Bingo…that attitude is pervading the commercial fleet as well. “Hey, Cap’…I’m all 'bout respect; Mate treats me with respect, I treat him…”
Hold on there, this is NOT a democracy nor a 9-5 job. Show up for watch on time, do your job safely, watch out for your shipmates; how hard can it be??? In today’s polarized world the answer is VERY difficult. Glad I am on the down hill slide because just managing the crew and stomping out conflict is getting to be an absolute PITA.
This. I have heard more of this in the past few years than ever before and the blank stares I get when I kindly explain the chain of command and what that is supposed to mean are stupefying. “Respect” to some is apparently giving them a blank check to do whatever they want. Going to sea doesn’t work like that and someone managing you is not a sign of disrespect. This is seafaring, not “the streets.”
MSC will be paralyzed if/when we get into a shooting war with China, or some country that can lob guided missiles at a ship.
All these people who treat it as an easy govt job where they can’t get fired will walk off and desert or the ones that do work will refuse to sail into harms way with the shitbirds.
“All these people who treat it as an easy govt job where they can’t get fired will walk off and desert or the ones that do work will refuse to sail into harms way with the shitbirds.”
Talk to those on ships in the Middle East right now. What a nightmare.
In the old days, EEO complaints were settled at the lowest administrative level, which was the Ship’s Master. There are no secrets on ships. Most pretty much knew the people involved and their reputations. I would opine that complaint resolution was generally fair and timely back then.
But when EEO Complaint settlement was moved off the ship to HQ, Civmars then learned how to wag their Supervisor by the Tail. Evidence was no longer required to bring forth an EEO charge as just the perception of being discriminated against was sufficient. EEO would never tell me what percentage of cases were determined to be unfounded. It had to be the majority.
I can only imagine the sway that EEO has over N1 with the current Federal Government. Prior to this, EEO had significantly undermined the ability of Supervisors to maintain productivity and enforce discipline. That affected crew attitude, crew cohesion, the material condition of the ship, and the safety of the ship.
You nailed it spot on! Problem also is so many office personnel are sitting on cushy jobs with no accountability or reason for them to stick their neck out to try and help change the system. Look at all of the officer types who walk into the office and see an empty desk and think of a phony job title to sit at that desk instead of shipping out. The office should be streamlined and gutted. Get a real mariner as admiral.
Years back, a shoreside staffer was overheard remarking “This would be a great job if we didn’t have the Mariners”.
Back in Bayonne in the late 70’s into the ‘80’s, MSCLANT had Merchant Marine and Maritime Industry veterans in key shoreside positions. Operating the MSC Fleet following Commercial practices was the key to meeting Mission requirements at a fraction of the USN cost.
But even back then, MSC was known for Late Reliefs. MSC was not like Commercial shipping Companies that had fixed schedules that would rarely change. MSC operating schedules had the acronym “MSC: Mostly Subject to Change”.
The trouble was that the Navy only funded MSC to hire, for example, one extra rating for each four seagoing billets. In a perfect world with no schedule changes, no FMLA, and no Medical problems, that would ensure timely reliefs.
Late reliefs directly affect morale and employee loyalty. Late reliefs present a big problem for Civmar job retention.
THAT is the reason I along with others left MSC. MSC has produced some well qualified mariners but the relief problem has been going on for decades. I talked to a US senator in the 1980’s about this and he told me he wasn’t aware of the problem. From his understanding as long as the ships were operational there was no complaint from the Navy so he didn’t hear of any civilian mariner issues. Matter of fact he was surprised so many “Navy” ships were manned by civilians. The situation for civilian mariners will not improve unless either the unions purported to represent them do something [not likely] or the mariners just go on strike which is illegal but may be a last resort. Civmars have no lobbying organization and in DC without a paid lobbyist you have no voice, it’s pay to play. Ask your senator or congressman who purports to “support our troops” what he or she has done for the Civmars and you’ll hear nothing.You get the representation you demand.
Late reliefs and crew shortages contributed to many work ethically challenged and under qualified personnel becoming permanently promoted. Up and coming motivated new hires would work for these substandard individuals and get a rotten taste in their mouth. These new hires were not long for MSC.
But the “new” electronic Promotion Evaluations are to blame also. When they were written by the Port Officers for submittal to the Software Development Company, each evaluation criteria was weighted with a certain value within each category. However, the Software Company wanted too much money to write code to support these different weightings. There was no chance to rewrite the Evaluations given that revelation. The end result is that MSC has Performance Evaluations that rate “Knowledge, Skill, and Ability” on par with “Plays Well With Others”.
What is the new comsc going to do about this?
Not having the right to strike doesn’t mean they have to be pushovers. Its obvious headquarters isn’t going to help. The navy and civilian folks are doing everything to divide and conquer the seagoing force. How does EEO supercede a Master or any of his Department heads? Up to the seagoing force to take the bull by the horns and stop thinking about free time in Thailand or the P.I.
There are serious crisis going on internationally. Incredible this foolishness is allowed to continue which could be affecting clf readiness if it has hapoened already. Whats it gonna take to fix it? WTF we paying a two star admiral for?
It won’t be pretty when a battle group can’t get their gas, spare parts, monster drink and bombs because the corporate knowledge says enough of this shit and walks off or quit.
Just send the EEO sleazebags to fill the vacancies since they seem to have all the answers
Include the S/SO’s since they seem to know it all.
There’s pros and cons there. I sailed with many department heads who had a little fiefdom going on and/or actively discriminated and abused their power. Solving everything on the ship just empowers that kind of abuse. Years ago, when I went through the office supported eeo process, I didn’t have any issues. I also properly documented everything and had my shit together. But I can see where the disconnect might be.
I think MSC just tries to do too much, so they don’t do anything well. There was always some new thing to push cooked up by the admiral or office friend. They need to just get back to basics, competence, etc. Tough to do your job or make others do theirs when you’re always chasing the latest inconsequential bullshit put out by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
MSC ships are crewed with CIVMARs. Never confuse CIVMARs with actually merchant mariners. There are very few actual merchant mariners on the GoGo ships. The ships are crewed with the lowest quality federal employees who have stumbled upon some of the highest paying federal jobs.
You just threw thousands of hard working dedicated professionals under the bus over a few so called “Thugs”. There is no confusion here. CIVMARS are Merchant Mariners.
MSC’s major retention problem has pretty much been late crew relief. Increase the leave schedule with compulsory sign off dates and IMHO the retention losses could have been greatly reduced. I think it borders on criminal the resourses wasted on training new hires constantly and overdue relief awards which is in itself a misnomer. Seems to me a more stable workforce may be less expensive long term. But I think that ship has long ago sailed.
The shore folks, big navy and the congress have this mental block that 30 days leave a year is more than enough and working almost every day at all hrs doesn’t matter never mind separation from home and family. Kind of like crabs in a pot pulling back the ones trying to get out.
From my understanding its a budget issue. They have money budgeted for 3/4 crew, so the money to actually have a 1:1 relief for even time is actually impossible, based on the financial constraints.
in mid January during covid I agreed to sail for MSC, and after all the paperwork was finished I got to training in May. Middle of covid, so I spent two weeks in Norfolk quarantine. And then training continued to the start of September. So far I was sort of enjoying it. My paycheck was minuscule, but I was young and dumb and getting paid to do pretty much nothing but hang out in a hotel and get wasted. Very mature of me, I know.
The Wipers, S/Us, and OSs around me were extremely stupid and I had to watch them be fed the answers by the teachers in all the safety classes such as STREAM. At this point I realized that it might be a bad idea for such personnel to be performing UNREPs, and was sort of worried. I had no idea what was in store.
In the coming months the things I would witness entry levels bordered on parody. OSs who had been with MSC for ten years coming back obliterated, shitting their pants from the bow all the way down three ladderwells into the shared head showers. A snail trail of feces that he refused to clean up.
I saw another OS of five years who couldn’t keep within 90 degrees of the charted course. One who would gamble and drink so badly that he left MSC in serious debt. One who insisted on wearing $14,000 worth of jewelry out to shitty dive bars in foreign ports, had it all stolen, and insisted that it had been stolen by someone on board (causing a massive police investigation). Wipers who called in sick three days a week and when confronted started a huge fuss calling the CHENG sexist and racist. A party of entry levels taking the captain’s vehicle and driver an hour and a half drive away to party because they “felt like it”. Or who would do driving OT and just not answer any calls from anyone who needed a ride. Most of all, a never ending stream of people who would never get off their phones. To the point where the wipers would use AirPods as earpro and just talk to on the phone all day long. But what really got me was the lack of safety. Every time up felt like a nightmare, because you couldn’t rely on anyone aside from the Bosun and a few excellent ABs. The OSs would sleep in, not show up until someone went to find them, and not even have safety gear. Which was almost useless, because so many of them had insane hairstyles that couldn’t even fit under a hard hat. We had to give one guy with dreads down to his waist a fucking trash bag to cover himself with.
But it’s not just entry levels.
I saw an AB at the gangway who was constantly on FaceTime (with a Filipino woman who was scamming him), even had a display for it, six hours a day on watch. And nobody would reprimand for it. I saw a medical officer making drug cocktails for himself. Captains and chief engineers getting drunk together underway. CRETs who would give themselves an extra 40 hours of overtime a week when they weren’t even sleeping onboard. Chief mates who didn’t know anything except to stay in their office all day and delegate. I witnessed Bosuns vanish for two days only to come back still drunk. Navigators who had absolutely zero clue how to work an ECDIS, to the point where we found out underway that major parts of it weren’t working and I almost had a breakdown thinking we weren’t on a safe course through the Philippines. And we weren’t, there were areas and navigational hazards he hadn’t taken into account. Drunk captains, chief engineers, and suppos passed out on the pier well past 8 in the morning. Incompetent thirds who couldn’t be trusted to tie up anything. 1st cooks who would take the supply van out while drunk and vanish for the day. And god forbid a fire ever breaks out, because everyone is obese, out of shape, refused to shave their beard, and with lungs so black from smoking that they can’t be expected to go into fire and be anything except another causality.
And shoreside is hard to critique because they simply useless and not there. Detailers never answering. Detailers changing constantly so you never know who you have to talks to about being four months overdue. And when I went to training in Norfolk, the teachers there were terrible. I had one class where the teacher was learning from the book he had just received alongside myself. And from what I recall there was a massive grudge between the military and the civmars teaching there, because one of the groups was being told to teach the other group so they could basically replace them. Many classes started off with bitching about the people in the office they hated, he said!/she said! on why the classroom hadn’t been set up or why half the staff wasn’t there. And many morning the bus from the Norfolk hotel (massive pile of DOG SHIT, by the way, next to the ghetto with car break ins constantly) would not show up to pick anyone up. The whole place is just really, really poorly run.
I cannot see any solution to the MSC problem, aside from maybe shutting down a certain facility in Jacksonville that shits out unqualified mariners at an astonishing rate. Wherever I got, not just MSC, I notice Jacksonville mariners are always three steps below the rest.
Let the shitshow that is MSC exist. There is a lot of fun to be had after all, as long as young don’t care about anything and want to get drunk all over the world. Which at the time I sort of did, and admittedly when I wasn’t having nervous breakdowns I had a lot of fun doing so.
One big perk is that after MSC, it’s pretty hard to find a job with worse coworkers. After you get your first 100k and quit, it’s all uphill!
Take comfort knowing that the terrifying, unsafe, and unstable ship culture that existed throughout history is alive and well in the 21st century due to the impressively infinite operational error of the proud Civmars of Military Sealift Command.
I’m glad I bailed before being assigned to the fleet. Signed on as a C/M but the NEO experience and a ship visit told me to run for the hills. The NEO lead instructor (MG) was the only bright spot.
The cyber security person came in and spent all her time telling us that we were forbidden to say the word pornography and had to refer to it as the P-word and then took great delight in telling about a CIVMAR found dead in front of his computer with his pants at his ankles. That was in affect our entire discussion regarding cyber security. Just when it couldn’t have possibly gotten worse the planning lady spent 30 minutes mins warning us not to call her because she was too busy. She very straight faced reminding us that if MSC emailed us we had 59 mins to respond or we would be considered AWOL. She in turn informed us that she had 4 days to respond to an inquiry from a CIVMAR. That math doesn’t add up. Next up was a 30 year MSC captain who focused on his 7 figure retirement account, liquor lockers and not flushing tampons down the toilet.
Finally I encountered a civilian MSC guy who was barking orders at me. His use of an ageist pejorative got my attention. I approached this stranger and asked who he was, his response was that it was none of my buisness. I then proceeded off to the side at which point the stranger informed me that I was terminated for refusing a direct order. I said thanks, reminded him to go fuck himself and caught a cab to the airport. [quote=“Leehasthadenvy, post:1, topic:67383, full:true”]
If you are considering applying to Sealift Command do not do it. It’s all a lie. When you arrive there to Norfolk you will be treated with contempt and total indifference. The threats regarding chain of command and being written up and terminated by these entitled civilian navy wannabes will begin immediately.
Just passing on some good advice to spare all from having a bad experience there.
[/quote]
-Wherever I got, not just MSC, I notice Jacksonville mariners are always three steps below the rest.-
∆∆This∆∆
Extremely long post from “HET” which seems excessively angry. The stories told would have made the rounds throughout the entire enterprise as more juicy entertaining sea stories. After nine years and 14 ships I’ve not seen or heard of about 95% of what was posted. If any what was posted was true why didn’t he report any of this to the SMS board whose contact information is posted in a thousand places (exaggeration) on every ship. Not doing so made him part of the problem.
I don’t mean any personal bearing about “HET” but that post is suspect and seemly disingenuous.