On March 12, 2025, four Indonesian fishers filed suit in San Diego, California, against Bumble Bee Foods. They claimed they were victims of forced labor, human trafficking, and debt bondage in violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA). This case is the first human trafficking case brought against a U.S. seafood company for forced labor at sea.
This blog post describes the recent Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA) case against Bumble Bee tuna. It provides an overview of the case, the risks of human rights abuses in the fishing industry, and of Bumble Bee’s failures to mitigate human rights abuses. It concludes by addressing the hopes for this case and for the fishing industry more broadly.
Photo Credit: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
The Case
The plaintiffs in this case are four men, Akhmad, Angga, Muhammad Syafi’i, and Muhammad Sahrudin, all of whom are from Indonesia. Akhmad, who is from rural Java, dropped out of school at age fifteen due to financial reasons. When he began working in the tuna industry, he was married with two children and started working on a fishing vessel to better provide for his family. Angga was also from rural Java and, prior to commencing work on a tuna fishing vessel, had never traveled outside of Indonesia. Muhammad Syafi’i was also from a rural area and joined the vessel as a cook, though he was soon forced to engage in fishing work. Muhammad Sahrudin is the oldest of eight children. He borrowed money from his hospitalized mother who had sold her jewelry to pay the recruitment fee. He left Indonesia after promising to repay his mother.
The complaint alleges that these four men were coerced into predatory contracts by the false promises of decent wages and working conditions. Their contracts – if the workers ever received them – guaranteed lower wages that did not account for the additional recruitment fees workers were charged. Once they signed these contracts, the fishers could not quit without owing hefty fines they could not afford to pay. One plaintiff alleges that he was forced to pay nearly half of his $320 monthly salary for months. Another claims he had $200 of his $300 monthly salary deducted for nearly 8 months to pay recruitment, administrative, and living costs while on board. This practice, called debt bondage, is a coercive tactic used to lure vulnerable fishers onto ships and keep them there indefinitely.
When these workers boarded the fishing vessels, they claimed they were met with a plethora of human rights abuses. The complaint states that they were beaten by the ship captains, starved and forced to eat bait fish for sustenance, and forced to keep working despite suffering from severe injuries with no medical attention. Workers were allegedly slapped, hit with metal hooks, stabbed with needles, and whipped. In the complaint, one plaintiff recanted a story of when a load of fish was dropped on his leg, slicing it from mid-shin to thigh. As blood filled his boot and the worker realized he could see his own bone, he reported that the captain ordered him to keep working.
The plaintiffs made multiple requests to leave that were denied; they were forced to continue working under these conditions for months. They were afraid of quitting and placing their families at risk. They also feared earning no compensation for the months of abuse they had endured at sea. Some of the plaintiffs reported being told that they could wait until the ship docked at port, but the ships did not go into port for months on end. When one worker finally made his way off the ship, he claimed he was never paid the wages he was owed.
The ships practiced transshipment, a process by which vessels remain at sea for longer periods of time by transferring catch from one vessel to another. Transshipment allows vessels with terrible working conditions and illegally caught seafood to remain at sea for months, obscuring their illegal activities and facilitating the abuse of crew members. This practice allowed the abuse to go undetected and made it impossible for workers to seek refuge.
While this may be the first human trafficking case brought against U.S. fishing companies, it is not the first time that egregious human rights abuses have been documented aboard fishing vessels. Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and forced labor is endemic within this industry. Due to the difficulties of documenting labor violations at sea, the vulnerability of recruited migrants and impoverished workers, deceptive recruiting tactics, and a culture of impunity, there is a long history of human rights abuses at sea.
The History Behind the Case
Forced labor in the tuna fishing industry is not new. The U.S. government has been addressing the issue of forced labor in the fishing industry since at least 2007, when it first included seafood in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report). In 2008, the U.S. State Department highlighted the struggles of rural Indonesian men recruited to work on foreign fishing vessels, often falling prey to forced labor, debt bondage, and various forms of mistreatment. Since then, numerous organizations including Greenpeace, BLOOM, Oceana, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have documented abuses in the tuna fishing industry. Each of these reports illustrates the labor abuses fishers are forced to endure and the lack of changes made within the industry.
This is also not the first time Bumblebee has faced forced labor allegations. In 2020, stories of abusive working conditions and forced labor led to the U.S. halting imports from a Taiwan-based fishing vessel that supplied a company affiliated with Bumble Bee. In 2024, Greenpeace issued a report connecting tuna produced via forced labor in Indonesia to tuna sold under the Bumble Bee brand in a supermarket in the state of Maine.
Bumble Bee Seafood
Despite all the evidence of the risk of harm in the seafood industry, Bumble Bee has done little to assuage these risks. It relies on the faulty Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a flawed third-party certification scheme that does little to address working conditions, and has faulty environmental standards. Bumble Bee claims to support worker voice, yet it has relied on social audits, an ineffective and corruptible accountability tool that is ill-equipped to address the sensitive issue of forced labor.
The years of documented human rights abuses on fishing vessels linked to Bumble Bee show that these measures are not working. Rather than being helpful, these tactics are actually a hindrance, as they occupy space that could be taken up by more useful measures, such as engaging in collective bargaining and enforceable brand agreements, providing workers with genuine contracts, and creating accessible and confidential grievance mechanisms.
The Future
This case is a big step forward for accountability in the tuna industry. As market demand for social accountability increases, the culture of impunity companies such as Bumble Bee have profited from will decrease. While the future of sustainable and ethical fishing remains unclear under the current administration, this case brings hope that seafood companies can be held accountable.
Nikki Santos is a Legal Fellow with Corporate Accountability Lab.
