Sci-Fi Tech Shanghaied to Saturn: forced labor in space

[JagerIV]

Back in the age of sail, Shanghaiing was a thing that happened. Basically, one was tricked into signing up for a ship, sometimes by getting one black out drunk, forging their signature, and having them wake up on a ship several hours out to sea.

The question is, how possible would such a thing be on spacecraft? Some elements are obviously well suited to such a practice: once a spaceship is heading out, your pretty much stuck on the ship until it reaches its destination. And if one is using transfer windows, a spaceship's captain may find himself with a very tight deadline to meet on when to depart. If your setting uses some sort of sleeper pods for the long transit period, things can be even easier: you put the captured man in a pod, have him sleep for the trip to some asteroid your mining, and wake him up there to work on it, with there being no real way he can get off that asteroid until the spacecraft is ready to leave after its been suitably mined.

Spacecraft of any significant size also seem like they would be naturally easy to secure: its by default going to be compartmentalized between different pressurized areas with somewhat sturdy pressure doors separating them. Converting that to security bulkheads to keep the less willing crew members away from the bridge, communications equipment, or captain's cabin.

So, the means and the reason to do so seem to exist: its an unpleasant job which may be very time intensive to do, so getting enough volunteers might be difficult, but if you can get someone onto your spaceship, they're pretty well stuck with you until the jobs done, and its hard for the crew to sabotage the ship in such a way that doesn't, well, do themselves in.

The main deciding factor is the legal set up of the setting: if someone gets kidnapped from the lunar port, mines some uninhabited asteroid for 6 months, before ending up on Ceres in the Asteroid belt a year later, how will the various port authorities treat that? To what degree, if any, does the man have an interest in pressing charges with anyone, or is he going to be better off taking the weak pay they did provide and moving on, get another job and not get known as a trouble maker?

 

[Darth Robbhi]

See "Logic of Empire" in Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth for a good example of this.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

The main deciding factor is the legal set up of the setting: if someone gets kidnapped from the lunar port, mines some uninhabited asteroid for 6 months, before ending up on Ceres in the Asteroid belt a year later, how will the various port authorities treat that? To what degree, if any, does the man have an interest in pressing charges with anyone, or is he going to be better off taking the weak pay they did provide and moving on, get another job and not get known as a trouble maker?

The problem is that if a company is going to go to that much trouble to get cheap labor, why not make it cheaper still and have an unfortunate accident so that any workers finishing their contract don't collect their wages at all? Good example of that are certain shipbreaking beaches where if a worker has accumulated a lot of overtime, come the end of the week he gets a couple of hundred tons of steel scrap dropped on him. Shanghaiing was a bit different because the hunt was for skilled men who were in short supply. Very often it was a case of "we get him, not thee"

 

[JagerIV]

The problem is that if a company is going to go to that much trouble to get cheap labor, why not make it cheaper still and have an unfortunate accident so that any workers finishing their contract don't collect their wages at all? Good example of that are certain shipbreaking beaches where if a worker has accumulated a lot of overtime, come the end of the week he gets a couple of hundred tons of steel scrap dropped on him. Shanghaiing was a bit different because the hunt was for skilled men who were in short supply. Very often it was a case of "we get him, not thee"

Of course, the definition of "skilled" vs "unskilled" is going to be somewhat skewed for space natives. Plus I assume "deep" space mining might be sufficiently unpleasant that your just going to have a hard time getting enough volunteers for it: like, if your a space welder or something, being in earth space where you can holiday to the very populated moon and earth or buy a luxury freshish food or any such thing off space amazon and have it delivered in a week is just a much more pleasant experience than being out in the lonely asteroid field months if not years away from anyone else.

 

[Doomsought]

Space stations have a limited amount of living space, and adding more living space is expensive. Politicians that don't really want to go through the expense of the proper solution will decide to solve it by just getting rid of people instead. Space ship captians might even get paid to pick up unemployed space station citizens and cart them off, and station security would be willing to lend a hand getting rid of layabouts.

 

[Marduk]

Of course, the definition of "skilled" vs "unskilled" is going to be somewhat skewed for space natives. Plus I assume "deep" space mining might be sufficiently unpleasant that your just going to have a hard time getting enough volunteers for it: like, if your a space welder or something, being in earth space where you can holiday to the very populated moon and earth or buy a luxury freshish food or any such thing off space amazon and have it delivered in a week is just a much more pleasant experience than being out in the lonely asteroid field months if not years away from anyone else.

That does, to a large degree, mirror the issues for modern day employment in places like oil rigs and fishing boats. The solution would probably be very much the same - temptingly high salaries, at very least on paper.
Also, in case of more hard sci fi, you really don't want not necessarily well screened random people who don't want to be there, on a space station, persumably with an important technical job, with access to required tools, possibly able to cause an accident that will kill everyone onboard and\or cause a fortune in damages, either by accident or just by doing his job carelessly. And he doesn't even need to be a homicidal maniac for that, what if he doesn't take the stress of being kidnapped well, or just happens to be an idiot?
Most of industrial age experiences with not exactly willing labor seem to indicate that slave labor does not lead to quality work, and in space you do really, really do want all the work to be quality work.

 

[JagerIV]

That does, to a large degree, mirror the issues for modern day employment in places like oil rigs and fishing boats. The solution would probably be very much the same - temptingly high salaries, at very least on paper.
Also, in case of more hard sci fi, you really don't want not necessarily well screened random people who don't want to be there, on a space station, persumably with an important technical job, with access to required tools, possibly able to cause an accident that will kill everyone onboard and\or cause a fortune in damages, either by accident or just by doing his job carelessly. And he doesn't even need to be a homicidal maniac for that, what if he doesn't take the stress of being kidnapped well, or just happens to be an idiot?
Most of industrial age experiences with not exactly willing labor seem to indicate that slave labor does not lead to quality work, and in space you do really, really do want all the work to be quality work.

Yeah, its definitely an unideal solution. You need two basic things to be true:

1) for some reason, you can't offer high enough salaries to attract the necessary workers. For example to take the space welder. Lets say you can make $100,000 dollars a year working in lunar orbit, with all the benefits of proximity to earth. How much more does it take to make you sign up for a mandatory 3+ year term of service to work something in the asteroid belt?

Of course, that did happen. People did, of their own free will, move to the Americas and Australian colonies. People sign up for the military for mandatory multi year terms with harsh conditions and discipline without paying dramatically more. Of course, it hasn't happened either, or at least, people haven't volunteered enough to the level "desired".

2) You have a legal system supportive of this. The thing that supported shanghaing in the past was a firm legal commitment to being on the ship for the duration of a contract, and the ability of the captain of a civilian ship to enforce harsh discipline. Because of how connected things are now, the need for the captain to be god of his ship is less, or to enforce really long term contracts with real repercussions. When your welder on a rig does something wrong, you can afford to simply fly him back to the coast for the police and courts to deal with, and fly in a replacement welder from shore after a limited delay.

Space colonies may be significantly more issolated, which may require a return to older school laws of the seas which historically had the side effect of allowing shiaghaing.

The complicating factor is that while space may be as isolated physically, if not more so, than sailing in the old days, communication may not be nearly as so. If you were shanghiaed out to, well, shanghai, your totally isolated from the rest of the world while on the ship, and once you got to shanghai, your ability to contact anyone in America would still be limited, and your best bet might just to be to get on the same ship to get back to America.

Meanwhile, normal spaceships may have more limited bandwitdth than being plugged into a planetary net, but it would be unusual, rather than normal, for the crew to have no ability to send messages back home while in transit. And once someone can get to any civilization, it should be possible to file a police report on the spot, and then wire money from your family/nation to get you home, and relatively easily name names and point to targets. Maybe more easily prove you were hired under false pretenses, rather than being a disgruntled employee. Especially if you did have the unusual "zero contact" instead of having a more normal daily or weekly video letter home, which could be a red flag for someone who was "imprissioned" rather than "regretted signing up half way through". Like how cell phone text messages can help destinquish between "casual sex happened" vs "rape" happened, which turns a he said/she said crime into something with more concrete evidence.

 

[Marduk]

Yeah, its definitely an unideal solution. You need two basic things to be true:

1) for some reason, you can't offer high enough salaries to attract the necessary workers. For example to take the space welder. Lets say you can make $100,000 dollars a year working in lunar orbit, with all the benefits of proximity to earth. How much more does it take to make you sign up for a mandatory 3+ year term of service to work something in the asteroid belt?

Of course, that did happen. People did, of their own free will, move to the Americas and Australian colonies. People sign up for the military for mandatory multi year terms with harsh conditions and discipline without paying dramatically more. Of course, it hasn't happened either, or at least, people haven't volunteered enough to the level "desired".

Obviously, you pay more. Seems like a scarce, training heavy profession. If 100k is not enough, pay 200k. Hell, if there just aren't enough space welders on the labor market, offer full training and certification to people right out of school if only they agree to take one term of service.

2) You have a legal system supportive of this. The thing that supported shanghaing in the past was a firm legal commitment to being on the ship for the duration of a contract, and the ability of the captain of a civilian ship to enforce harsh discipline. Because of how connected things are now, the need for the captain to be god of his ship is less, or to enforce really long term contracts with real repercussions. When your welder on a rig does something wrong, you can afford to simply fly him back to the coast for the police and courts to deal with, and fly in a replacement welder from shore after a limited delay.

Space colonies may be significantly more issolated, which may require a return to older school laws of the seas which historically had the side effect of allowing shiaghaing.

That's a loose connection there. Back in the same time, harsh discipline wasn't much less common and accepted on land.

The complicating factor is that while space may be as isolated physically, if not more so, than sailing in the old days, communication may not be nearly as so. If you were shanghiaed out to, well, shanghai, your totally isolated from the rest of the world while on the ship, and once you got to shanghai, your ability to contact anyone in America would still be limited, and your best bet might just to be to get on the same ship to get back to America.

Meanwhile, normal spaceships may have more limited bandwitdth than being plugged into a planetary net, but it would be unusual, rather than normal, for the crew to have no ability to send messages back home while in transit. And once someone can get to any civilization, it should be possible to file a police report on the spot, and then wire money from your family/nation to get you home, and relatively easily name names and point to targets. Maybe more easily prove you were hired under false pretenses, rather than being a disgruntled employee. Especially if you did have the unusual "zero contact" instead of having a more normal daily or weekly video letter home, which could be a red flag for someone who was "imprissioned" rather than "regretted signing up half way through". Like how cell phone text messages can help destinquish between "casual sex happened" vs "rape" happened, which turns a he said/she said crime into something with more concrete evidence.

Yeah, the legalities would make those doing it quite vulnerable to lawsuits. A spaceship is not a shady brothel or farm somewhere, like hiring under false pretenses usually works now, it's tracked all the time, landings\dockings and people entering\leaving going through customs if the local governing polity has anything to say about it, and such transfers would be registered in databases for good. Worse yet, the contract itself could be copied, or better yet, notarized, with the money and timeframes involved.

 

[JagerIV]

Obviously, you pay more. Seems like a scarce, training heavy profession. If 100k is not enough, pay 200k. Hell, if there just aren't enough space welders on the labor market, offer full training and certification to people right out of school if only they agree to take one term of service.

Yeah, "people regretting their contract" seems much more likely than true false pretenses happening. Like, you think 4 years of sign up is fine, especially maybe combined with a training program, but 2 years in it becomes untollerable. But, well, unlike college you can't just drop out. Or maybe the small print or not really understanding the contract makes it sound better than it really is. For example, you sign up and think your going to be paid a lot, but the ship is doing a company store like system, or you just didn't realize how much more expensive living out in the belt is, so "cost of living" and fees paid to the mining operation for say, non grewl food or repairs/replacements means your actually living in poverty and not actually building savings.

Or you have some sort of tramp miner who pays on a "share" basis: your going off to mine an isolated asteroid that's very small but a probe suggests it might have value (or not be claimed and thus there's a hope to make a bigger profit for not having to buy the land). So, like, your entitled to 0.1% of the profit. They expect to make $300 million from the expedition. So you go, yeah, you go "that's like $300,000 dollars". But, that's the high level, most optimistic estimate of what they'll get. What if it gets only $150 million, either its less rich, or the price is not as high as initially expected. And its based, in small text, profit rather than gross. Other fixed costs are $100 million, so actual profit is $50 million in the end, so 0.1% of the profit is only $50,000 in pay, and over the course of the expedition you built up a tab to the ship of $45,000 dollars, so you leave after a year or so in the belt with $5,000 in your pocket.

Of course, the line between being shanghaied and signing a miss leading contract might be pretty thin. But, a misleading contract is obviously preferable to outright illegal behavior and kidnapping.

That's a loose connection there. Back in the same time, harsh discipline wasn't much less common and accepted on land.

Eh, I don't know much about the actual historical practice: most of my research amounted to looking at the wiki pages, where the ability to enforce harsh discipline was listed as an important element.

Yeah, the legalities would make those doing it quite vulnerable to lawsuits. A spaceship is not a shady brothel or farm somewhere, like hiring under false pretenses usually works now, it's tracked all the time, landings\dockings and people entering\leaving going through customs if the local governing polity has anything to say about it, and such transfers would be registered in databases for good. Worse yet, the contract itself could be copied, or better yet, notarized, with the money and timeframes involved.

Yeah, you really need the powers that be to be giving a wink and a nod to the practice. Could be as simple as it being tied into organized crime of some sort, so the customs house is somehow corruptly in on it (helps if the port is itself some sort of hive of scum and villainy in general). Or there's some sort of government policy encouraging it in some way, for example for geopolitical reasons they want there to be more deep space infrastructure and presence than the market can naturally support. Though either subsidies or straight impressment, like conscription or penal colonies would make sense.

Shaighiaing is definitely not a system someone would design to meet some goal, it has to organically evolve out of the situation accidentally.

 

[Laskar]

Well, the simple answer is that it’s the future, and the future is not today. If you’re trying to justify 19th-century employment practices in an analogue to todays’ society, you’re going to fail. So if shanghaiing sailors is practiced in a future setting, that setting is not going to have modern values.

Obviously, you pay more. Seems like a scarce, training heavy profession. If 100k is not enough, pay 200k. Hell, if there just aren't enough space welders on the labor market, offer full training and certification to people right out of school if only they agree to take one term of service.

Not necessarily. Hiring a skilled technician out from another firm is almost always going to be cheaper and faster than training a new guy. You see that today, where many employers require several years of experience from new hires. And if they can’t find anyone domestic with the requisite experience, they often hire foreigners on work visas. This has been going on for so long that there is an experience gap in the trades, and a looming experience crunch that’s starting to hit now that baby boomers are retiring. For too long, employers have gotten by through poaching skilled workers off of each other. Now it's all starting to fall apart.

Also, there simply might not be enough time to hire and train someone the regular way. In a hard-SF setting, this could be because the launch window is almost here. In a softer setting, this could be because there’s a war going on right now, and there simply isn’t enough time to wait for new sailors from the academy.

In the kind of setting where shanghaiing is a common practice, there simply is not going to be a professional navy. There is going to be a navy, and it is going to be very unprofessional. It could be that corruption is the rule of life in the military or civilian society, so you are looking at the 27th-century equivalent to a banana republic or the Czar’s regime.

All the institutions and creeds that created the modern professional military have been abandoned, or were never formed in the first place, and while there may be a core of good officers keeping the whole thing from collapsing in on itself, there are many officers who are a law unto themselves, and run their ships as they see fit. Or maybe the navy is going through a rapid expansion, and captains are filling the holes in their rosters by abducting civilian sailors. There was once a small professional navy, but it got wrecked fighting a superior foe, and the central government is too weak to conscript replacements and too unpopular to appeal to patriotism.

The complicating factor is that while space may be as isolated physically, if not more so, than sailing in the old days, communication may not be nearly as so. If you were shanghiaed out to, well, shanghai, your totally isolated from the rest of the world while on the ship, and once you got to shanghai, your ability to contact anyone in America would still be limited, and your best bet might just to be to get on the same ship to get back to America.

Meanwhile, normal spaceships may have more limited bandwitdth than being plugged into a planetary net, but it would be unusual, rather than normal, for the crew to have no ability to send messages back home while in transit. And once someone can get to any civilization, it should be possible to file a police report on the spot, and then wire money from your family/nation to get you home, and relatively easily name names and point to targets.

The captain of the ship is the master of the ship. If he doesn’t want a message to go out, it will not go out. All communications from the ship are censored, perhaps by a dedicated AI. And even if a message could get out, the captain has a pet forger on his crew. Hell, every captain in the navy has one. Forging documents is a daily necessity to get everything one needs from the navy’s byzantine procurement system. For a price, a deep-faked video of the technician swearing his loyalty pledge and signing on the dotted line can be bought, though usually it’s enough to bribe some port officials into swearing that they witnessed you sign up.