Contract Disputes & Unpaid Wages Become #1 Reason Seafarers Sought Help In 2025

The ISWAN SeafarerHelp 2025 Annual Review revealed that contractual breaches and wage theft remain the main concerns of seafarers, accounting for 25.4% of all cases handled by the helpline in 2025.

When combined with the 12.5% of cases tied to Financial Issues and Compensation, it becomes clear that nearly two-fifths of all calls were about seafarers suffering due to economic exploitation.

Statistics compiled by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) for 2025 reveal that seafarer abandonment reached its worst levels with 6,223 seafarers abandoned across 410 ships globally.

This represents a 31% increase in vessel abandonments and a 32% increase in affected crew members compared to the previous year.

It also marks the 6th consecutive record-breaking year for ship abandonments, highlighting that the industry is struggling with non-compliance and rogue operators.

For the seafarers caught in these situations, the financial consequences are catastrophic.

The ITF reported that abandoned seafarers were owed a collective total of USD 25.8 million in unpaid wages and entitlements in 2025.

While union and legal interventions managed to recover USD 16.5 million, over USD 9.3 million remains disputed, leaving thousands of families destitute.

To understand why contract disputes and unpaid wages dominate welfare data, one must look at the loopholes in international shipping.

The ITF data indicates that 82% of all vessel abandonments in 2025 occurred on ships flying Flags of Convenience (FOCs), most notably Panama, which remained the flag state with the highest number of cases of seafarer abandonment.

Under international maritime law, a ship must be registered to a flag state, which is then legally responsible for enforcing labour laws and safety standards under the Maritime Labour Convention.

The FOC system allows shipowners to register their vessels in foreign countries with weak regulatory oversight, low taxes and no strict enforcement mechanisms.

In recent years, the problem has been exacerbated by the “shadow fleet”, vessels operating under untraceable ownership, often utilising false safety certificates, forged insurance papers, and unknown flags to evade sanctions.

When these ships run into trouble, the anonymous owners simply cut all communication, switch off the vessel’s transponders, and leave the crew to starve without pay.

Wage theft at sea is far more than a financial dispute; it can even lead to severe psychological trauma.

The ISWAN report underlines that seafarers rarely experience contract and financial issues in isolation.

Contractual breakdowns are followed by a degradation of onboard living conditions, a lack of provisions, and a collapse of morale.

ISWAN’s helpline handled 382 mental health cases in 2025, a 35.9% spike, which was more than the cases handled during the peak of the crew-change crisis in the COVID-19 pandemic.

When an operator stops paying a crew, they often stop provisioning the ship as well.

Seafarers find themselves trapped at anchor for months on end, rationing food and fuel, unable to afford the flights home, and watching their families fall into debt.

The isolation and helplessness lead to acute distress, severe anxiety, and suicidal ideation among stranded crew members, the report reveals.

Crew Abandonment By Nationality

For the 3rd consecutive year, Indian nationals remained the most targeted demographic, with 1,125 Indian seafarers abandoned in 2025, a 25% increase from the previous year.

Philippines, the world’s primary supplier of crew members, saw 539 Filipino crew members stranded.

309 Syrian crew members were also logged in abandonment and wage-theft registries.

In late 2025, the Indian government’s Directorate General of Shipping blacklisted 86 vessels linked to repeated contract violations, labour abuse, and abandonment, completely banning them from recruiting Indian crew members.

The Path Forward

The data from the ISWAN 2025 Review and the ITF prove that current compliance frameworks are failing the human element of shipping.

Resolving the crisis of contract disputes and wage theft requires all stakeholders to come together and make a synchronised plan of action.

First, flag states must be held accountable for the vessels they register.

Regulatory bodies like the International Maritime Organization (IMO) must mandate transparency of beneficial cargo and ship ownership as a condition for vessel registration, thus eliminating the anonymity that allows rogue owners to hide.

Second, port states must exercise their right to detain ships whose documents seem suspicious or those that fail to comply with the MLC.

Until the industry closes the regulatory loopholes that allow bad actors to thrive, contract breaches and unpaid wages will become an even bigger problem.

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