Labor & Employment Law

Unions, Shippers Demand Action to End Somali Piracy: Sign the Petition

By Mike Hall

Discovery Channel re-enactment shows pirate takeover of the Maersk Alabama.

A coalition of international unions, shipping associations, insurers and other maritime groups are demanding “concrete action” to end the increasingly violent and brazen Somali piracy “that is putting lives at risk and threatening world trade.”

The pirates’ 2009 attack on the U.S.-crewed Maersk Alabama and last fall’s kidnapping of a British couple still being held for a $7 million ransom have grabbed headlines. But in the past two years, Somali pirates attacked hundreds of ships and kidnapped more than 1,800 seafarers crewing those vessels. Many are still being held for ransom.

The coalition has launched on online petition and is seeking half a million signatures by World Maritime Day, Sept 23. The petition asks governments to dedicate the resources necessary, including stepped up naval protection, to end the attacks and “regain control of the Indian Ocean from a handful of criminals.”

To read and sign the petition, go to www.endpiracypetition.org.

The petition says in part:

Almost every day seafarers are being kidnapped and exposed to an increasing risk of injury or even death. Every day seafarers transport the world’s goods through areas where the risk of pirate attack is increasing.

Every day shipping companies and their insurers have to pay for increasing anti-piracy measures, extra fuel and ransoms?costs that are eventually passed on to the consumer. Every day the risk of a major ecological disaster due to an oil spill caused by piracy increases.

David Cockroft, International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) general secretary, is urging people to sign the petition and then pass the link on to friends around the world.

In this way we can signal our belief that it is past time for all governments to do what has to be done to protect seafarers, ships and the goods that they carry and on which we all rely.

David Heindel, Seafarers (SIU) secretary-treasurer and first vice chairman of the ITF’s Seafarers Section, is asking U.S. union members to sign the anti-piracy petition.

This is an enormously important issue. Lives are at stake, and so are the economies of many nations.

Click here to find out more about Somali piracy and to read case studies and firsthand accounts of pirates’ attacks and kidnappings.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 27, 2010 (boomark / email).