Filipino seafarers working on Dutch ships receive much less pay than their Dutch and German colleagues. Sometimes up to four times less. Discrimination, says the foundation Equal Justice Equal Pay, which after years of legal wrangling is now preparing a mass claim on behalf of 23,000 seafarers against the Dutch state and the shipowners.
Filipino seafarers earn about 3.25 euros per hour for the same work, while Dutch colleagues can receive around 15 euros. Shipowners justify this with the so-called residence principle. This means wages are based on the cost level of the country where someone lives.
Last year, the Dutch Human Rights Commission ruled in a case involving a Filipino and an Indonesian seafarer that wage differences based on country of origin are discrimination. Negotiations followed between the government, the shipowners and the foundation about changing the salary rules, but these led to nothing.
Billions
Lawyer Frank Peters is combative on behalf of the seafarers. "We are going to reclaim the wages from 2016, so that is ten years from today. Every year the procedure takes longer, more damages accumulate." According to Peters, the amount involved runs into billions of euros.
Dutch shipping companies find the difference in salary and other employment conditions easy to explain. "We reward based on purchasing power. According to international shipping, that is also the fairest," says Annet Koster of the Royal Association of Dutch Shipowners.
"For example, going to the hairdresser in the Philippines is eight times cheaper than in the Netherlands. But that also applies to groceries, housing costs, you name it."
Danilo Dada is one of the signatories of the mass claim:
According to the shipowners, the salary difference is also necessary to compete internationally. Koster fears that if the court grants the mass claim, "it is a matter of waiting until shipowners go bankrupt or choose to sail under another flag. At the moment, only Dutch shipowners are held accountable for this."
Earlier research, commissioned by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, shows that if the residence principle were banned, shipowners' labor costs would rise by 20 to 35 percent.
It is expected that half to three quarters of the shipowners could then decide to sail under another flag. This would cause damage to the Dutch economy of 125 to 200 million euros per year. Dutch captains and seafarers could also lose their jobs.
Economic consequences
Lawyer Peters calls the conclusions in the research "demonstrably incorrect." The foundation commissioned a second opinion from the scientific research institute SEO Economic Research. "SEO has shown that the earlier research is little more than writing down what shipowners said off the cuff. If you do proper statistical research, you see it is very different," says Peters.
According to SEO, the economic consequences of equalizing salaries are not so bad: no more than 20 percent of the ships would sail under another flag. Also, according to the research institute, jobs do not necessarily have to disappear.
Playing field
Nautilus International FNV, the international union representing maritime workers, currently supports the existing collective labor agreements. Equalizing wages must happen at a global level. If only the Netherlands does this, the Dutch fleet will collapse, fears the union.
In a response, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management also says that changing seafarers' pay without international coordination is undesirable. That would "break the level playing field."
Lawyer Peters: "We also hold the Dutch state liable, because it enables this system and thus facilitates structural discrimination. That is simply unacceptable."