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Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

bbc.com

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Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#361

Post by BBC-vs-neolibs »

novok wrote: post #179
jollybean wrote: post #130

Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing. When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a lot less, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they will not bother with 'end of life' for ships, or getting insurance, or worrying about the lives of people who are 'expendable'. Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour practices. If every piece of this puzzle from end-…

The fault here is ultimately with egypt. They were not letting him leave, they took his passport and not even letting him get 'deported' back to his home country. This is not from outsourcing, this is Kafkaesque bureaucracy created by Egypt itself.

Less outsourcing means being less beholden to Egypt, too.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#362

Post by Popegaf »

1337shadow wrote: post #351
Popegaf wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, ultimately, we the consumers are at fault. We buy the cheapest products (or the flashiest: see Apple) and these are the consequences. Companies have to save costs to compete because we won't agree to pay more. We won't vote for politicians that make everybody's life better: we will vote for politicians who promises that "the other guys" are going to suffer and that "you or your group" is going to have an…

You are Nongqawuse :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

You are Ken M :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_M

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#364

Post by tacocataco »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #326
open0 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been enslaved on a Thai fishing boat? I know a few people who have, including a neighbor that was missing for 3 years. The US has its own problems, but places like Dubai, Southeast Asia, etc. have a much more severe problem with mistreatment and abuse of workers. Last year a building collapsed here during construction and killed about 60 people. Stuff like that happens all the time.

I lived in Gulf countries for 12 years; I'm well aware of the shitty and life-threatening work conditions for migrant labourers. I've also lived in the US for 9 years; I'm also well aware of the mistreatment of workers here, such as workers who are undocumented migrants, workers who are prisoners, workers who work gig companies, Amazon workers, and many others.

The common theme here is humans are excellent at externalizing costs.

Jeff bezos is not pissing in a bottle. The people who profit the most from these ships are never trapped on them.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#365

Post by fennecfoxen »

csomar wrote: post #270
novok wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fault here is ultimately with egypt. They were not letting him leave, they took his passport and not even letting him get 'deported' back to his home country. This is not from outsourcing, this is Kafkaesque bureaucracy created by Egypt itself.

Someone is always going to bear responsibility. This is why, when you are incorporating an off-shore company, you need some kind of "representative" in the country itself. These people might be making "free" money but if things turn sour they might find themselves in trouble. The court did not do some random detention (they did let the rest of the crew) but they declared him the responsible party. In that case, he di…

> Someone is always going to bear responsibility.

"Powerful people demand that there is always some scapegoat who they can abuse, even if they aren't at fault and it doesn't really help make things better."

Blood for the blood god, I suppose!

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#366

Post by cmeacham98 »

gwright wrote: post #272
cmeacham98 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally disagree. Based on sibling comments it seems like some people think this would have legally screwed up his claim to the lost wages, and even if not, giving up your only leverage in this situation is probably not the optimal strategy. I can see a parallel world where he decided to get off the boat and we're reading an article about how he lost all that time and won't be able to recover wages, and some HN com…

My point was that "I have no legal way to leave" is a different scenario than "I won't leave until I get paid". Both situations have a tremendous unfairness about them but they aren't the same and I don't think it is unreasonable to think that those details are an important part of the story.

Depending on thtle situation, there is little to no difference between "I have no legal way to leave" and "I have no legal way to leave and be paid for my work".

The vast majority of the world's population is not in a financial situation where they can just write off months of work for no pay, so they might as well have been legally trapped there.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#367

Post by fennecfoxen »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #325
unreal37 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems fairly easy to get a union if a workplace wants one...

Right, ask Amazon workers about that.

The warehouse workers down in Alabama? Why would you ask them? They didn't want one. It wasn't close at all, either.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#368

Post by lolinder »

malandrew wrote: post #337
lolinder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egypt definitely has fault here, but the company that owns the ship could have gotten the ship out of there if they cared about him at all. Yes, it might have been expensive, but I would expect a US based company to have rescued him within weeks of this situation starting, not years.

Egypt is using the violation of human rights as extortion here. I’m sorry, I’m this is in no way the fault of the shippers. A fair discussion is two entities sitting at the table and negotiating. Not two sitting at the table with one being cruel to the other that the other might care about. That’s pure extortion.

If a ship were straight-up captured by pirates and the crew held for ransom, I would still expect the company that sent the crew out to do everything in its power to bring them home. If said company simply shrugged and said "we tried to come up with the ransom money, but couldn't", I would consider that behavior unethical.

The same applies here: yes, Egypt is corrupt. Yes, this is a massive violation of human rights. But the company took on a moral responsibility when it sent out that crew. We can't excuse someone from their ethical duty simply because other people neglect theirs. Ethics is meaningless if it stops applying as soon as there's corruption outside.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#370

Post by smcl »

pulse7 wrote: post #105
jandrese wrote: post #8

It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. If you think this would be unfair to the ships owners this is exactly the point. Force them to…

The problem was that this man >>signed<< a document where he agreed to be "legally bound to this ship"... So be careful before you are signing something...

We don't know what the situation was here. It could even be that all the sailors were required to sign some standard-looking documentation (no idea what, agreement to terminate their contract with x% of salary, papers allowing them to enter Egypt) before leaving the ship, but he was given something that was different and bound him to the ship as its guardian. Your advice still stands of course.
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