Joint open letter – Transport heads call on world leaders to secure global supply chains

International Chamber of Shipping ^ | 9/29/21 | Press Release

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the maritime, road and aviation industries have called loudly and clearly on governments to ensure the free movement of transport workers and to end travel bans and other restrictions that have had an enormously detrimental impact on their wellbeing and safety. Transport workers keep the world running and are vital for the free movement of products, including vaccines and PPE, but have been continually failed by governments and taken for granted by their officials.

Our calls have been consistent and clear: freedom of movement for transport workers, for governments to use protocols that have been endorsed by international bodies for each sector and to prioritise transport workers for vaccinations as called for in the World Health Organization’s SAGE Roadmap for Prioritizing Uses of COVID-19 Vaccines in the Context of Limited Supply.

Heads of government have failed to listen, to end the blame-shifting within and between governments and take the decisive and coordinated action needed to resolve this crisis.

This is why IRU, the world road transport organisation, IATA, the International Air Transport Association, ICS, the International Chamber of Shipping, and ITF, the International Transport Workers’ Federation, have come together to make an urgent plea to the world’s heads of government and the United Nations Agencies to remove restrictions hampering the free movement of transport workers, and guarantee and facilitate their free and safe movement.

[griswold3]

L8r

[Gen.Blather]

Globalization relies on the US Navy which has kept the sea lanes open for all nations including enemies. During the Vietnam war North Vietnamese ships were allowed to go anywhere they wanted. Can you imagine that freedom at any other time before WWII? (The reason, BTW, was because the Vietnam “war” was not a declared war. For reasons not relevant here we will never again see a “declared” war.) But the US is trying to back out of being the world’s policeman. That means other countries will start acting like the Barbary Pirates and exact tribute to allow ships to transit their waters. THAT means the end of globalization. It also means that US companies MUST move their supply chains either on shore or near shore. Failure to do so means bankruptcy.

[Texas Eagle]

Our calls have been consistent and clear: freedom of movement for transport workers,

Everybody else can go to hell, eh, Transport heads?

[Little Ray]

They can’t.
That’s the whole point of free enterprise. The invisible hand incentivises people and businesses to get material where it is needed or wanted. It is too impossibly complicated to be done by diktat as authoritarian states have discovered again and again.
At BEST this is simply an attempt to seize more control over private businesses. At worst it proves that statists have learned nothing about the impossibility of State control of economies.
In any case, it’s all bad.

[unixfox]

Yes, let's call on "world leaders" to solve the very problem they created.

Insanity.