For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos less than Europeans

For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos less than Europeans
Lian Buan Oct 31, 2024 https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/filipino-leads-case-netherlan...

A Filipino cook, who contracted a chronic neuro condition on a chemical tanker, leads a landmark suit to end a Dutch practice to pay Filipinos and Indonesians less than their European counterparts.

Mario* has sailed across the world. He did not study to become a seafarer, in fact he did not even finish high school. He waited tables at a restaurant in Manila, then studied to become a cook. “My dishes are quality,” he beamed with pride. In 1993, he copped his first gig on a ship as a messman or basically the errand boy, working his way up to becoming a cook, the chief cook his penultimate role.

Mario is a fighter. “If you don’t fight, you will get nothing,” he said. He is aware that he has a reputation for being litigious. “I always file complaints — regarding safety, welfare, having to pay for internet,” Mario said. But he doesn’t worry for his employability, despite having to go from contract to contract. He is confident of his work ethic. “I work hard,” he said.

But Mario is sick. He has been diagnosed with a type of stroke from blocked small arteries in the brain after years of working on a chemical tanker. He now has difficulty hearing from his right ear. Before his last job on a Dutch ship, he got dizzy while taking a shower and almost fainted. It felt like a stroke (later diagnosis would identify it as “chronic lacunar infarct” which happens when blood flow to one of the small arteries in the brain is blocked, causing tissue death).

their European counterparts.

*The identity of the Filipino complainant is being withheld upon his request. Filipino quotes are translated to English for brevity.

Mario* has sailed across the world. He did not study to become a seafarer, in fact he did not even finish high school. He waited tables at a restaurant in Manila, then studied to become a cook. “My dishes are quality,” he beamed with pride. In 1993, he copped his first gig on a ship as a messman or basically the errand boy, working his way up to becoming a cook, the chief cook his penultimate role.

Mario is a fighter. “If you don’t fight, you will get nothing,” he said. He is aware that he has a reputation for being litigious. “I always file complaints — regarding safety, welfare, having to pay for internet,” Mario said. But he doesn’t worry for his employability, despite having to go from contract to contract. He is confident of his work ethic. “I work hard,” he said.

But Mario is sick. He has been diagnosed with a type of stroke from blocked small arteries in the brain after years of working on a chemical tanker. He now has difficulty hearing from his right ear. Before his last job on a Dutch ship, he got dizzy while taking a shower and almost fainted. It felt like a stroke (later diagnosis would identify it as “chronic lacunar infarct” which happens when blood flow to one of the small arteries in the brain is blocked, causing tissue death).

This was December 2022 and they were sailing across the Atlantic when he was told he could dock off to a hospital — but in weeks’ time when they reach Huelva, Spain. “They told me they we won’t get a service boat, but would just wait for the ship to come closer.”

This was a pivotal moment for Mario. In Huelva, Spain, he was given a “fit to work” certificate but was told he should check with a neurologist as soon as possible. This never happened.

For eight more months until his contract ended in September 2023, he worked with the right side of his body going numb. He wouldn’t even notice he was cutting his fingers.

He has always felt he was being treated unfairly, but this was something else. “We had a Dutch chief engineer, he suffered a heart attack as I suffered a stroke, he was immediately airlifted. A helicopter took him to the shore in Florida to get immediate medical attention. Because he’s Dutch.”

The Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners (KNVR) told Rappler that it “takes any signals regarding unfair treatment very seriously and on any such matter will engage with the member company concerned and with all members in general.”

Beyond Mario’s medical experience, the uneven treatment in terms of wage is institutional. For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos and Indonesians less than their European counterparts. This unequal wage system is state-sanctioned because companies were awarded legal opinion that says this was necessary to preserve the viability of the maritime sector.

Mario and another Indonesian seafarer are the lead complainants in a first-of-its-kind suit in The Netherlands to reverse this policy, once and for all. “It’s the same argument deployed to justify slavery. The entire colonial system was built on the backs of slaves. But are these [seafarers] slaves?” Michael de Castro, Mario’s Philippine lawyer, said.

*The identity of the Filipino complainant is being withheld upon his request. Filipino quotes are translated to English for brevity.

Mario* has sailed across the world. He did not study to become a seafarer, in fact he did not even finish high school. He waited tables at a restaurant in Manila, then studied to become a cook. “My dishes are quality,” he beamed with pride. In 1993, he copped his first gig on a ship as a messman or basically the errand boy, working his way up to becoming a cook, the chief cook his penultimate role.

Mario is a fighter. “If you don’t fight, you will get nothing,” he said. He is aware that he has a reputation for being litigious. “I always file complaints — regarding safety, welfare, having to pay for internet,” Mario said. But he doesn’t worry for his employability, despite having to go from contract to contract. He is confident of his work ethic. “I work hard,” he said.

But Mario is sick. He has been diagnosed with a type of stroke from blocked small arteries in the brain after years of working on a chemical tanker. He now has difficulty hearing from his right ear. Before his last job on a Dutch ship, he got dizzy while taking a shower and almost fainted. It felt like a stroke (later diagnosis would identify it as “chronic lacunar infarct” which happens when blood flow to one of the small arteries in the brain is blocked, causing tissue death).

This was December 2022 and they were sailing across the Atlantic when he was told he could dock off to a hospital — but in weeks’ time when they reach Huelva, Spain. “They told me they we won’t get a service boat, but would just wait for the ship to come closer.”

This was a pivotal moment for Mario. In Huelva, Spain, he was given a “fit to work” certificate but was told he should check with a neurologist as soon as possible. This never happened.

For eight more months until his contract ended in September 2023, he worked with the right side of his body going numb. He wouldn’t even notice he was cutting his fingers.

He has always felt he was being treated unfairly, but this was something else. “We had a Dutch chief engineer, he suffered a heart attack as I suffered a stroke, he was immediately airlifted. A helicopter took him to the shore in Florida to get immediate medical attention. Because he’s Dutch.”

The Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners (KNVR) told Rappler that it “takes any signals regarding unfair treatment very seriously and on any such matter will engage with the member company concerned and with all members in general.”

Beyond Mario’s medical experience, the uneven treatment in terms of wage is institutional. For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos and Indonesians less than their European counterparts. This unequal wage system is state-sanctioned because companies were awarded legal opinion that says this was necessary to preserve the viability of the maritime sector.

Mario and another Indonesian seafarer are the lead complainants in a first-of-its-kind suit in The Netherlands to reverse this policy, once and for all. “It’s the same argument deployed to justify slavery. The entire colonial system was built on the backs of slaves. But are these [seafarers] slaves?” Michael de Castro, Mario’s Philippine lawyer, said.
LONG AT SEA. The Filipino cook has been a seafarer since 1993.

‘Justified’ inequality

The Netherlands’ own Equality Act, in effect since 1994, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. Yet, the Dutch government has time and again sanctioned agreements between Dutch shipping companies and unions that said Southeast Asians can be paid less.

Under a 2019 commercial shipping collective bargaining agreement (CBA), Filipinos, Indonesians, and Ukrainans specifically, may get less. In this agreement, employees are entitled to the wages and working conditions negotiated in the CBA. Except that this CBA does not cover “employees resident in the Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine” whose wages and working conditions can be negotiated directly between a local trade union, and the Dutch union, or between a union and the individual employer.

CBA. The contentious clause of a 2019 Collective Bargaining Agreement sanctioned by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

The effect was that “Europeans are paid up to twice as much as Indonesian and Filipino crew members for the exact same job on the same ship,” said the Equal Justice Equal Pay Foundation, who is leading this claim. The KNVR said ships would pay Europeans less if they were to live in the Philippines or Indonesia, too.

Mario has lodged his case before the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights based in Utrecht, a half-hour train ride from The Hague, where most of the other judicial institutions, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), are based. The Institute acts as an advisor to the government, and receives complaints about discrimination.

While its judgments are not legally binding per se, it is authoritative in a way that it bears weight for when someone goes to court. The Institute said 80% of organizations “take actions” after their judgments. It is comparable to the authoritative weight of resolutions and decisions of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

It is ironic because in 1997, the Institute’s predecessor, the Equal Treatment Commission, sanctioned this discriminatory clause. The commission believed then that paying Filipinos and Indonesians less falls within the exemption of the Dutch Equality Act. The law effectively allows “indirect discrimination which is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and where the means to achieve that aim are appropriate and necessary.”

In the 1997 judgment, the commission said that the cost of living in the Philippines and Indonesia are lower, and even if they were getting less, Filipino and Indonesian seafarers were still paid higher than their counterparts based in their countries.

The commission said this unequal wage system “is part of a coherent package of government measures to protect and preserve the maritime sector” that is “not only common in the Netherlands, but also internationally to be able to cope with the competition.”

“We want to reverse this [1997 judgment],” said De Castro, “because there’s really a global movement away from it. In the words of one seafarer, this has been a race to the bottom for Filipinos. As long as they earned in dollars, they’d do it, no matter how unequal the wages are.”

In international law, a policy is considered “customary” and therefore legal even without an explicit law if the policy itself is part of accepted state practice. In 1997, the commission believed that the cheap wage system was accepted state practice because the “Dutch State has incorporated sailing with shipmates from low-wage countries into its maritime shipping policy and tolerates the actions” that are “repeated over time.”

their European counterparts.

*The identity of the Filipino complainant is being withheld upon his request. Filipino quotes are translated to English for brevity.

Mario* has sailed across the world. He did not study to become a seafarer, in fact he did not even finish high school. He waited tables at a restaurant in Manila, then studied to become a cook. “My dishes are quality,” he beamed with pride. In 1993, he copped his first gig on a ship as a messman or basically the errand boy, working his way up to becoming a cook, the chief cook his penultimate role.

Mario is a fighter. “If you don’t fight, you will get nothing,” he said. He is aware that he has a reputation for being litigious. “I always file complaints — regarding safety, welfare, having to pay for internet,” Mario said. But he doesn’t worry for his employability, despite having to go from contract to contract. He is confident of his work ethic. “I work hard,” he said.

But Mario is sick. He has been diagnosed with a type of stroke from blocked small arteries in the brain after years of working on a chemical tanker. He now has difficulty hearing from his right ear. Before his last job on a Dutch ship, he got dizzy while taking a shower and almost fainted. It felt like a stroke (later diagnosis would identify it as “chronic lacunar infarct” which happens when blood flow to one of the small arteries in the brain is blocked, causing tissue death).
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This was December 2022 and they were sailing across the Atlantic when he was told he could dock off to a hospital — but in weeks’ time when they reach Huelva, Spain. “They told me they we won’t get a service boat, but would just wait for the ship to come closer.”

This was a pivotal moment for Mario. In Huelva, Spain, he was given a “fit to work” certificate but was told he should check with a neurologist as soon as possible. This never happened.

For eight more months until his contract ended in September 2023, he worked with the right side of his body going numb. He wouldn’t even notice he was cutting his fingers.

He has always felt he was being treated unfairly, but this was something else. “We had a Dutch chief engineer, he suffered a heart attack as I suffered a stroke, he was immediately airlifted. A helicopter took him to the shore in Florida to get immediate medical attention. Because he’s Dutch.”

The Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners (KNVR) told Rappler that it “takes any signals regarding unfair treatment very seriously and on any such matter will engage with the member company concerned and with all members in general.”

Beyond Mario’s medical experience, the uneven treatment in terms of wage is institutional. For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos and Indonesians less than their European counterparts. This unequal wage system is state-sanctioned because companies were awarded legal opinion that says this was necessary to preserve the viability of the maritime sector.

Mario and another Indonesian seafarer are the lead complainants in a first-of-its-kind suit in The Netherlands to reverse this policy, once and for all. “It’s the same argument deployed to justify slavery. The entire colonial system was built on the backs of slaves. But are these [seafarers] slaves?” Michael de Castro, Mario’s Philippine lawyer, said.
LONG AT SEA. The Filipino cook has been a seafarer since 1993.
‘Justified’ inequality

The Netherlands’ own Equality Act, in effect since 1994, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. Yet, the Dutch government has time and again sanctioned agreements between Dutch shipping companies and unions that said Southeast Asians can be paid less.

Under a 2019 commercial shipping collective bargaining agreement (CBA), Filipinos, Indonesians, and Ukrainans specifically, may get less. In this agreement, employees are entitled to the wages and working conditions negotiated in the CBA. Except that this CBA does not cover “employees resident in the Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine” whose wages and working conditions can be negotiated directly between a local trade union, and the Dutch union, or between a union and the individual employer.
Page, Text, Letter
CBA. The contentious clause of a 2019 Collective Bargaining Agreement sanctioned by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

The effect was that “Europeans are paid up to twice as much as Indonesian and Filipino crew members for the exact same job on the same ship,” said the Equal Justice Equal Pay Foundation, who is leading this claim. The KNVR said ships would pay Europeans less if they were to live in the Philippines or Indonesia, too.

Mario has lodged his case before the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights based in Utrecht, a half-hour train ride from The Hague, where most of the other judicial institutions, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), are based. The Institute acts as an advisor to the government, and receives complaints about discrimination.

While its judgments are not legally binding per se, it is authoritative in a way that it bears weight for when someone goes to court. The Institute said 80% of organizations “take actions” after their judgments. It is comparable to the authoritative weight of resolutions and decisions of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

It is ironic because in 1997, the Institute’s predecessor, the Equal Treatment Commission, sanctioned this discriminatory clause. The commission believed then that paying Filipinos and Indonesians less falls within the exemption of the Dutch Equality Act. The law effectively allows “indirect discrimination which is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and where the means to achieve that aim are appropriate and necessary.”

In the 1997 judgment, the commission said that the cost of living in the Philippines and Indonesia are lower, and even if they were getting less, Filipino and Indonesian seafarers were still paid higher than their counterparts based in their countries.

The commission said this unequal wage system “is part of a coherent package of government measures to protect and preserve the maritime sector” that is “not only common in the Netherlands, but also internationally to be able to cope with the competition.”

“We want to reverse this [1997 judgment],” said De Castro, “because there’s really a global movement away from it. In the words of one seafarer, this has been a race to the bottom for Filipinos. As long as they earned in dollars, they’d do it, no matter how unequal the wages are.”

In international law, a policy is considered “customary” and therefore legal even without an explicit law if the policy itself is part of accepted state practice. In 1997, the commission believed that the cheap wage system was accepted state practice because the “Dutch State has incorporated sailing with shipmates from low-wage countries into its maritime shipping policy and tolerates the actions” that are “repeated over time.”

In Mario’s case, De Castro said their main argument now is equal pay has become customary since the 1997 judgment. “Equal pay for work of equal value is a recognized human right in several international covenants: the International Labor Convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Maritime Labor Convention,” said De Castro.

“When it comes to scrimping on Southeast Asian seafarers, the Netherlands is left behind. That’s not supposed to happen in the Netherlands, they’re supposed to be the best, the center of justice,” said De Castro, referring to the global reputation of the Netherlands, due in part to The Hague being hailed as the legal capital of the world.

The KNVR still relies on the same cost-of-living justification.

“The distinction by country of residence is justified because of the large differences in the costs of living between countries, which makes the situation of seafarers living in these different countries non comparable,” said the KNVR in a statement to Rappler.

Multinational companies often have discrepancies in wages when their employees work out of different cities — those who work in a more expensive city get the higher wage, taking into account the operational cost of maintaining that office, and the employee’s cost of living. But should residence be a factor when all employees are working — and living — on the same ship?

“The principle in international shipping is that the seafarer on board takes his/her wage back home to the country of residence. This is where the seafarer needs to have a living wage, meaning that he/she should be able to make a decent living in the context of the country of residence,” a KNVR spokesperson told Rappler.

De Castro and his small team are vetting thousands of claims of Filipino seafarers who were affected by this practice, in preparation for a class suit.
Favorite worker, favorite victim

There is a reason for singling out Filipinos and Indonesians in the Dutch shipping CBA. Both countries are among the top suppliers of seafarers in the global labor market — which means they get to save in paying lesser amounts to most of their workers.

As of 2021, Filipinos are the top nationality of seafarers in the world, with Indonesians ranking fifth.

Filipino seafarers, along with other nationalities coming from top and emerging markets, are favored because they are deployed young at the operational and support levels (see charts below).

But Filipinos are also often victims of sea abandonment. According to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, Filipinos are the fifth “most abandoned nationality,” or the country with the fifth highest number of seafarers who:

have not received two or more months’ worth of wages
no longer receive sufficient food and water
have not been able to go home even though their contract has ended

In terms of pay gaps, the Netherlands ranks 13th in the world with the highest migrant pay gap across industries, according to the 2020 report of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The report shows that on average, migrant workers employed in the Netherlands earn 19.9% less than their Dutch counterparts. While the maritime sector is notorious for problems of unpaid wages, Mario’s case is unique in the sense that the CBA that was negotiated with the sanction of the state institutionalized this wage gap.

According to Mario, he was never shown a copy of the 2019 Dutch CBA, only the CBA negotiated directly with Philippine companies. A seafarer for a long time, Mario knows how CBAs go and he has been keen to see the Dutch version because ideally, it should list benefits and incentives that can extend to all nationalities on board.

For example, if it is a holiday in their country, all seafarers on board should enjoy holiday pay. “But the Philippine CBA is so different from the Dutch CBA, it was like telling us — accept it, at least you’re being paid,” Mario said.

When his contract ended in September 2023, Mario was earning $2,000 per month, already a result of his constant grievances, but still below the ILO-mandated minimum wage for a chief cook which is $2,038.

Mario remembers a dispute with overtime pay in the Dutch ship. He was being asked to cook two kinds of dishes — Dutch food for the Dutch, and then the usual dishes for the rest. He said this meant longer work hours, but he was not being paid for overtime.

Mario, the fighter, got cheeky. “I prepared dinuguan, I prepared tilapia…the Europeans did not like it,” said Mario. The captain budged to give him overtime pay only then. Dinuguan is pork innards cooked in pig blood like a stew, and tilapia is saltwater fish, both Filipino delicacies.

their European counterparts.

*The identity of the Filipino complainant is being withheld upon his request. Filipino quotes are translated to English for brevity.

Mario* has sailed across the world. He did not study to become a seafarer, in fact he did not even finish high school. He waited tables at a restaurant in Manila, then studied to become a cook. “My dishes are quality,” he beamed with pride. In 1993, he copped his first gig on a ship as a messman or basically the errand boy, working his way up to becoming a cook, the chief cook his penultimate role.

Mario is a fighter. “If you don’t fight, you will get nothing,” he said. He is aware that he has a reputation for being litigious. “I always file complaints — regarding safety, welfare, having to pay for internet,” Mario said. But he doesn’t worry for his employability, despite having to go from contract to contract. He is confident of his work ethic. “I work hard,” he said.

But Mario is sick. He has been diagnosed with a type of stroke from blocked small arteries in the brain after years of working on a chemical tanker. He now has difficulty hearing from his right ear. Before his last job on a Dutch ship, he got dizzy while taking a shower and almost fainted. It felt like a stroke (later diagnosis would identify it as “chronic lacunar infarct” which happens when blood flow to one of the small arteries in the brain is blocked, causing tissue death).
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This was December 2022 and they were sailing across the Atlantic when he was told he could dock off to a hospital — but in weeks’ time when they reach Huelva, Spain. “They told me they we won’t get a service boat, but would just wait for the ship to come closer.”

This was a pivotal moment for Mario. In Huelva, Spain, he was given a “fit to work” certificate but was told he should check with a neurologist as soon as possible. This never happened.

For eight more months until his contract ended in September 2023, he worked with the right side of his body going numb. He wouldn’t even notice he was cutting his fingers.

He has always felt he was being treated unfairly, but this was something else. “We had a Dutch chief engineer, he suffered a heart attack as I suffered a stroke, he was immediately airlifted. A helicopter took him to the shore in Florida to get immediate medical attention. Because he’s Dutch.”

The Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners (KNVR) told Rappler that it “takes any signals regarding unfair treatment very seriously and on any such matter will engage with the member company concerned and with all members in general.”

Beyond Mario’s medical experience, the uneven treatment in terms of wage is institutional. For years, Dutch ships have been paying Filipinos and Indonesians less than their European counterparts. This unequal wage system is state-sanctioned because companies were awarded legal opinion that says this was necessary to preserve the viability of the maritime sector.

Mario and another Indonesian seafarer are the lead complainants in a first-of-its-kind suit in The Netherlands to reverse this policy, once and for all. “It’s the same argument deployed to justify slavery. The entire colonial system was built on the backs of slaves. But are these [seafarers] slaves?” Michael de Castro, Mario’s Philippine lawyer, said.
LONG AT SEA. The Filipino cook has been a seafarer since 1993.
‘Justified’ inequality

The Netherlands’ own Equality Act, in effect since 1994, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. Yet, the Dutch government has time and again sanctioned agreements between Dutch shipping companies and unions that said Southeast Asians can be paid less.

Under a 2019 commercial shipping collective bargaining agreement (CBA), Filipinos, Indonesians, and Ukrainans specifically, may get less. In this agreement, employees are entitled to the wages and working conditions negotiated in the CBA. Except that this CBA does not cover “employees resident in the Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine” whose wages and working conditions can be negotiated directly between a local trade union, and the Dutch union, or between a union and the individual employer.
Page, Text, Letter
CBA. The contentious clause of a 2019 Collective Bargaining Agreement sanctioned by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

The effect was that “Europeans are paid up to twice as much as Indonesian and Filipino crew members for the exact same job on the same ship,” said the Equal Justice Equal Pay Foundation, who is leading this claim. The KNVR said ships would pay Europeans less if they were to live in the Philippines or Indonesia, too.

Mario has lodged his case before the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights based in Utrecht, a half-hour train ride from The Hague, where most of the other judicial institutions, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), are based. The Institute acts as an advisor to the government, and receives complaints about discrimination.

While its judgments are not legally binding per se, it is authoritative in a way that it bears weight for when someone goes to court. The Institute said 80% of organizations “take actions” after their judgments. It is comparable to the authoritative weight of resolutions and decisions of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

It is ironic because in 1997, the Institute’s predecessor, the Equal Treatment Commission, sanctioned this discriminatory clause. The commission believed then that paying Filipinos and Indonesians less falls within the exemption of the Dutch Equality Act. The law effectively allows “indirect discrimination which is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and where the means to achieve that aim are appropriate and necessary.”

In the 1997 judgment, the commission said that the cost of living in the Philippines and Indonesia are lower, and even if they were getting less, Filipino and Indonesian seafarers were still paid higher than their counterparts based in their countries.

The commission said this unequal wage system “is part of a coherent package of government measures to protect and preserve the maritime sector” that is “not only common in the Netherlands, but also internationally to be able to cope with the competition.”

“We want to reverse this [1997 judgment],” said De Castro, “because there’s really a global movement away from it. In the words of one seafarer, this has been a race to the bottom for Filipinos. As long as they earned in dollars, they’d do it, no matter how unequal the wages are.”

In international law, a policy is considered “customary” and therefore legal even without an explicit law if the policy itself is part of accepted state practice. In 1997, the commission believed that the cheap wage system was accepted state practice because the “Dutch State has incorporated sailing with shipmates from low-wage countries into its maritime shipping policy and tolerates the actions” that are “repeated over time.”

In Mario’s case, De Castro said their main argument now is equal pay has become customary since the 1997 judgment. “Equal pay for work of equal value is a recognized human right in several international covenants: the International Labor Convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Maritime Labor Convention,” said De Castro.

“When it comes to scrimping on Southeast Asian seafarers, the Netherlands is left behind. That’s not supposed to happen in the Netherlands, they’re supposed to be the best, the center of justice,” said De Castro, referring to the global reputation of the Netherlands, due in part to The Hague being hailed as the legal capital of the world.

The KNVR still relies on the same cost-of-living justification.

“The distinction by country of residence is justified because of the large differences in the costs of living between countries, which makes the situation of seafarers living in these different countries non comparable,” said the KNVR in a statement to Rappler.

Multinational companies often have discrepancies in wages when their employees work out of different cities — those who work in a more expensive city get the higher wage, taking into account the operational cost of maintaining that office, and the employee’s cost of living. But should residence be a factor when all employees are working — and living — on the same ship?

“The principle in international shipping is that the seafarer on board takes his/her wage back home to the country of residence. This is where the seafarer needs to have a living wage, meaning that he/she should be able to make a decent living in the context of the country of residence,” a KNVR spokesperson told Rappler.

De Castro and his small team are vetting thousands of claims of Filipino seafarers who were affected by this practice, in preparation for a class suit.
Favorite worker, favorite victim

There is a reason for singling out Filipinos and Indonesians in the Dutch shipping CBA. Both countries are among the top suppliers of seafarers in the global labor market — which means they get to save in paying lesser amounts to most of their workers.

As of 2021, Filipinos are the top nationality of seafarers in the world, with Indonesians ranking fifth.
Filipino seafarers, along with other nationalities coming from top and emerging markets, are favored because they are deployed young at the operational and support levels (see charts below).

But Filipinos are also often victims of sea abandonment. According to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, Filipinos are the fifth “most abandoned nationality,” or the country with the fifth highest number of seafarers who:

have not received two or more months’ worth of wages
no longer receive sufficient food and water
have not been able to go home even though their contract has ended

In terms of pay gaps, the Netherlands ranks 13th in the world with the highest migrant pay gap across industries, according to the 2020 report of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The report shows that on average, migrant workers employed in the Netherlands earn 19.9% less than their Dutch counterparts. While the maritime sector is notorious for problems of unpaid wages, Mario’s case is unique in the sense that the CBA that was negotiated with the sanction of the state institutionalized this wage gap.

According to Mario, he was never shown a copy of the 2019 Dutch CBA, only the CBA negotiated directly with Philippine companies. A seafarer for a long time, Mario knows how CBAs go and he has been keen to see the Dutch version because ideally, it should list benefits and incentives that can extend to all nationalities on board.

For example, if it is a holiday in their country, all seafarers on board should enjoy holiday pay. “But the Philippine CBA is so different from the Dutch CBA, it was like telling us — accept it, at least you’re being paid,” Mario said.

When his contract ended in September 2023, Mario was earning $2,000 per month, already a result of his constant grievances, but still below the ILO-mandated minimum wage for a chief cook which is $2,038.

Mario remembers a dispute with overtime pay in the Dutch ship. He was being asked to cook two kinds of dishes — Dutch food for the Dutch, and then the usual dishes for the rest. He said this meant longer work hours, but he was not being paid for overtime.

Mario, the fighter, got cheeky. “I prepared dinuguan, I prepared tilapia…the Europeans did not like it,” said Mario. The captain budged to give him overtime pay only then. Dinuguan is pork innards cooked in pig blood like a stew, and tilapia is saltwater fish, both Filipino delicacies.
Food, Food Presentation, Meal
Some of Mario’s dishes as a chief cook.
Food, Meal, Cafeteria
Some of Mario’s dishes as a chief cook.
Cafeteria, Indoors, Restaurant
Some of Mario’s dishes as a chief cook.
Some of Mario’s dishes as a chief cook.
‘Even if I die, continue this case’

When Mario attended the first hearing in Utrecht on October 2 this year, he said the owners of his previous company conceded. “They said I am a good worker, even though I complain a lot. The owner cried, he said, he cannot believe that, that was done to me,” Mario said.

De Castro said it’s a chance for the Philippine stakeholders, especially manning agencies and regulators, to take a cold hard look at the problem and “hopefully as a nation we can come up with an answer that is fair and protects each one of us instead of just selling the human to the lowest bidder.”

The Philippine embassy in the Netherlands said it is “looking closely at the complaint.”

“In line with the 11 July 2024 United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution on promoting and protecting the enjoyment of human rights by seafarers, which the Philippines initiated, the Embassy calls on Dutch authorities, shipowners and their representatives to ensure safe, decent and fair living and working conditions for all seafarers,” Philippine ambassador to the Netherlands, J Eduardo Malaya, told Rappler.

Mario is now based in the Philippines and has no plan of ever going on board a ship again, determined to spend more time with his two children, ages 2 and 9. He gets by with some passive income, while his wife works as a cop. He showed a medical certificate declaring that he now has Grade 6 disability.

“My life is now shorter…If I die, they can continue this case for the future of not just seafarers, but also land-based [migrant workers],” said Mario.

“Para hindi na tayo apihin (So we will no longer be oppressed).”

– Rappler.com