In September of last year, the CIW and the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) announced a groundbreaking collaboration to “explore the implementation of the award-winning WSR model in the UK fishing industry.”  Their goal: To build and launch a pilot program, based on the CIW’s Fair Food Program, with fishers, vessel owners, and retail seafood buyers to address generations of labor abuse on the high seas.  Today — nearly one year of coalition building and careful planning later — the work in the UK is picking up steam, and the growing partnership for a more modern fishing industry is looking to be ready to launch by the end of 2023, according to reporting from the Financial Times. 

Inspired and informed by the unparalleled success of the Fair Food Program, this pilot, which has been referred to as the ‘Fair Fish’ Program, will be the first-ever WSR program for fishers, who have historically been some of the most marginalized workers around the globe, with extremely dangerous working conditions and many at risk of modern-day slavery.  The CIW and the Fair Food Standards Council have been closely advising this pilot, hosting a delegation of UK fishing industry leaders in Immokalee for a several day visit with Fair Food Program workers, growers and buyers, after traveling to Scotland last last year to see the fishing industry up close, and visiting London again this year for a series of follow-up meetings. And now that the initiative is gaining momentum, some of the UK’s biggest buyers of seafood are in talks to provide the market power that would give this pilot the teeth  it needs to enforce the rights of vulnerable fishers under its protections. 

This comes at a crucial time for thousands of fishers in the country: a recent exposé on the UK fishing industry detailed the myriad workplace dangers migrant fishermen face, and is worth reading to get a full sense of what happens when workers do not have an effective voice and the power to monitor and enforce their own rights...