Renewing our respect for invisible essential workers of the seas

It has been that way for a while. Fun fact: during WWII merchant marines got the short shift. The died at a much higher rate than soldiers and sailors and when they got back they were denied veterans benefits including the GI Bill.

Who except for very prominent professionals are not invisible to the world at large?

It’s a nice article and it’s good to remind us of the amount of individuals dedicated to activities in the ocean.

> [..] In March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the world, travel restrictions left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stuck onboard their ships, working way past their contracted dates as they were unable to return to shore for repatriation.

> At the time, few states acknowledged seafarers as key workers, making travel extremely difficult, if not impossible. Since then a number of countries have acknowledged their status and more recently, certain states have rolled out vaccination programmes.

Imagine being at the at of a very long working period, months on sea. Then at the end you're asked to work for several more months. This as your relief cannot travel to you. Many additional months later you finally can be relieved. Except now there's still the issue of leaving the vessel, many countries ban you from leaving the vessel (often cannot even go to shore). Meanwhile the big shipping companies have been reaching out to their governments to try and fix this. Just to be ignored, basically.

Only a month ago or so I noticed The Netherlands vaccinating everyone on a Dutch flagged vessel. This instead of only vaccinating the Dutch people on a Dutch vessel.

It's quite shameful how these seafarers were treated by pretty much every country in the world.

Forget about respect, how about basic human rights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thaila...

"essential workers" has been my least favorite invention in recent memory. If a person is providing value to their community, they are essential.

I don’t mean to diminish marine workers specifically, but isn’t every job essential? I see this label used pretty much all the time now and my feeling is that in the end, it comes down to supply and demand. To their customer, any worker is essential to some extent, since they demand their labor to fulfill some need. But the worker is not infinitely essential since for high enough compensation, others would step in to do the job as well. So why have the label? It feels like it is used as a marketing device for change (like pushing for wage increases) more than anything.