Chouest Pay Cut 10%

Professional Mariner Forum
41

[QUOTE=tugsailor;158883]So, you get paid for 14 days, but actually spend 15 days on the boat (12 hours after around noon the day you come on, and 12 hours until around noon on the day you get off, and then have 13 unpaid days off, plus two unpaid half days spent traveling to and from. I wouldn’t like that, if I’m confined to the boat for 12 hours, and responsible for whatever happens on the boat for 12 hours, I sure as hell want to be paid for a full day. But given your excellent day rate, I can see where that more than makes up for it. I can also see where the 14/14 schedule would be worth it for some people.[/QUOTE]

How is 12 hours a full day? If you figure your standard day rate is for being on the boat for 24 hours and responsible for the boat for 24 hours, and you get a half day’s pay for being there for 12, it still works out the same. By your logic, you should get paid double for every day you’re there (days you’re responsible for 24 hours) since you want regular pay the days you are only there for 12?

If you’re there for more than 14 days you get paid for more than 14 days. 15 calendar days (also 15 calendar days home technically then) perhaps but 2 half days plus 13 whole days still comes out to 14. If you work a regular rotation I really don’t know anywhere that’s going to pay you for the full day when you’re only there for 1/2 a day. I just know if I add up all my 6 hour watches and multiply it by half my day rate I’m not being taken advantage of.

42

Every Company I have worked overseas for, since the early 90s, paid from the time you left and until you got home. That is with a FULL days of pay, no matter what time you departed or arrived back home.
Last year they changed it to 1/2 day for departure after 1200 and a full day for departure before 1200, the same thing was done for the day you go home. Now it is 1/2 day for ANY time you leave or arrive back home. Also, the Brasil division brings you in a day early for pre-embark meetings and the off chance that crew change will be a day early (this happens more than not), you now get 1/2 day pay for this as well. As far as the days joining and departing go, we now get only 1/2 day pay for this as well.

For the ones that work domestic that do not understand overseas: This pay scheme is what we signed up for when we started working overseas. To change it now is BS, but we all understand the down turn and at least we have a job. We understand that we picked this job and work the extra days and are away from home for longer times than you guys, that is also the reason for the Full days of pay and not taking a 1/2 day here and 1/2 day there. A nice incentive to get guys to work overseas and not stay in the GoM.

Oh, and the so called FREE classes??? Well, most of them you have to sign away at least a year in a 'Í Promise not to leave" and then you get into the ‘Well the class is full, we can put you on standby’…I signed up for two classes and heard the same thing and the son got the same reply 3 times.

I do not have the time to waste ‘ón standby’. I started this in the late 70s and have always paid my own way and on my own schedule, a long time before the companies would pay for squat. Class, Hotel, Transportation, Food all paid for by me.

43

[QUOTE=z-drive;158893]How is 12 hours a full day? If you figure your standard day rate is for being on the boat for 24 hours and responsible for the boat for 24 hours, and you get a half day’s pay for being there for 12, it still works out the same. By your logic, you should get paid double for every day you’re there (days you’re responsible for 24 hours) since you want regular pay the days you are only there for 12?

If you’re there for more than 14 days you get paid for more than 14 days. 15 calendar days (also 15 calendar days home technically then) perhaps but 2 half days plus 13 whole days still comes out to 14. If you work a regular rotation I really don’t know anywhere that’s going to pay you for the full day when you’re only there for 1/2 a day. I just know if I add up all my 6 hour watches and multiply it by half my day rate I’m not being taken advantage of.[/QUOTE]

Maybe it ought to be a different story on a harbor boat, or when crew change is just two hours from home.

Most of what a sailor gets paid for is the hardship of being away from home. In theory, I work 12 hour days, but the reality is that I average about 15 hours a day, I should get OT for that extra time, but I don’t. I should get OT whenever I have to get my hands dirty handling cargo, or doing repairs, but I don’t. Whenever I am away from home at the employers request and for the employers benefit, I expect to be paid. If I have to fly from Anchorage out to Dutch Harbor three times over three days before the plane lands, I am just as a way from home and I need to be paid for all three of those days. If I have to wait five days in Dutch to get a flight out, I need to be paid for those days too. (All of those things have happened). I more than earn whatever I am paid, and I make money for the owners, so I naturally expect to be paid my full wages for every day that I am away from home in the employer’s service.

44

You can’t compare working in Alaska and the travel complexities therein to the northeast. I’d agree entirely in those circumstances you should get paid, at the very least for days you’re stuck. I don’t think you’d find too many people who find our system unfair given the circumstances though. It’s apples to oranges. You’re dealing win days of travel, were are dealing with a few hours usually.

How about when joe boss schedules you to crewchange in the GOM on weds but you don’t get on the boat until thurs or fri because of the customer or whatever? When do you start getting paid? Do they hire a chopper to make sure it doesn’t happen?

45

Since we’re on the subject of paycuts, did anyone know about this shuttle service trying to start up from New Orleans Airport to Port Fourchon? they have stops at PHI-Houma and Bristow heliport too as the plan says but they’re looking for surveys to help make this happen. save $$ for the flyers…

The link is here www.limolivery.com/oil-shuttle

46

testing my reply - last one didn’t go through…

47

[QUOTE=z-drive;158923]You can’t compare working in Alaska and the travel complexities therein to the northeast. I’d agree entirely in those circumstances you should get paid, at the very least for days you’re stuck. I don’t think you’d find too many people who find our system unfair given the circumstances though. It’s apples to oranges. You’re dealing win days of travel, were are dealing with a few hours usually.

How about when joe boss schedules you to crewchange in the GOM on weds but you don’t get on the boat until thurs or fri because of the customer or whatever? When do you start getting paid? Do they hire a chopper to make sure it doesn’t happen?[/QUOTE]

Sitting on a boat right now in the GOM after crew change day. No extra pay (Still getting their day rate) for the guys who are supposed to be getting off and the division that I am in the client stipulates that they allow NO OFFSHORE CREW CHANGES. Though that only applies to us vessel personnel… the rig changes offshore quite often.

We get no crew boat nor helo. That is client driven though, not our company… which doesn’t make me feel any differently about sitting here after crew change comes and goes.

48

So the guys on the beach are getting paid and you aren’t while stuck (working) on the boat? Or nobody is getting paid?

49

[QUOTE=z-drive;158952]So the guys on the beach are getting paid and you aren’t while stuck (working) on the boat? Or nobody is getting paid?[/QUOTE]

No, the guys who are still at home don’t get paid until they get here. So until they crew change they are without work and pay.

50

[QUOTE=blaineatk;158951]Sitting on a boat right now in the GOM after crew change day. No extra pay (Still getting their day rate) for the guys who are supposed to be getting off and the division that I am in the client stipulates that they allow NO OFFSHORE CREW CHANGES. Though that only applies to us vessel personnel… the rig changes offshore quite often.

We get no crew boat nor helo. That is client driven though, not our company… which doesn’t make me feel any differently about sitting here after crew change comes and goes.[/QUOTE]

Maybe its because your client doesn’t like midget mates :slight_smile:

51

[QUOTE=blaineatk;158956]No, the guys who are still at home don’t get paid until they get here. So until they crew change they are without work and pay.[/QUOTE]

If the oncoming crew is still sitting at home without pay — no problem. That’s how it ought to be. But if they left home at the employers request to join the vessel, they need to be paid their full day rates. The employer can best afford to bear the risk of customer or weather caused crew change delays, and all the attendant expenses — hotels, meals, taxi, rental car, etc. An employer that expects its crew to sleep in a carryall on the dock for two days without pay is a thief.

52

[QUOTE=tugsailor;158972]An employer that expects its crew to sleep in a carryall on the dock for two days without pay is a thief.[/QUOTE]

Oh my GOD!..not you too?

let’s step this up a notch

2 hours in the carryall, 5 hours at the dock in Fourchon w waiting for the crewboat to arrive, 4 hours on the crewboat waiting for it to depart, 6 hours out to your vessel in 12’ seas with people puking and the head not fit for a Neanderthal, too rough to do personnel transfer on arrival, 2 hours waiting on the crewboat for seas to come down, still can’t transfer, do the Billy Pugh ride up to a platform, (at least finally get coffee and some food), your boat can’t get to platform because other vessels have priority, 6 hours waiting on the platform and boat finally comes in to transfer personnel, crane operators all leave to go eat right when about to start, another hour’s wait till crane operators ready and finally 27 hours after leaving the office you set food on your boat and expected to immediately start a 12 hour watch. How much did you just get paid for all this misery?

NOT NEARLY ENOUGH is the correct answer!

53

Well BHP is just BHP, it’s not like the real world.

54

Philosophical question: when should pay start? Obviously, from the mariner’s perspective, it would be from door-to-door. From the boss’s perspective it’s from the time you actually turn to for duty on your vessel. Neither extreme is necessarily ideal. So where’s the happy medium? If your vessel is tied up at a dock, then maybe it’s okay to start pay upon embarkation. If you have to take a crew boat/launch, helo, whatever it may be, then I would argue it should start from the time you show up at that crew boat or helo, even if you have to wait a while for that particular mode of transport to be ready to take you out. If you have to wait in a hotel somewhere for your vessel to get to the dock, I would argue pay should start somewhere around hotel check-in.

The boss, on the other hand, might argue that it’s not his fault the weather sucks, the vessel was held up somewhere through no fault of his or the vessel’s own, and I can kind of see his point, he doesn’t want to pay you for work you’re not actually performing. My counterargument to that is, if I’m not getting paid, I’d much rather be doing my own thing somewhere else, and in any event part of the reason I’m getting paid is for being away from home.

Maybe the answer is somewhere in between, maybe get paid from the vessel’s normal port of call, and likewise when getting off. It’s pretty common in other sectors of the industry, why won’t GOM mariners band together and demand something similar?

One more question: what happens if, heaven forbid, you get seriously injured during one of these personnel transfers? I would assume that legally the company should bear full responsibility, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the boss tried to weasel out of it every way he could.

55

At latest it should start as soon your meet your shipmates at the rendezvous point whether it be the office parking lot, airport or port where you will take a helo or crewboat from

56

[QUOTE=bcoogan23;158988]At latest it should start as soon your meet your shipmates at the rendezvous point whether it be the office parking lot, airport or port where you will take a helo or crewboat from[/QUOTE]

That’s probably a better way of describing what I wanted to say.

57

If you are an hourly employee, a computer technician, at a company in Miami that sells fancy computers, and the company sends you to San Francisco to fix a customer’s computer — when does your pay start? If you depart from the employer’s facility in Miami, your pay must have started when you punched in for work. If you are dispatched from home, your pay must start when you walk out your door headed for the airport.

Obviously, you are going to get your hourly rate for a full day every day while you are gone, and a lot of OT. You are going to get some kind or per diem, and all expenses paid.

When does your pay end? When you get back to the employers premises and punch out at the end of the day, or if outside of business hours, when you arrive back home.

This is how employment normally works when an employee is sent out of town on a job in America.

Why should it be any different for us?

58

I completely agree 1000000%, I just don’t ever see that happening. At least not down here in the GoM.

59

[QUOTE=tugsailor;158995]If you are an hourly employee, a computer technician, at a company in Miami that sells fancy computers, and the company sends you to San Francisco to fix a customer’s computer — when does your pay start? If you depart from the employer’s facility in Miami, your pay must have started when you punched in for work. If you are dispatched from home, your pay must start when you walk out your door headed for the airport.

Obviously, you are going to get your hourly rate for a full day every day while you are gone, and a lot of OT. You are going to get some kind or per diem, and all expenses paid.

When does your pay end? When you get back to the employers premises and punch out at the end of the day, or if outside of business hours, when you arrive back home.

This is how employment normally works when an employee is sent out of town on a job in America.

Why should it be any different for us?[/QUOTE]

If you offer an hourly rate to a GOM boat Captain, with everything after 8 hours over-time, and a 10% pension on the base salary, paid door-to-door, he will spend his next 12 hour watch figuring out what that means compared to what he’s making per day.

It’s not likely that many boat companies will ever try to pay hourly and have that hassle on the accounting side.

But, it’s easy enough to figure hours, 2328 regular time, everything after 8 hours per day as overtime, for an additional 769 hours/year. Figure from door-to-door. Throw in a make believe 10% pension fund, and see what that comes out to compared to a typical 28/28 GOM Captain day rate. I imagine it would be around 30 plus per hour, about the same as an emergency room RN. If people were looking for doctor pay in the oil field, hats off to them for wishful thinking.

The boat companies will always pay a day rate, but anyone can figure or correlate it to make themselves feel better or worse, accept an offer or not. This entire thread began because employees had something that is now gone, which always hurts. You can make $400,000 per year, and lose 10%, and this same conversation will take place. Regardless of how everything plays out, and I hope for the better (although I am pessimistic right now and think it will get much worse based on supply/demand fundamentals in the market), the rock solid truth of the GOM is the day rate. Always has been and always will be.

60

[QUOTE=tugsailor;158995]If you are an hourly employee, a computer technician, at a company in Miami that sells fancy computers, and the company sends you to San Francisco to fix a customer’s computer — when does your pay start? If you depart from the employer’s facility in Miami, your pay must have started when you punched in for work. If you are dispatched from home, your pay must start when you walk out your door headed for the airport.

Obviously, you are going to get your hourly rate for a full day every day while you are gone, and a lot of OT. You are going to get some kind or per diem, and all expenses paid.

When does your pay end? When you get back to the employers premises and punch out at the end of the day, or if outside of business hours, when you arrive back home.

This is how employment normally works when an employee is sent out of town on a job in America.

Why should it be any different for us?[/QUOTE]

With all this talk about how “backward” the GOM is in regards to travel, why hasn’t anybody mentioned that at least at some West Coast towing outfits, you’re screwed over just as successfully regarding travel?