Sure. There’s MMP, MEBA, and SIU halls in Houston/La Porte area. The ships and boats might not stay in the area, but the hall is Gulf Coast. If you’re knocking on doors in the area and striking out, it’s always worth a try. I understand the main content of this thread is oil patch GoM; however, the poster to which that comment was geared toward had been complaining nonstop about their employer, to which I pointed out there exists a multitude of options right now in all areas of shipping.
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Well said. Find a job that makes you happy and the rest will fall into place.
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In a post a little earlier, you talk smack about masters or chief mates watching tv in their room (which is not okay in my view), but here you say it’s okay for you to be on the treadmill while on watch?
When you’re Chief you’re never off watch.
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How about when you’re the chef?
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Idk. Go wake him up off watch and say there’s something wrong with your plate. Report back.
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Are you asking about Prime Ocean’s benefits or the drilling company’s? Why do you think they’d know anything about other companies’ benefits?
Geez, Chief must be some kind of superhero eh?
“Never off watch” must play havoc with your STCW rest hours record keeping.
Just curious, what are some of those shoreside opportunities that offer the same kind of pay and schedules?
Not sure I know what you mean by “and” schedules. You mean shoreside? There are many careers in shoreside management, on the operational side or the vendor side.
read your post earlier where you mentioned there were lots of jobs shoreside in the marine industry that compared to offshore. Just wondering what they might be. I’d like to learn more. I do expect that they’d be in locations where we couldn’t live where we do when we work offshore. That’d be a big disadvantage.
The companies for which they are recruiting. Why wouldn’t they have that information? If they are making recruitment calls on behalf of other companies, they should be prepared for an array of questions from potential candidates. They can’t even seem to tell me the possible employer’s name so I could do my own research. The phone call conversations I encountered were pretty much asking if I could fly “next week” for “a job”. Uh, ok. What kind of job? Name of the company? Permanent employee? What are the medical benefits? 401K matching? Vesting schedule? What kind of clown wouldn’t want these types of questions answered before accepting a job?
I also told them that perhaps they can give me the contact information to the individuals at those companies in HR that would know the answers to the above questions, so my wife and I could make an informed decisions of whether or not it would be a good idea to make a career change. They said they’ve never received that request before and they’d “look into it”.
Edit: I guess it’s not that surprising. I was asked to fly to Cairo “next Tuesday” to join in Port Said by an AMO company and they couldn’t even tell me what the job paid! 
“typically you find that stuff out when you get there”.
Uh…thanks but no thanks.
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Because they’re not placing you as an employee with that company, you’re an employee of Prime Ocean working a temp spot with that drilling company. It might be an opening the drilling company is looking to fill permanently and if you do a good job over a few hitches they’ll hire you full time, or it might be an opening where an employee is taking FMLA leave for one hitch. Regardless, you’re an employee of Prime Ocean, paid by Prime Ocean, getting benefits by Prime Ocean.
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Right, that was another possibility they described. I asked about that as well by saying, “what type of benefits could I expect provided that I am indeed “liked” and moved into a permanent spot?” They also said they’d get back because they didn’t know. They never got back about it.
At the end of the day, not too concerned, but I do find it odd.
You have at least one whole hitch to ask actual employees about pay and benefits and company culture, etc.
Right, but how would you know if it’s something good enough to leave your current employer for? Outside of this industry, that “you’ll-find-out-once-you-start-working-here” mentality would be considered asinine.
Just because there’s a chance you might be hired full time doesn’t change the fact that it’s a temp job and you’d be stupid to leave a permanent job for a temp job.
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You are running into the normal bullshit that has become “acceptable behavior” that employers get away with in this industry because most old salts know the game, pay, benefits, etc when they take a temp job.
Coming as an outsider, you don’t have any experience with the normal pay packages, and because “we’ve always done it this way”, the idiots on the other side of the phone have no idea why you would ask such questions.
Rumors I’ve heard over the years is that AMO will send people to a ship and won’t tell them anything about the contract in advance…if you question the dispatcher, you get screamed at and told the job will go to someone else and you are at the bottom of the call list forever.
The good news is this behavior is coming to an end. There are not enough bodies to fill these jobs. I heard a temp 3ae job on drillship in the gulf was paying ~$31 an hour. Buc-ee’s gas station in Houston had manager pay offering $34 an hour…
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Touché. Still would be nice to hear some details before committing.
But that’s $31 an hour for ~86 hour weeks so it comes out to ~$483 per day. It’s a bit low but still a lot more than the gas station.
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