Seaborne labour is vital for global trade

Solly Rakgomo | Monday March 30, 2026 09:59

Not so apparent but no less fundamental is the human labour that keeps this great maritime system at work. Seaborne labour is one of the most crucial yet under-investigated aspects of maritime relations, despite its growing role in the economic balance, sustainability, and the regulation of crises. Seaborne labour as the key to the global economy According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), approximately 80-90 percent of all global trade in tonnes is transported by sea, and it is estimated that the amount of cargo shipped is more than 10.6 billion tonnes annually. The whole mechanism is based on an estimated 1.8-2 million merchant seafarers who work in the world shipping system, including container, bulk, tanker, and specialised ships (UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport). Practically, transporting food and other vital goods occupies over 70 percent of the total volume of food and other important goods in the world, rendering seafarers vital in food supply to all parts of the world as well as daily consumption (International Chamber of Shipping).

However, despite this centrality, the maritime policy debate tends to treat labour as a background variable rather than a pillar of strategy. The implicit assumption on which trade resilience, naval logistics, and port efficiency are constructed is that there is a continuous supply of skilled seafarers, an assumption that is at best seldom questioned until it is disrupted. An at-risk and unstable workforce It has been empirically demonstrated that the seafaring occupation is one of the most hazardous in the world. Another historic occupational health study in Denmark had revealed that occupational accidental mortality among seafarers was over eleven times greater than among working-age men on shore, highlighting the high physical hazards of sea work (International Labour Organization). Military confrontations, working hours and exhaustion, contact with dangerous machinery, and environmental risks are not going to disappear in shipboard life, even under the regulatory system of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC 2006). These vulnerabilities are even exacerbated in global shipping by cost-minimisation strategies. Recent qualitative studies show the direct impact of precarious work relations on nutrition, food quality, and well-being on board ships, even though seafarers are the ones who keep global supply chains running (Baum-Talmor et al., 2024). These circumstances demonstrate a sharp paradox: the labour that nourishes the world can be at risk of working under conditions that undermine its health and safety.

The politics of the invisibility of COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that seaborne labour remains politically invisible. When the crisis was at its peak, approximately 1.9 million seafarers were caught in interrupted crew changes, leaving many at sea long after the legal contract expiry (International Maritime Organization). The condition was, in large part, explained as a humanitarian and welfare crisis, although many states were slow to recognise seafarers as key workers and thus to grant access to medical care, repatriation, and shore leave (Doumbia-Henry, 2020). Even more marginalised were fishing crews whose rights were not covered by the MLC, since they had restricted crew changes and access to ports and welfare (Vandergeest et al., 2021). The pandemic helped realise that seaborne labour is institutionally peripheral to global crisis governance, despite its undeniable structural importance. A little-studied side of sea politics Although shipping is of economic and strategic relevance, the literature on seafarers' welfare is remarkably sparse.

A critical analysis of the literature on maritime labour law defines welfare-centred scholarship as substantially small relative to the total body of shipping and logistics studies (Exarchopoulos et al., 2018). More recent literature on port geography also observes that maritime research has placed a strong emphasis on infrastructure, companies, and streams, yet systematically treats labour as an analytical concept (Warren et al., 2025). This distortion is explicitly noticeable in the discussions surrounding maritime automation. A systematic review of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) conducted in 2024 concluded that human-centred research on seafarers and automation has grown over the past three years, yet remains disjointed and limited in scope (Li et al., 2024). With the accelerating pace of digitalisation, there is a risk that the issue of labour will be pushed further to the periphery, rather than being incorporated into future structures of maritime governance. Ocean governance, sustainability, and labour The seafarers are being seen as playing a vital role in ensuring sustainability in maritime transportation, safety, environmental compliance, and the reliability of their operations (Desai Shan et al., 2021). Violations of their rights and well-being not only compromise human security but also the safety of life on the sea, the safety of marine environments, and the sustainability of maritime human resources in the long term.

Green supply chains, decarbonization goals, green shipping corridors, and resilient supply chains require a skilled, safeguarded, and motivated maritime workforce. Rediscovering maritime priorities The case is obvious: the seaborne labour is the backbone of the global economy, works at an unequally high risk of death, and is still also underrepresented in the research and policy. With the challenges facing maritime affairs that are new, such as pandemics and geopolitical uncertainties, automation, and climate change, the human factor can no longer be overlooked. It is imperative to treat seafarers as strategic players rather than labour inputs to ensure a resilient, ethical, and sustainable maritime order. Turning a blind eye to this fact does not make the systems more efficient; it makes them weaker.