Most of these are in current union contracts
Iām thinking of a six man outside tug crew instead of the typical four or five.
You mentioned that ships need two- 3rd Mates and two - 3AEs. I suspect that a Purser would be in order too. Maybe two Cadets.
Crew costs per container delivered, or per barrel delivered, are so low that there is no real reason not to have an ample crew. It does not matter if it costs an extra $2 to deliver a container or if the price of gasoline goes up 2 cents per gallon. The extra crew cost is trivial.
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Iām with you.
[quote=ātugsailor, post:60, topic:5095ā]
Union or company provides or pays for all STCW and professional development courses
[/quote]This was being payed in grant money to the individual companies that applied
[quote=ātugsailor, post:60, topic:5095ā]
Maximum allowed 401K match that is fully vested immediately
[/quote]Again the feds could fix the vesting issue
[quote=ātugsailor, post:60, topic:5095ā]
Full day rate paid door to door,
[/quote]Iām not sure how the gulf companies get away with the 1/2 day crap maybe that could be addressed with better labor laws that get enforced
[quote=ātugsailor, post:60, topic:5095ā]
Larger crew sizes
[/quote]This should be addressed regardless maybe without corporate pressure.
[quote=ātugsailor, post:60, topic:5095ā]
All travel expenses including airfare, mileage, parking, meals, lodging, taxi, etc. paid in full door to door,
[/quote] I believe somewhere buried in the STCW code itās required to return the mariner to the port vessel was boarded.
If we had any backing for laws already on the books I think this wish list isnāt unreachable with a little collective bargaining the way it was intended.
Of course those are in most union contracts, Iām not proposing anything too radical or pie-in-the-sky.
If you want a little more radical sounding idea: whatever the Longshormen get, we should get more. With the average Longshorman with no certifications or licenses getting $144,000 per year, plus benefits, for a job that lets him go home every night, itās obvious that Seafarerās should be making more.
Once the new Seafarerās Guild gets established and organized, itās primary goal should be to get fair wages and benefits for seafarerās that are at least as much as the longshoremen.
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A 3a/e for certain. Right now on many ships running UMS there can be a real juggling act with STCW due to the 1AE being in the duty rotation. I also would not complain if I were given a real true to life electronics technician with a technical understanding above and beyond what the current electrician rating is.
Deck side Iām not sure if an additional 3/m would be beneficial vs another C/M. Iāve heard about an idea to have an additional C/M who was sort of a captain in training. They were jokingly referred to as the āPapermate.ā The C/Mās split their 8 hours of watch. One C/M was responsible for running the deck and the Papermate responsible for all of the new paperwork and maintaining compliance with rules and regs that seem to come out every year. Essentially the Papermate was an assistant captain but could also fill in for the other mates to ease STCW rest hour burdens. The position was also a required stepping stone to master on board the companyās vessels. The guys I overheard talking about it were talking as though their company had implemented it, but Iāve never seen it on the ships Iāve been on.
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The āPapermateā sounds like a worthy idea.
This effectively is what you can achieve with a day working Chief mate. Also consider the sales pitch to the company. Another third mate is way cheaper than a second Chief mate.
You are definitely correct that it is more and more difficult to maintain the STCW rest periods with the first having a duty day and the mate having to stand watch. The additional officers would allow a certain amount of flexibility to spread the rest hours around with the ever shortening port calls. Itās a solution that not many companies want to acknowledge, but if we are being serious about fatigue, itās the right thing to do.
Or the CM doesnāt stand a watch at all and both runs the deck and helps with office paperwork. As others pointed out, a second 3M is significantly cheaper than a second CM.
I would say ācontributionā rather than āmatchā.
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For most of the years that I was on the ATB, we had a ābasicā 28 day rotation. Of course this was reliant on when we hit port and, for me, if I had a relief. Most of the time I ended up working about 9 months a year. Either because of ācan you stay onboard until the next port?ā, or āHey, your relief quitā. . .always sucked when they quit a few days before crew change, or once, with my bags packed, the day of crew change. Most times it was manageable since I was young and single back then and extra days had little impact on my personal life. It also worked fairly well when we were running domestic coastwise routes. Once we lost our sweetheart charter, tramp style trips to the west coast of South America and other spots in the Caribbean made it a bit harder to maintain. The WORST style was what I had to deal with at Belcher. There, it was a 28 x 28 rotation, but the entire crew changed at once. If you didnāt have a relief, you stayed onboard until they got one for you. Then, you had to come back with your regular crew. They paid you the same, regardless of the days at sea. Supposedly, after a year, if you sailed extra days, they would pay a bonus. I donāt know if they did. I quite after six months of the BS. . . . and never got any recompense for my extra days at sea. . . .
Sure, its cheaper but you get a lot less.
With a chief mate and 1st mate neither is going to require much if any supervision. A third mate typically will. So it depends on the operation. There is a reason the 8x12 is called āthe captainās watchā.
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In the maritime world you most definitely get what you pay for!
Yes, If a ship running coastwise in a heavy traffic area replaces the C/M on watch at night with a third mate the captain is going to take a big hit.
Same thing with cargo, maybe on a box boat a third mate can lean on the rail as good as anyone but with breakbulk or RO/RO nobody in their right mind is going to leave a typical third mate to oversee the loading and lashing of āhigh and heavyā cargo.
Yes but your dayworking Chief mate could oversee the lashing and final loading of cargo without the issues of cutting into their rest period before turning to for watch. I worked tankers for a few years with a second third mate and the chief mate would be present for gauging, topping up, stripping, or anything that needed his attention. It works and it gives better flexibility.
Iāll agree with you that it is easier to sleep at night knowing that the Chief mate is on the bridge, but Iāve had fairly good third mates over the years and feel it can be done successfully. The major downside I can immediately detect is the lack of bridge time a dayworking Chief mate gets which could lead to a softening of skills on the bridge which wouldnāt be good for the eventual Captains job, but that could be managed with the occasional arrival or docking.
To me it is about getting another license in the rack that we can put to good use spreading the workload out. Iād take anything the company gave me at this point. It is near impossible to stay within the letter of the law on rest periods on most tight turnarounds and the solution is either to slow down the pace (not gonna happen) or get more qualified people onboard to help out. Until then we are going to continue to see a lot of noncomformities on the rest logs.
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Sure, so there are two factors, the number of hours and frequency of cargo ops and the ratio of when the C/M needs to be on deck / not needed on deck.
If those factors are the same on tanker as on RO/RO than each would have the same needs. But they are not the same.