California ports like LA/LB and SFO ship assist wages, generally speaking, don’t fit into this equation.
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Who does ship assist in Hawaii?
P and M Marine, small family outfit, and YB/Foss
9-10 months on a ship and 2ish months paid leave. If they can get relieved at all.
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Is this who owns the Tiger boats?
The attempt to unionize in the GOM if memory serves me was ~2000-2003 timeframe. Believe the heyday of crossburning ended quite a few decades earlier. Unions may be corrupt and champion some of the least productive of our seagoing ilk but they certainly are critically necessary, and just the training they provide is invaluable. I left the patch and never looked back and thank my lucky stars for AMO. I cannot believe the GOM is still that anti-union engrained but I’ve been out of the patch for over 25 years, so go figure.
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Yes
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There were 3 different unions covering the Maritime industry in NZ, down from 4.
The ratings union was all powerful as it was in Australia. Tidewater sent a port Captain down from Morgan City whose mindset hadn’t moved from the GOM in the 1980’s.
Let us say his horizons were broadened.
It was about the time when some ITF guys met with an accident in Cajun country.
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Not sure of what any of the raises have been on the Gulf Coast region but I have heard that some companies are losing a lot of wheelhouse personnel due to inadequate
pay , some are still stuck in the stoneage regarding pay it seems.
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Just double-checking that the $85,860 annual salary is correct, because of the difference from the CE pay. $85,860 correct?
In another thread I saw this about Crowley AB pay. Obviously, this is only a part of their pay. Can anyone translate that into what a Crowely AB makes, as a true representative daily-rate?
Previous Crowley/IBU contract for west coast ship assist/escort tugs expired October of 2024, and they are currently in negotiations.
As of 10/24 the hourly rate for A/B [Limited] on ship assist harbor tugs in San Francisco Bay and the Puget Sound is $37.31/hr or $447.72/day.
Crews work 12 hour days, 6on/6off. AB’s and Engineers on escort tugs can make significantly more with mandatory escort overtime pay, but some assignments such as Tacoma have little or no overtime. No travel pay unless you are covering an assignment outside of your “home port”. Vacation and sick time accumulate annually.
I have to get some rest, but I’ll post the other Crowley IBU and MMP harbor assist rates later this evening.
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As promised here are the rates of pay for Crowley IBU and MMP harbor assist tugs working in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound.
Under the current IBU contract that expired October 2024 the rates of pay for engineers is based on license held and are as follows:
Chief Engineer (Limited Oceans) $51.50 / hr. - $618 / day
DDE (Any HP) $47.61 / hr. - $571.32 / day
DDE 4000 $46.34 / hr. - $556.08 / day
Assistant Engineer $46.34 / hr. - $556.08 / day
Junior Engineer (QMED) $34.70 / hr. - $416.40 / day
Deckhand/Engineer (Unlicensed Trainee) $31.22 / hr - $374.64 / day
As mentioned in my previous post, the IBU is currently negotiating renewal of their contract.
Under the MMP contract the current rates of pay are as follows:
Master $67.68 / hr. - $812.19 / day
Chief Mate $57.54 / hr. - $690.48 / day
Per the CBA these rates will increase 5% on April 1st, 2025. Deck officers do not get vacation pay. Crowley contributes 9% of gross wage to 401(k) for retirement, and officers have the option to contribute additional funds to an employee Individual Retirement Account Plan (IRAP). Medical benefits are fully funded by the company.
I share this information because I strongly believe that knowledge is power, and I hope that others might use it to improve their employment conditions. I also hope that people will continue share the details of their own wages and benefits in an effort to improve the the conditions for everyone working on tugs in service of the billionaire owners of the shipping lines, oil companies and terminal operators. We only have strength in solidarity.
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At CTI we publish an annual Fact Book filled with information about our operation: annual operational days, historical work hours, accident rates, tonnage moved, etc. The book is passed out to officers. There is a section on wages, present and historical. The staff is working on the page documenting 2025 U.S. pay scales, using data from this forum thread. The first draft is below. Did we get anything wrong?
(BTW: For CTI wages we switched from using the term ‘average’ to ‘numerical median’ when discussing wages, because we would have ABs apply here and demand to be paid the ‘average’ CTI wage because, they said, they were ‘average ABs’. 
Doesn’t work that way, so we changed the term).
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People typically think of the mean (total amount divided by number of people) rather than the median (equal number of people paid higher and lower) when seeing “average”. So if you really do mean median, that’s definitely a step up in clarity.
Of course it invites the question of why use median for your company and mean for the others.
Median is often a more useful measure when there are extreme values that will skew the mean.
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Any know what ECO is making on the navy contract in SD and Jacksonville ?
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Communications over pay issues, I’ve found, has a lot of interesting psychology involved in it.
The average mariner is not well-schooled in mathematics. I would explain to a lot of applicants that ‘average’ day-rates for each position are skewed towards the mariners here with specialized experience, and to those with the most seniority. Our ABs are fairly steady, so most of them rack up seniority that pushes their pay above entry level pay. So, the numerical average for our mariners is higher than what many ABs make elsewhere. We purposely make our wage scale deep to reward people with seniority, and to recognize that specialized experience counts.
But that means nothing to the random AB applying here, who has no specialized experience. He just sees the word ‘average’ and conflates it with his own quality, which he rates as no more than ‘average’, then accuses of us about lying about our wages when we refuse to pay him the ‘average’ rate. The term ‘numerical median’ is close enough to the math but obtuse enough not to set off this false expectation.
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Do I understand your post correctly?
Historically low end of the wage range Vane is now paying captains $1000 a day?
That’s what I’ve seen of late. Heard they have signing bonuses right now too. They’re trying hard to recruit new talent.
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