (£660) a month for a 48-hour week.
...“On our way to go to the boat he told us: ‘You have to give me your documents’ - so without hesitation I gave all my documents to them,” he said.
Joel says he was then taken straight to the fishing ground to start working.
But he was surprised to find that his boat was the Philomena rather than the Mattanja, which was the only vessel he was authorised to work on under the terms of his visa. “This was already something fishy for me,” he said
He claims that instead of the 48-hour week he had been told about, he was working 18 hours a day, seven days a week while the Philomena was out fishing.
....Other men said that, despite arriving in the UK on 48-hour transit visa, they were told to work onshore in the TN yard at Annan, in breach of their visa entitlement.
One man, Jovito Abiero, told the BBC he was sometimes sent to the home of the company owner Tom Nicholson to do gardening.
... 25-year old Vishal Sharma left India and arrived in London on a transit visa.
He’d signed a contract with a different company to work in the engine room of a Belgian tanker for 15 months.
But his agent in India then told him to travel to a different meeting point in the south of England, and he was taken to the Noordzee.
“I asked: ‘Why am I working there? It’s not my ship… I am not a fisherman’.”
Vishal claims he was threatened with deportation if he didn’t comply.
He spent three weeks on the trawler and says he was never paid.
....”
read the article JOnty before commenting.
It says quite clearly that they were underpaid or claimed to have not been paid for the work, their documents were confiscated, they were on contracts to work either in different ships or in different roles (engine rooms etc.).
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