If this were true they wouldn’t have a crewing shortage
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Since MSC manning was taken away from the Navy to save money. I’d be curious to see how much is actually saved.
Crewing shortage isn’t unique to MSC. All companies and union halls are also desperate for people. It is magnified at MSC due to how they work their schedules and training, but everyone needs mariners right now.
The truth is young people don’t want to sail. Maritime grads are taking land jobs because the pay/time away ratio is better…And barely any of the kings pointers are fulfilling their obligation & requirement to sail American flagged for 5 years…with no consequences.
Pay is not the issue and there are a lot of speculations on what the Deck Officers are making. Try a FOIA request. Confusing but eye opening concerning the misinformation here about MSC actually pays beyond base.
Even on the lowest paid ships the 3rd Mates are making a hell of a lot more than $130,000 after 8 months of what appears to be confinement due to lack of reliefs. Base for 2nd Mates on the lowest paid ships is $94K for watch officers and $120K for Day workers. This is prior to the massive amount of overtime and penalties they accumulate.
The Navy helps out a lot with officer manning by providing ships with SSOs. These Naval Reservist are at times station aboard for months at a time. MSC’s biggest manning issues is not just the results of reliefs, but also the server shorts of critical unlicensed STCW Deck and Engineer personnel. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck in port because we didn’t have enough ABs to sail, or having to wait for temp loaners just to move the ship.
All that just to say Pay is not the issue. Unlicensed enlisted Naval personnel will not help. They would be limited to what they can do due to lack of required qualifications for they type of work required.
Here’s an example discussed on here almost 8 years ago:
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I’m talking about the industry as a whole, not MSC specifically.
It’s the issue for the entire industry and MSC is at the bottom of the pay scale for the industry as a whole.
One of my distinct memories from being a cadet at MSC was sitting on the bridge of the ship trying to google if my credits would transfer to Colorado School of Mines or something, when the 3rd mate who had seen something besides MSC assured me the rest of the industry was not like this. Not only could I see MSC was a shit show at the time (when things were relatively good), but also the 90% of the mission is just wasting tax payer dollars. Id much rather feel productive running gasoline between Pascagoula and Tampa, than unrep with the same ship 4 times a month, or baby sit a ship tied to a dock somewhere. Now that I’m older and wiser I certainly dont want to get shot at. Needless to say it was not a blast.
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I always found that the one thing my friends and I who cadet shipped with MSC found was that our experience was basically that we could get away with whatever we wanted because the problems there were so much bigger than “the cadet blacked out in Sasebo”
All our stories go along the lines of “dude on the Kaiser…” followed by “you think that’s bad? We almost killed…” and it’s just a back and forth of near misses and incidents that should’ve resulted in firings, criminals hearings, detainment by foreign authorities etc.
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Everyone has their own experiences. Some would argue running gas from Houston to Tampa and back and doing nothing else would be a boring type of repetitive hell. Loading an aircraft carrier, destroyer, and hooking up groceries to a helicopter all at the same time some would argue is badass. I loved it. MSC is a total mess I’m not defending that, but to say it’s not worthy of any seagoing experience is lazy.
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Thank you @Capt_Phoenix this is what I was trying to get across. It’s all tied in together.
Truth is this isn’t an difficult problem to solve. The DoD spent $1.5-$1.8 Trillion this year, they have the money.
- Improve pay and opportunities for senior officer.
- Fully fund and streamline the military-to-mariner program and have recruiters selling the program to every SWO in the fleet.
- Fund a hawsepipe academy to get prior-enlisted SWOs licenses.
- Rotate some of NAVSEA’s 86,000 employees (NAVSEA alone is twice the size of the entire USCG) out to the MSC fleet.
- Boost advertising and media engagement. Pay people like @Meme.Lord, @Salvatore_Mercoglian and @Mikey to go out to the ships and produce content. Encourage existing civmars to write for gCaptain and produce social media content.
- Stop treating CIVMARS like second class citizens. They are US Merchant Marine officers but some naval officers think its of to treat them like civilian burger flippers at the Navy Exchange.
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Need this to be a thread on your twitter @john
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I tell everyone who will listen to me, we should be following the military recruiters arround trying to recruit highschool kids, and I’d be willing to do it. But half the battle is it doesnt sound like we have the capacity, i don’t know where to send people. Piney point sounds like its running at capacity, the Star Center Tech program only takes like 10 people at a time, tongue point has strict income requirements. There needs to be more handholding 0 to hero programs in general.
Shoot, Ive been itching to go shoreside, if theres a market for media consulting and recruiting id give it a go.
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When was in college I mentioned this a company commander because we were discussing “diversifying” the classes from just kids from NE and a handful of kids from other states with family in the industry. I said it would be so easy to sell the academies to kids who grew up in the ocean but had no idea the schools existed. The response was basically “yeah well we’re not going to pay someone outside of the current payroll to do it” which essentially means you’ve got some 130 year old retired tanker captain who’s been married 7 times trying to convince some 17 year old that the sea is the way to go
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Whats worse is what AMO is sending to the academies, they have next to no information, tell kids they cant offer them a job, and to call when they graduate and send them on their way. Just bring an Ipad with the job board on it and thats half the battle. But this isnt a thread on how we can fix AMO.
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msc will just cease to exist one day.
that day cant come soon enough for the scumbags in the office and the lowlife parasites on the ships.
I agree; I have tilted at this particular windmill for some time with no success. I don’t know that I can truly call myself a hawsepiper but I definitely had to individually sit for each STCW course (about $25K out of pocket) as well as studying for all the tests. There are plenty of little things the Navy could do to make the transition easier.
- Issue SWOs MMCs prior to joining their first ship. Build the parallel track from the beginning. Be religious about keeping it updated with new credentials (radar obs, firefighting, etc).
- Incentivize the attainment of the license. Academy SWOs can sit for the license as soon as they earn their OOD letters; give them a kicker to do so. Let them wear the SSO pin, up the rate of their sea pay, something.
- One day I may start my own SWO Academy, so at the risk of cannibalizing my own idea, this is needed as well. Trying to hawsepipe it with a full time job is a monsterous undertaking. MSC should be taking advantage of the DoD Skillbridge program, where transitioning servicemen can work for industry while still drawing their pay. They could easily put together either their own courses, or contract it out to get SWOs their STCW in return for a one/two year hitch.
I doubt there will ever be recruiters selling this to SWOs, because we still have our own needs to look after, but for those officers who were going to depart anyways, it’d be great. Of course the Navy is too shortsighted to implement a program that would ultimately help the service if there is no immediate benefit, so short of someone requiring it in the NDAA it’ll just have to hang out with all the other good idea fairies. Maybe your Senator Kelly can tuck it in there somewhere towards the back.
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Need a whole forum for that
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I see a solution. You want to go to KP on the taxpayer’s dime? You ship out at MSC for 2-3 years or pay it all back.
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This is another huge issue. I hear it from MSC people and SIU people. The competent people are leaving because they are forced to do the work of half a dozen incompetents.
The ship’s officers are scared of firing the incompetents because… well if you know, you know.
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There really should be a bigger recruiting drive in high schools. I know in my own experince many people i knew in high school joined the military because they wanted out of our town. If they had been presented the merchant marine as an option I’m sure many would have jumped at the idea.
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