It's horrifying, but I don't know that I can come up with a remedy. Clearly, these men don't have other job options, and with no job, they'll just starve. And if they don't take the job, they're easily replaced with another human who will. Zero turnover expense for the employer.
The profits are not really "trickling down." Five families control this industry, and they make enormous profits ($5 million per ship, which is a 100% return). The government is easily captured / bribed to prevent much pressure about working conditions. There's no tradition of a labor movement from which these people can draw from, they're uneducated and really when you're that poor you're only able to think about today, much less where your rights are in a few years.
And let's say Bangladesh did somehow make it too expensive / burdensome to shipbreak there. I hear Somalia has no laws, and lots of young men standing around who will join in.
You try to instead convince Germany to stop sending their ships to Bangladesh to be broken in these conditions. But now, German shipping becomes a more expensive business due to the disposal costs, and German shipping companies become uncompetitive against Chinese shipping companies which will happily shipbreak in Bangladesh. Germany loses its shipping industry either by relocation of the firms to a friendly jurisdiction or they just go insolvent after losing all their business to Chinese competitors.
It really is all a race to the bottom and I don't know of a solution.
It's horrifying, but I don't know that I can come up with a remedy. Clearly, these men don't have other job options, and with no job, they'll just starve. And if they don't take the job, they're easily replaced with another human who will. Zero turnover expense for the employer.
The profits are not really "trickling down." Five families control this industry, and they make enormous profits ($5 million per ship, which is a 100% return). The government is easily captured / bribed to prevent much pressure about working conditions. There's no tradition of a labor movement from which these people can draw from, they're uneducated and really when you're that poor you're only able to think about today, much less where your rights are in a few years.
And let's say Bangladesh did somehow make it too expensive / burdensome to shipbreak there. I hear Somalia has no laws, and lots of young men standing around who will join in.
You try to instead convince Germany to stop sending their ships to Bangladesh to be broken in these conditions. But now, German shipping becomes a more expensive business due to the disposal costs, and German shipping companies become uncompetitive against Chinese shipping companies which will happily shipbreak in Bangladesh. Germany loses its shipping industry either by relocation of the firms to a friendly jurisdiction or they just go insolvent after losing all their business to Chinese competitors.
It really is all a race to the bottom and I don't know of a solution.