Authors: Amina Munir and Amna Hashmi
When policymakers discuss the issue of maritime security, the concept of supply-chain resilience, or the future of global trade, the discussion is nearly always about vessels and ports, chokepoints, and technology. Not so apparent but no less fundamental is the human labor that keeps this great maritime system at work. Seaborne labor is one of the most crucial but under-investigated aspects of maritime relations, despite the fact that its role in the economic balance, sustainability, and regulation of crises is becoming all the more significant.
Seaborne Labor 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 approximated 1.8-2 million merchant seafarers who work in the world shipping systems in container, bulk, tanker, and specialized 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, in spite of this centrality, the maritime policy debate has a tendency to consider labor as a background variable, but not 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). The working hours and exhaustion, contact with dangerous machinery, and environmental risks are not going to disappear in the shipboard life, even in the conditions of the regulation system of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC 2006).
These vulnerabilities are even exacerbated in global shipping by cost-minimization strategies. Recent qualitative studies show the direct impact of precarious work relations on nutrition, quality of food, and well-being on board ships, even though the seafarers are the ones who keep the global supply chains going (Baum-Talmor et al., 2024). These circumstances demonstrate a sharp paradox: the labor that nourishes the world can be at risk of working in the conditions that undermine its health and safety, on the other hand.
The Politics of Invisibility of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how seaborne labor is still politically invisible. When the crisis was at its peak, approximately 1.9 million seafarers were caught in interrupted crew changes, meaning that many were left in the 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 late to consider seafarers as key workers and thus grant access to medical care, repatriation, and shore leave (Doumbia-Henry, 2020).
Even more marginalized 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 to realize that seaborne labor is institutionally peripheral to global crisis governance, although its structural importance is undeniable.
A Little-Studied Side of Sea Politics
Although shipping is of economic and strategic relevance, the literature on the welfare of seafarers is remarkably sparse. A critical analysis of the literature on maritime labor law defines welfare-centered scholarship as substantially small in comparison to the total amount of shipping and logistics studies (Exarchopoulos et al., 2018). More recent literature on port geography also observes that maritime research has put a strong emphasis on infrastructure, companies, and streams but systematically deems labor 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 the human-centered research on seafarers and automation has been growing in the past three years only to be disjointed and limited in scope (Li et al., 2024). With the increased rate of digitalization, there is a risk that the issue of labor will be pushed further to the periphery as opposed to being incorporated into the future structures of maritime governance.
Ocean Governance, Sustainability, and Labor
The seafarers are being seen as playing a vital role in ensuring sustainability in maritime transportation, safety, compliance with the environment, and 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 labor is the backbone of the global economy, works on the 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 adopt seafarers as strategic players rather than labor inputs in order to have a resilient, ethical, and sustainable maritime order. Turning a blind eye to this fact does not bring efficiency to the systems; it brings weakness to them.
