Decent Work in the Fishing Industry

Why teaching decent work in fishing matters

The example of the fishing industry highlights some of the drivers of forced labor in global supply chains. While forced labour happens across all industries and all countries, some activities are more at risk of forced labor and labor exploitation. This is the case of fishing where forced labor has been documented for several decades. Reasons include the hard and hazardous nature of the work, the isolation of the work on board of fishing vessels, and the difficulty of regulating, let alone monitoring fishing in global waters. 

The fishing industry plays a key role in food consumption across the globe and is an important economic sector. Businesses play a key role for preventing and mitigating forced labor and modern slavery in the supply chain, as fishing operators, processing plants, or retailers.

Learning Objectives

The learning objectives include overarching objectives about human rights in business, and sub-objectives that break down the objectives into smaller learning steps and apply the insights to the fishing industry.

1. Industry context: Understand how the structuring of an industry can enable human rights or lead to violations. Sub-objectives: map the labor rights risks along the fishing value chain, understand the different actors in global fish production and distribution, and learn about the economic relevance of global fish production in producing countries and market states.
2. Human rights challenges and the role of businesses: Discuss corporate responsibility for human rights along the global value chain. Sub-objectives: examine how the operations of fishing companies can lead to labor rights violations or forced labor, learn how to identify and monitor indicators of forced labor.
3. Management solutions: Reflect on how management must be an important part of providing holistic solutions. Sub-objectives: develop promising solutions to address human rights and forced labor concerns in the fishing industry, consider short-term and long-term strategies to mitigate human rights risks and remedy human rights abuses.  

The learning objectives can be modified to target different levels. For example:

• For undergraduate or bachelor students: Use the teaching resource as a way to introduce human rights issues at different stages in the global value chains and introduce the Business and Human Rights (BHR) and International Labor Standards (ILS) framework.  
• For graduate or master students: Dig deeper into questions of corporate responsibility (and mandatory human rights due diligence), understand how to recognize the indicators of forced labor, and discuss the relation to management and purchasing practices.
• For executive education and practitioners: Work on specific business practices to address forced labor risks in the value chain, discuss the transferability to different industries, and talk about the role of different stakeholders in the value chain. Tailor the example that is used to start the session to the target audience (e.g., for operations managers in the hospitality sector, discuss sourcing fish, or with professionals working in consumer goods or retail, speak about fish ingredients in cosmetics).

How the teaching resource is structured and how to use it

This resource focuses on decent work and the elimination of forced labor in fishing, providing general information on the industry, macroeconomics data and information about the labor challenges that workers face within it. It presents several practical examples from different countries and different stakeholder perspectives as well as advice to contextualize the learning experience to different audiences. 

The session outline starts with an introduction to set the stage, depending on, e.g., the course, level, and country in which the resource is used (Unit 0). The introduction is followed by three main units that introduce the fishing industry (Unit 1), discuss the human rights challenges and forced labor in particular (Unit 2), and address possible management solutions (Unit 3).

The resource is tailored to be taught during one session of a 2-to-3-hour duration but can be customized to different formats. The teaching resource is targeted at graduate students but can be adapted to different levels (undergraduate, graduate, executive education).

The teaching resource consists of core documents, background material, and examples of teaching experiences. The core documents include a standard session outline and presentation slides. The background material includes reports and media sources that can be assigned to students. The teaching experiences document adaptations of the teaching resource by business school lecturers from different countries and disciplines.

Standard slides and teaching notes

Background material

Teaching experiences

Feedback and questions

Are you looking for an expert to join your class as a guest speaker? Did you use the teaching tool and would like to share your experiences and/or materials? Do you have feedback or questions? 

Feel free to reach out: 

Julianna LaBelle, bhr@gbsn.org