Fishing union lodges complaint over RTÉ programme Skippers

AN international trade union representing workers in the fishing industry has lodged a complaint with RTÉ over its Skippers programme, claiming it ignored major health and safety and worker abuse issues that are plaguing the industry.

In its write-up for the series, RTÉ said its creators “ate, slept, breathed and fished with our skippers while they were out on the high seas in the world’s most dangerous job, creating a sense of immediacy with the audience at home; bringing the action, and turmoil wave by wave, roll by roll”.

However, Ken Fleming the International Transport Workers Federation’s (ITF) inspector in Ireland said there were glaring omissions in the programme’s contents.