In the past, seafarers have faced unique employment conditions, where wages and working conditions were determined by custom rather than by the letter of labor law. While shore-based workers have made major gains in living standards, the authors of Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific claim that even in the twenty-first century, “life at sea for thousands of seafarers is modern slavery” (p. 1).
This book charts the collective activism of seafarers as they struggled for improved legal rights and working conditions from the nineteenth century onwards. It draws on extensive primary and secondary sources and comprises thirteen chapters, numerous illustrations, and (given the use of fifty-seven acronyms) an indispensable list of abbreviations. The emphasis is on the role of Australian unions and their connections with labor unions in the Asia-Pacific region.
In Chapter 3, the authors argue that following the introduction of the White Australia Policy (WAP) in 1901, the...
University of California Press