Rescued at sea: how we can do more for essential workers as the pandemic persists

When the container ship Ever Given was finally dislodged from the Suez Canal in March, media attention moved elsewhere. The ship’s crew did not.

While a handful of its Indian seafarers were allowed to leave, most have had to stay on board as the vessel floats idly in the Great Bitter Lake due to a legal dispute – adding to the ranks of those stranded amid a pandemic.

Sailors have born the brunt of plagues for centuries, and COVID-19 is proving to be no different. Crewing “death ships” in the Middle Ages, for example, meant being trapped in close quarters with the rats and fleas spreading bubonic plague.

Now, many of the seafarers needed to deliver everything from the salt on tables to the soap in showers are once again suffering. An estimated 200,000 remain stranded at sea beyond the length of their contracts because of COVID-19 restrictions (down from about 400,000 last year), and several have reportedly jumped overboard due to the severe mental strain. The recent worsening of the pandemic in India, home to a large portion of the world’s seafarers, has prevented many from finding work at all – and has further extended the tenures of those already on board.

The situation has been deemed an “ongoing humanitarian crisis,” and is just one example of the ways essential workers require greater protections amid an ongoing disaster.

Thankfully, efforts are underway to come to seafarers’ aid. About 60% of them come from countries that haven't yet been able to make COVID-19 vaccines widely available, so more than a dozen US states have started vaccination programs for foreign-national crews delivering goods. Some private companies have also begun sourcing vaccines for seafarers, and the SG-STAR Fund, a joint effort between the government of Singapore, the shipping industry and seafarer unions, has won praise for facilitating safe crew changes.

Work is also underway to address the problem of seafarer abandonment – which results in gut-wrenching stories like that of Mohammad Aisha, a Syrian seafarer whose four-year stint on an abandoned cargo ship was widely chronicled when it mercifully came to an end last month.

The number of seafarer abandonment cases spiked last year.

Seafarers are not the only essential workers suffering disproportionately from the impacts of the pandemic. Garment workers, for example, have been hit particularly hard.

Tens of thousands of garment workers who lost their jobs amid the COVID-19-related economic slowdown have reportedly been wrongfully denied terminal compensation, and according to a report published by a advocacy group last year the pandemic led to a brutal crackdown on garment workers’ rights.

Even before the pandemic, this workforce faced significant challenges. An estimated three-quarters of all garment workers are women, and the same portion is based in Asia, where their jobs pay as little as $66 per month. Many are informally employed, making them particularly vulnerable to market fluctuations like the steep decline last year in Bangladesh’s apparel exports – the mainstay of its economy.

Here, too, efforts are underway to help. In Laos, garment workers losing jobs have received cash transfers, and countries in the European Union – the biggest market for Bangladeshi-made clothing – have funded COVID-19-related aid programs for impacted garment workers there.

Miners have also suffered. Many continue to work in close quarters despite social distancing guidelines, and rising gold prices during the pandemic have fueled more illegal mining – which exposes workers to more dangerous conditions.

In addition, sharp declines in household income in many parts of the world have increased the risk of children being forced to work in mines.

Efforts to better protect miners have included stronger federal COVID-19 safety guidance for mines in the US, and an offer from mining firms in South Africa to assist the rollout of vaccines – in a country where mineworkers are next in line to receive jabs after healthcare workers.

For more context, here are links to further reading from the World Economic Forum's Strategic Intelligence platform:

On the Strategic Intelligence platform, you can find feeds of expert analysis related to Work, the Future of Economic Progress and hundreds of additional topics. You’ll need to register to view.