San Diego seafood, with canned headquarters, from San Diego, knew for years that fishing vessels in his supply fleet have used forced labor, but failed to stop the practice, according to a process on Wednesday at the Federal Court in San Diego, which is believed to be the first to be trafficking in a company.
The applicants, four men in the villages of rural Indonesia, claim that they were promised to do good jobs on long -lasting tone boats, which are part of Bumble Bee’s “trust fleet”, but instead they were subjected to physical abuse, devoid of adequate foods and refused by medical care. They claim that they were rooted in the bondage of the debts and were subject to the salary taxes and deductions that left them after months of workforce and excretory isolation at sea.
One of the men claimed that he refused the medical assistance after the hot oil in the ship’s kitchen sprayed his body, causing burns so severe that “he felt that his genital organs had exploded.” Another assumed that he ordered to continue to work after a load of fish landed on him, passing his foot to the bone and spilled his blood boot. Another two claimed that they were beaten by routine and stabbed with needles by their captains.
The trial claims that Bumble Bee, one of the most important American companies on the canned tuna market, violated the law on protection against the protection of victims of federal traffic and was negligent in ensuring that his suppliers did not use forced labor. The Roman process comes after decades of reports By the US State Department, the United Nations and other organizations that have identified the forced labor force as a very significant problem in the fishing industry.
Bumble Bee had “years and years and years to address this, but they didn’t do it,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a prominent lawyer for human rights From Cohen Milstein who represents the plaintiffs in a common effort with lawyers in Greenpeace and San Diego from Schonbrun Seplow. “There is almost no chance that they do not know that the forced labor has been ubiquitous in their supply chain, given the level and volume of reporting of the last 20 years on this exact problem.”
A lawyer who spoke in the name of Bumble Bee stated in a statement that the company “will not comment on the pending disputes”. In the most recent “impact report on sustainability and progress”, ” Published in 2024 Bumble Bee said he works with several external organizations to improve his recruitment and supply chain supervision practices.
The process, citing dozens of studies by government agents and other organizations, claimed that forced work is a long -term problem in the fishing and seafood industry, but that Bumble Bee remains more behind other seafood brands in combating such practices. Bumble Bee agreed in a legal settlement with a group rights group two years ago for Eliminate requests from its products and advertising This mentioned a “correct and safe supply chain” and “correct and responsible working conditions”.
Bumble Bee, which had a US market share of 41% for canned cans when it is submitted for bankruptcy in 2019 It is incorporated into Delaware, and in 2020 it was sold for nearly $ 1 billion to the Taiwan tone trading giant, FCF Co. Ltd., but as a subsidiary of the FCF, remains with headquarters in the center of San Diego, inside Gates of Petco Park and, obviously in the company’s 2024 company, each charity and non -profit organization that Bumble Bee said was based in San Diego. She included the food bank in San Diego, whose council is Vice President Senior Bumble Bee and General Councilor Jill Irvin.
Cans by Bumble Bees Ton as part of the decoration in the company’s lobby next The controversy has been swirling around Bumble Bee in recent years. Both Bumble Bee and Starkist, another important player in the canned tuna industry, said guilty in 2018 for a price fixing conspiracy. Bumble Bee agreed to pay a $ 25 million criminal fine, and his former CEO Christopher Lischewski was found guilty of trial and convicted of 40 months in arrest for his role as a leader in fixing prices. Chicken of the Sea, who moved his headquarters in San Diego to El Segundo in 2018, cooperated with the antimatrust investigation of the Department of Justice and was not accused.
The same year FCF has purchased Bumble Bee, US Customs and Border Protection issued an order Stopping all imports from a ship in Taiwan, who provided Ton to FCF. The order quoted a suspicion of forced labor on the ship. In a common statement of FCF and Bumble Bee, companies did not challenge the fact that the ship in question provided FCF And he acknowledged that “significant progress must be made to ensure that responsible work practices are followed on all tuna vessels.”
In 2022, Volunteers from Greenpeace using Bumble Bee’s “Trace My Catch” instrument, a feature aimed at creating transparency around the supply of tone, found that Bumble Bee had a Taiwanese ship that was the subject of another different. CBP detention order in 2020 . The result of the result of East Asia Greenpeace, “Fake my capture ”, He identified bee tuna boxes containing fish that were caught on at least six ships related to charges of forced work. The process claimed that Bumble Bee refused to comment on the report before being published.
Fryszman said that Bumble Bee did not do the same measures to combat forced work, as well as much of the rest of the seafood industry. This includes the continuous use of the Bumble Bee and FCF transbraction, a practice through which the fishing boats are in the open waters in the Pacific Ocean on Monday or years, transferring their capture to refrigerated freight boats.
The practice allows the ships to keep their crew at sea endlessly, where “they are isolated away from the earth and without a little or no means of escaping or getting help for – or even to report – their conditions,” the process said.
According to the trial, Bumble Bee and FCF have recognized in a self-assessment as part of a sustainability project that it used transbraction, ships with a significant migrant workforce and ships in which the crews were not allowed on the shore at least once to 90 days-all the key indicators of the forced labor potential.
The costume also claims that the US Greenpeace in 2016 sent a link to one of Investigations about forced work on Taiwan fishing ships For Lischewski, Bumble Bee’s CEO at that time. The costume claims that Lischewski replied: “As for Taiwan’s report, I printed it, but I haven’t taken time to read it. It is not great on my list of priorities. “
The plaintiffs in the trial submitted on Wednesday claimed that they were subjected to forced work after they were recruited in the Bumble Bee fleet in 2020 and 2021. They claim to have provided jobs through recruitment agencies that then deduced huge percentages of their salaries to reimburse the recruitment fees. Men say that, often, the recruitment agencies would confiscate their personal documents, which made them impossible to get rid of their situation or find other works and that they were in a hurry by signing contracts with moments before being taken to work. Once at sea, they worked seven days a week, usually for 18 hours a day or more, according to the complaint.
The main plaintiff of the trial, identified only as Akhmad, is a married father who claimed that the captain of his ship and the senior crew has been beaten too many times to count, sometimes using a metal hook, according to the complaint. Akhmad claimed that the captain also forced him to continue to work after his foot threw it up to the bone.
“Akhmad was left to clean and bandages his leg himself, without sterile medical supplies,” the trial said. “His foot bleed for two weeks and he is still in pain, years later.”
Akhmad claimed that IT promised a $ 300 per month salary, but his employer deducted $ 250 per month for life costs and “to reimburse recruitment and administrative costs.”
Another plaintiff, identified only as Angga, initially promised $ 700 a month, but later he was in a hurry to sign the contract, where he learned that the salary will be $ 300 per month, with only $ 50 left after deductions, according to the complaint. He also claimed that the contract included rigid sanctions because he did not fulfill the commitment and language of two years that the recruitment agency could take after his family for these penalties if he violated his contract.
Angga claimed that he and other workers on his ship were frequently beaten and stabbed with a needle and often only rice to eat. Finally, Angga and other fishermen joined a work stop, asking them to leave the ship. He claimed that the captain’s physical abuse increased in frequency after stopping work, but men were left to leave two months later. He claimed that he was never paid for his forced work months.
Muhammad Sahudin was on the same ship as Angga and largely claimed the same deception regarding his salary and deductions taken from it. Sahudin claimed that he was stabbed, beaten and beaten by the captain and senior crew. Like Angga, he participated in stopping work and was eventually allowed to go home. “Finally, Sahudin did not earn money from his forced labor,” the trial said.
Muhammad Syafi’i was recruited as a chef, but once on the ship he was put on fishing. He claimed that he experienced deductions, fines and sanctions like the other applicants. In his job as a chef, he prepared two lots of food at each meal – the captain and the senior crew have eaten chicken or duck, while the Indonesian fishermen ate lower food that was often expired, according to the complaint. “They were so hungry that they resorted to the food of the bait fish, including the bait fish he could say was old,” the trial said.
Syafi’i claimed that if the men on the boat wanted rain, boots, gloves or other protective equipment, the cost would be deduced from their salaries.
“Unfortunately, this is a representative sample” from what many deep fishermen experience, Fryszman said.
In addition to the request for damages for the plaintiffs, the process aims to impose Bumble Bee a list of nine requirements for his supply fleet, such as the minimum rest requirements, safety and first aid training and the end of using the transacence. The process aims to beat the bees “to benefit from the tone harvested without such protection”.
