(Un)Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value for Southeast Asian Crew

More than 10,000 seafarers from Indonesia and the Philippines work onboard ships flying a Dutch flag every year.[1] Regardless of what job they have on board, their wages are less than those of their European counterparts performing the same job, living on the same boat and eating the same food.

Last month, two seafarers, Filipino and Indonesian, filed a complaint with the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights seeking to end the practice of paying different wages to overseas seafarers through collective bargaining agreements,[2] in the name of “preserving the viability of the maritime sector.”[3] The wages and working conditions of employees resident in the Philippines and Indonesia can be negotiated directly between a local trade union, and the Dutch union, or between a union and the individual employer through a commercial shipping collective bargaining agreement.[4] This is a first-of-its-kind suit in the Netherlands to reverse this policy.

‘Equal pay for work of equal value’ is a recognised human right in many international covenants including the ILO Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Maritime Labour Convention where discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin is prohibited. Although wage discrimination is illegal in many countries in the world, including the Netherlands, challenges continue to exist in closing the prevailing migrant pay gap. An ILO report found that migrant workers in high-income countries earned about 12.6 per cent less than nationals, on average.[5]

The segmentation of the labour market into national and non-national workforce leads to wage discrimination across different industries. A separate (and lower) wage for migrant workers often bears little relation to the local labour market conditions in the countries of destination, but seems to be determined by the conditions of the sending countries where the cost of living is lower as in the cases of Indonesia and the Philippines. There are additional costs incurred during the migration process and being a regular migrant (or irregular migrant) in the country of destination, such as the legal costs of documentation, costs related to the dynamics of migrant families, such as fees associated with sending remittances, travel expenses visiting family back home. Justifying paying lower wages solely based on the home country's economic metrics without taking into consideration these migration-related costs is fundamentally flawed.

Separate living wages for nationals and migrants violate the core principle of ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ and lead to discrimination based on nationality. Closing the migrant pay gap requires a set of measures that push for decent work for all. This includes formalisation of the informal economy, affording migrant workers same treatment under the national labour laws, and empowering them to better defend their rights. Ensuring migrant workers’ right to organise and collective bargaining is also essential where migrant workers can be involved in employer and union leadership to improve equality in the workplace. This way, we can truly make progress towards achieving SDG targets 8.5 and 8.8 which call for “equal pay for work of equal value” and “protected labour rights for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrant workers, and those in precarious employment.”

[1] https://www.seafarersclaim.com/the-claim/

[2] https://splash247.com/dutch-case-reviews-equal-pay-for-southeast-asian-crew/

[3] https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/filipino-leads-case-netherlands-seafarer-unequal-wages/

[4] https://www.rappler.com/philippines/dmw-statement-rappler-story-filipino-seafarer-claim-unequal-wage-dutch-ship/

[5] https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/%40ed_protect/%40protrav/%40migrant/documents/publication/wcms_763803.pdf