7 ms·

I visited Chittagong a decade or so ago (as part of a non-profit working with child workers) and I can only emphasise what a visceral and horrifying thing this

I visited Chittagong a decade or so ago (as part of a non-profit working with child workers) and I can only emphasise what a visceral and horrifying thing this kind of ship breaking is to witness. 10,000's of people (as young as 6/7) working 24/7 in conditions that bear absolutely no respect for their health or safety. One of the most morally repugnant parts of the Western legal system is the creation of the labyrinthine corporate structures used to to protect the ship owners for any liability as part of their ships being broken.

version_five 4y ago
Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for the people that work there and their families?
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - zizee 4y ago
    This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.
    - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      > This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. > They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". Exactly. I know what the gp said. It was the same with those in China. The West didn’t force anybody in China using slavery to take that plastic. They were happily buying it. It was the “best option under given circumstances” for those who were doing it. Whole families built businesses on it.
      - zizee 4y ago
        Oh right, sorry! Ironically I misunderstood what you were saying :facepalm:
- rayiner 4y ago
  My dad is from near Chittagong. I think it’s a thousand percent better for Bangladesh to do this dirty work to build a real economy of its own, instead of depending on European countries for hand outs. It’s not like america didn’t have kids working in coal mines when it was in an early stage of development.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    I think the point is that the corps should have to pay to keep their workers and the environment safe
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - version_five 4y ago
      To me this is first order thinking. If paying to keep workers and the environment safe means developing countries are denied work and resources, is that actually better? The simplistic "dangerous work is bad" analysis doesn't account for the upside compared with not bringing this work to the subcontinent. And the solutions seem to ignore the downside of shutting down or rendering economically unviable the shipbreaking yards. There's certainly going to be a gradual pathway to improving working conditions, but I think it has to be gradual and deliberate, or it's just going to shut the current workers out. More regulation always favors big companies. A bad end point would be where Indian and Bangladeshi shipyards are regulated out of existence and established companies that can do lots of paperwork get to benefit from a regulatory regime that makes them mandatory. That's where is is likely to head when the problem is considered in a shallow way
      - Timon3 4y ago
        This looks deep at one side, and fully ignores the other. Think about the consequences of not improving safety - personally a lot of poor people will be hurt, either resulting in them having to be supported by their family, or more likely simply dying, and structurally you're not encouraging any change in these conditions. By allowing the workers to be made to work in unsafe conditions you'll reduce cost and prices, but you won't have an incentive to develop safer ways to process everything, since the unsafe way is allowed and way cheaper! > More regulation always favors big companies. Is there actual research into this? I see this religiously repeated by a lot of people, but I somehow never see actual data to support it.
jpollock 4y ago
By the time they're beached, they're not owned by a Western company. They've been sold for scrap to the scrappers. "right now, selling a vessel to a beaching facility would get maybe $500 (£371) per tonne." https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-toxic-tide-of-ship-breaking/4015158.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-toxic-tide-of-sh...
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  But they all know what’s going to happen when they sell to the scrappers. It’s disgusting and should be illegal.
  - e40 4y ago
    You build it, you recycle it in a way that isn't detrimental to the health and safety of humans. That should be the (international) law.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      No profit in eliminating foreign externalities. Your faith in capitalist law and liberal democracy reforming these problems is curious
      - Y_Y 4y ago
        I'm sure you could just contrive an accidental sinking, or even better have the ship taken by "pirates" who happen to leave some cash in the lifeboats with the dispossessed.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        need to collect that cash as evidence
      - refurb 4y ago
        It's unenforceable regardless. You think some poor African nation cares about worker safety and environmental issues when half of their population can barely get enough to eat? Hell, they barely have control over their own country let alone enforcing environmental or worker regulations.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tfourb 4y ago
And it would be really easy to regulate this issue away. Pass a law in the EU or US that stipulates that ship owners AND the shipping companies that contract them have to perform due diligence on the end of life value chain of their vessels. AND make it possible for foreign nationals to sue these companies in U.S./EU courts if this due diligence hasn’t been done for damages due to injury or environmental damage.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Hmm, so how would that work if the ship changes hands multiple times. And might end up in it multi-decade service life in hands of some bankrupted entity? Original buyer being responsible of also decommissioning? What if they get restructured or cease to exist?
  - tfourb 4y ago
    If at each transaction the prior owner would have to do serious due diligence on the likelihood of the next owner to dispose of the ship sustainably and would be liable for the method of the due diligence, it would preclude unreliable owners from ever buying the ship. And in well regulated economies, going bankrupt is not actually a license to ignore your corporate responsibilities. Owners and executives retain personal liability until the entity is actually dissolved, including assets like ships. This is actually how we do a lot of regulation quite successfully, when we care about the outcome. There is not actually a government regulator sitting on every assembly line of every factory. Companies mostly self certify that they adhere to regulation and face steep liability if they don’t.

version_five 4y ago

Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible, but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for the people that work there and their families?

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break, split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them back in the day. Why don’t they want it anymore? They should have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who knows what they would have been doing! /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zizee 4y ago
  This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". You could keep saying "this is inhuman, let's stop it from happening", but the effect is just making it worse and worse. Instead, better options should be provided. That's the real solution, but it's a whole lot harder to implement than the knee jerk response of stopping an activity. edit to preempt ridiculous interpretations of my words: This is assuming slavery is not the case. If slavery is involved, it is a different situation to what i am talking about.
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    > This is not what the grandparent is saying. The typical situation is not that people are forced to do the work. We're not talking about slavery* here. > They are doing it because they see it as their "best option". By stopping it, the result is their "best option" is taken away from them, and they have to go do the next "best option". Exactly. I know what the gp said. It was the same with those in China. The West didn’t force anybody in China using slavery to take that plastic. They were happily buying it. It was the “best option under given circumstances” for those who were doing it. Whole families built businesses on it.
    - zizee 4y ago
      Oh right, sorry! Ironically I misunderstood what you were saying :facepalm:
rayiner 4y ago
My dad is from near Chittagong. I think it’s a thousand percent better for Bangladesh to do this dirty work to build a real economy of its own, instead of depending on European countries for hand outs. It’s not like america didn’t have kids working in coal mines when it was in an early stage of development.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  I think the point is that the corps should have to pay to keep their workers and the environment safe
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - version_five 4y ago
    To me this is first order thinking. If paying to keep workers and the environment safe means developing countries are denied work and resources, is that actually better? The simplistic "dangerous work is bad" analysis doesn't account for the upside compared with not bringing this work to the subcontinent. And the solutions seem to ignore the downside of shutting down or rendering economically unviable the shipbreaking yards. There's certainly going to be a gradual pathway to improving working conditions, but I think it has to be gradual and deliberate, or it's just going to shut the current workers out. More regulation always favors big companies. A bad end point would be where Indian and Bangladeshi shipyards are regulated out of existence and established companies that can do lots of paperwork get to benefit from a regulatory regime that makes them mandatory. That's where is is likely to head when the problem is considered in a shallow way
    - Timon3 4y ago
      This looks deep at one side, and fully ignores the other. Think about the consequences of not improving safety - personally a lot of poor people will be hurt, either resulting in them having to be supported by their family, or more likely simply dying, and structurally you're not encouraging any change in these conditions. By allowing the workers to be made to work in unsafe conditions you'll reduce cost and prices, but you won't have an incentive to develop safer ways to process everything, since the unsafe way is allowed and way cheaper! > More regulation always favors big companies. Is there actual research into this? I see this religiously repeated by a lot of people, but I somehow never see actual data to support it.

jpollock 4y ago

By the time they're beached, they're not owned by a Western company. They've been sold for scrap to the scrappers. "right now, selling a vessel to a beaching facility would get maybe $500 (£371) per tonne." https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-toxic-tide-of-ship-breaking/4015158.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-toxic-tide-of-sh...

Swenrekcah 4y ago
But they all know what’s going to happen when they sell to the scrappers. It’s disgusting and should be illegal.
- e40 4y ago
  You build it, you recycle it in a way that isn't detrimental to the health and safety of humans. That should be the (international) law.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    No profit in eliminating foreign externalities. Your faith in capitalist law and liberal democracy reforming these problems is curious
    - Y_Y 4y ago
      I'm sure you could just contrive an accidental sinking, or even better have the ship taken by "pirates" who happen to leave some cash in the lifeboats with the dispossessed.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        need to collect that cash as evidence
    - refurb 4y ago
      It's unenforceable regardless. You think some poor African nation cares about worker safety and environmental issues when half of their population can barely get enough to eat? Hell, they barely have control over their own country let alone enforcing environmental or worker regulations.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tfourb 4y ago

And it would be really easy to regulate this issue away. Pass a law in the EU or US that stipulates that ship owners AND the shipping companies that contract them have to perform due diligence on the end of life value chain of their vessels. AND make it possible for foreign nationals to sue these companies in U.S./EU courts if this due diligence hasn’t been done for damages due to injury or environmental damage.

Ekaros 4y ago
Hmm, so how would that work if the ship changes hands multiple times. And might end up in it multi-decade service life in hands of some bankrupted entity? Original buyer being responsible of also decommissioning? What if they get restructured or cease to exist?
- tfourb 4y ago
  If at each transaction the prior owner would have to do serious due diligence on the likelihood of the next owner to dispose of the ship sustainably and would be liable for the method of the due diligence, it would preclude unreliable owners from ever buying the ship. And in well regulated economies, going bankrupt is not actually a license to ignore your corporate responsibilities. Owners and executives retain personal liability until the entity is actually dissolved, including assets like ships. This is actually how we do a lot of regulation quite successfully, when we care about the outcome. There is not actually a government regulator sitting on every assembly line of every factory. Companies mostly self certify that they adhere to regulation and face steep liability if they don’t.