Bouchard crew concerns

If you have legit chest pains only 3 days after missing payroll, then prepare for your med cert to be pulled until you can be thoroughly examined and re-certified to the satisfaction of the USCG. That’s not healthy.

Trained for what exactly? They got word that BTC crews were preparing to (or had) reduce manning onboard their vessels below the legal minimum resulting in an unsafe situation. The proper initial action was for the respective COTPs to do exactly what they did - remind the masters of their legal responsibilities in regards to safe manning of the vessels. If compliance is found to not be happening or, god forbid, an incident occurs, then they will take further action. Meanwhile, everything else (wage/lien related) is a matter of civil law to be handled in federal court.

Despite the “sea lawyerness” of so many around here, there is nothing that has happened here which is not part of the due process of law.

BTW I say all of this not in any means as a defender of BTC or their notoriously bad behavior. I actually work for their competition.

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The most plausible scenario is that the Bouchard crews want to keep their high paying jobs, and go with the vessels when they are sold, or Bouchard is put under the control of a trustee. They also assume that they will eventually be paid. Thus, they really are not trying very hard to get off the vessels.

Remember that this is setting a precedent. Lots of owners are watching. If this method of threatening the public good to get indentured service from a CotP is successful then what’s to stop the next company from doing it? Your company?

We all know what’s going on here. Lawyers have figured out how to manipulate the situation to their clients advantage. Now you advocate the mariner victims do nothing but hire their own lawyers?

Those mariners need to threaten the public good as well. It should be legal. Obviously destruction of property isn’t legal. But a hunger strike is. (It might even help get media attention.) It would show the CotP the mariners are desperate and need resolution.

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I love how everyone is a maritime lawyer all of a sudden. This is yet another thread that has spun out of control with redundant suggestions about things that are already being done. Can’t we have one thread kept to facts about the vessels/logistics and perhaps ways we can assist the stranded crew?

Example:
I live in NYC. Does anyone know if the local vessels need/would appreciate anything in particular? Couple cans of dip, a box of pastries? Need something mailed out to their family for them? Let me know and I’ll make it happen.

That’s what you call being helpful as opposed to being a useless keyboard warrior. If anyone is on these vessels (Port of NY/NJ) or knows someone on these vessels please message me.

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The useful practical solutions have been mentioned. Get a lawyer, call your elective representative, seek media attention. They have been exhausted and have still not worked. Maybe it’s time for extraordinary solutions.

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Now that sounds about right. Good for Genesis

Are there any Bouchard vessels still at anchor in NY/NJ? Don’t know but aren’t they all alongside at this point?

What about Port Arthur International Seafarer’s Center? ? Two ATBs still at anchor, don’t know the status. The padre there was supplying fresh produce at last report. They take paypal.

Do they send Marine Chemists to charm school? AKA as leadership and management? I’m thinking no.

The COTP took control of the Bouchard vessels in New Orleans.

Commander of Coast Guard Sector New Orleans and Captain of the Port of New Orleans, issued Notices of Federal Assumption (NOFA) for two Bouchard ATBs — tugs Donna J. Bouchard and Bouchard Girls and associated barges — that had been at anchor outside the port since mid-November,

It seems to me the COTP is very much at the center of this situation. The NY COTP has, deliberately or not, created uncertainty as to the status of the crews now on board when they issued the notice mentioning abandonment but not specifying how crews could legitimately leave the vessel without risk of action against their documents.

I’m here asking for information so that I can try and help. Your response is to poke fun at me? What exactly have you done?

Charm school? I put in my time in leadership and management at a Tier 1 Shipyard, and no matter what I always sympathized with the guys at the deck-plate level doing the real work. In this case, our fellow seamen who are stuck in a floating prison cell.

Forget it. I’ll go to the arrested tugboats around here myself and ask if they need anything. Stick to your keyboard.

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I didn’t intend to poke fun at you. Good to hear you’re looking to help. Thanks for that.

My point is that to get people to cooperate it’s better to not insult. Learned that in rehab.

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A Notice of Federal Assumption is not an arrest and will do nothing to help the crew recover their lost wages. They need to get a lien placed on the vessel itself at which point it could potentially be arrested by the US Marshal service. Again, this is not a function of the USCG.

I agree that the COTP will not help crewmembers recover lost wages.

However by creating uncertainly about the status of a mariner’s MMC the COTP arguably has created a situation that appears to have helped Bouchard here at the expense of working mariners.

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Looks like the Donna Bouchard is being towed into Fourchon right now. Maybe their long ordeal is coming to an end.

They were being escorted by the CG last night

It looks like the Donna Bouchard is secure to a mooring in Fourchon, on the west side of the canal.

I wonder if the crew is still stuck onboard?

3 barges and 2 tugs moored up just outside the Gowanus. 1 in the lower end of Stapleton? And I think one was outside the bridge last night. Thought I just saw a tankerman walking around out on deck with a sign around his neck “will work for food”…

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If I was on one of their units I would defiantly have a bed sheet or something hung over the side with something similar painted on it.

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What’s the worst that could happen if an employee did such a thing? I bet it’s impossible to maintain discipline when employees aren’t getting paid & being sent home would be considered a reward? I’d workout 8 hours, read books for 8 & sleep/nap anytime I wanted.

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If I wasn’t getting paid I would not do a damn thing, I’d be cooking over an open fire on the deck until I got a ride to the airport. What they going to do fire you from an unpaid job? I wouldn’t even be on the ship unless there was jail time or license loss facing me if I went off the ship.Has the USCG in writing threatened to do any of these things to the people on Bouchard vessels or is this just people making drama out of thin air? One has to wonder about the employment situation among mariners in the USA if they put up with this crap and stay on board. Have they accepted that they are slaves on the plantation, lost their cojones or what?. There has to be something I am missing here. Geez… when times were slow I took a 3AE job while holding a CE license but I never would have considered working for free or a hope.

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