I have a quick question regarding Crowley Western Alaska AB/Tankerman pay?
as the summer hits the layoffs are starting to come in!,
I was layed off for a day 2 weeks ago,
which is typical in the summer months at Bouchard,
and I finally bought a house and I need to keep making the mortgage payments…
anyone here at gcaptain work for Crowley’s Western Alaskan fleet working fuel oil?
and is a member of United Steelworkers Union (USW)?
I did a search as I know all about ccaptains pointy stick, but all of the Crowley information is very dated!
I have a quick question regarding Crowley Western Alaska AB/Tankerman pay?
as the summer hits the layoffs are starting to come in!,
I was layed off for a day 2 weeks ago,
which is typical in the summer months at Bouchard,
and I finally bought a house and I need to keep making the mortgage payments…
anyone here at gcaptain work for Crowley’s Western Alaskan fleet working fuel oil?
and is a member of United Steelworkers Union (USW)?
I did a search as I know all about ccaptains pointy stick, but all of the Crowley information is very dated!
Tony[/QUOTE]
Crowley is top to bottom SIU. Dont know about the fleet on the west coast for pay wise but i know Crowley is known for rounding out the bottom. Dealing with their ATBs i think you deal with Crowley direct and not SIU so good luck.
[QUOTE=Goirish44;137865]Crowley is top to bottom SIU. Dont know about the fleet on the west coast for pay wise but i know Crowley is known for rounding out the bottom. Dealing with their ATBs i think you deal with Crowley direct and not SIU so good luck.[/QUOTE]
Crowley is top to bottom SIU on the EAST Coast. Crowley is usually MMP & IBU on the WEST Coast. Crowley’s Western Alaska fleet is United Steelworkers Union Local 5000 (a Great Lakes Union). Local 5000 must have offered the lowest wages. Crowley has no ATBs, manned barges, or “barge captains” in Western Alaska, just a few older boats. Most companies working in Western Alaska expect their crews to work straight through the whole season. There are a lot of ex-Crowley guys around in Alaska.
[QUOTE=Goirish44;137865]Crowley is top to bottom SIU. Dont know about the fleet on the west coast for pay wise but i know Crowley is known for rounding out the bottom. Dealing with their ATBs i think you deal with Crowley direct and not SIU so good luck.[/QUOTE]
Crowley is not all SIU. The western AK fleet is indeed USW (I have no idea why, but it is true)
I’ve got a friend that’s a mate in that fleet. He loves it. I wouldn’t do it, but to each his own. They work six months straight or something like that, depending on ice conditions, then collect unemployment for the rest of the year. Tiny barges and boats moving up tiny rivers. I think depending on what boat you’re on there are some really mellow Captains up there. It would be an adventure at the very least. No idea on the pay, and because they’re with that little union I can’t look it up in the contract.
Crowley is Crowley, more paperwork and less pay. I have not heard about the pay recently, but its undoubtedly less than SIU and the nonunion companies.
[QUOTE=sailorman1981;137892]Question: Is Crowley using an ATB to supply the Western Alaska tugs with fuel/oil for the villages?
I know the Seneca or Sioux would drag a fuel barge around so the fleet could lighter off of.[/QUOTE]
Crowley charters foreign flag tankers to lighter from (the fuel comes from Asia), and also charters Kirby to do line haul tug and barge work from the Alaska refineries. If Kirby uses any ATBs in Western Alaska, I haven’t seen them. I do see Kirby ATBs in Southeast Alaska and BC.
OK, Thanks for the input guys, Crowley Rep just called me and the wage is $344.00 a day on a 12,000 bbl barge
working about 6 months or so, That is not bad for a tiny vessel to be honest, And is better then no pay during a layoff!
Sioux and Seneca are long gone as well as all of crowleys line haul oil barges. Single hulled stuff was all phased out. They do have the ATB’s but as stated Kirby seems to be doing most of the work as well as chartered tankers. I have heard good and bad from the boats up there. I know of a few classmates deck side who worked up there and needless to say after 1 summer none of them went back…cowboy country up there so adventurous yes!
I saw Island got the Seneca, Sioux and an old Pt boat from Crowley. Western/Arctic Alaska is the Wild West for sure, I worked two summers up there while going to college for Red Stack.
Kirby pays the tankerman more than the engineers on the ATBs, $550/day. The engineers at Kirby are the lowest paid clowns in the circus. They built new double hull barges and push them around with 25 year old rustbuckets and stupid captains. I had a captain tell me to unhook the wires to a rented power pack gen set on deck (backup main generator). One of main generators was destroyed and in pieces. I TOLD THE NUMB-NUT CAPTAIN “I’m not sailing with one generator and 100,000 gals of gasoline and diesel under tow”. Apparently the captain had done this before when the genset was set on deck without being wired up and inadequate gauge wire to feed the switchboard. You’ll see that ATB on the front page of the Anchorage daily news someday.
I worked on a crowley ship and the captain was from Homer. He was a good seaman and was doing pilot observing time with the Anchorage pilots and saw that ATB I was previously on going through an area Marked “Boulder Field” with a loaded barge on the way into Anchorage. He told me expected to see that barge on the front page of the Times someday.
I don’t tow oil, but from what I hear AB/Tankermen make as much, or more, than Mates with master of towing and a lot of Alaska experience. I don’t get that.
I know some good people who work at Kirby, but they have a lot of idiots that don’t belong in Alaska. The impression I get is that its a huge company with tons of paperwork and the Gulf of Mexico Joe Boss bad attitude. They like to send people up from the Gulf with that “yessuh, bossman” attitude. The boats appear to be poorly maintained and poorly managed .They are also into the ridiculous physicals for hiring, but bend the rules like crazy to keep the people they have. I don’t want to see Kirby get any bigger on the West Coast, smaller would be better.
For every person I meet that is happy working at Crowley, there are 10 that hate it. Its amazing how much smaller Crowley has become in Alaska. There are ex-Crowley people everywhere in Alaska. Too many ex-Crowley people are forever brainwashed into “the Crowley way.”
AB/T on the 750’s do quite well, but they are SIU Inland which isn’t to terrible. When I worked for Crowley, they sent a 550 series up to Alaska a couple times. I think it was to keep them from being laid up when work was slow.
To bad steam is gone - a question. The numb nuts captain you say asked you to unhook the wires to this portable generator? Was that because the second previous generator had been repaired and now there were two gen sets below deck,or he was just being a yeasa boss as I have seen referenced in this post? Just curious.
The rent-a-generator was up outside the engine room hatch. The cables going to the switchboard went through the hatch not an electrical stuffing tube. The captain was worried if there was a fire we could not seal up the engineroom and use the Haylon (boy I thought that stuff was gone with the steam ships). The captain was correct about the wires but I informed him I could cut them with a fire ax to get the hatch shut if the engine compartment was fully engulfed, (after shutting off the deck generator of course). I stirred up a hornets nest with him (captain) and the port engineer (he had been a hydraulic parts salesman before the put on his engineering cap). The port engineer flew up from Seattle and I flew the f out of there as fast as I could.
I shipped oil from Alaska for 10 years on VLCC’s and we would have run our turbines with no oil going to them to avoid an environmental disaster like the Exxon Valdez if we had to get the vessel to a safe anchorage in an emergency. With no power to a tug you have no steering. If the only other generator is not wired up you are screwed in confined waters if your only power source fails.