Figured its time I actually get involved on the forum here to see what useful information I can find. Been reading a lot and searching around and had a question I’d like to see if anyone can answer.
I’m a CMA grad who has been working for Crowley Valdez the last 4 years. Stayed right up til the end of Crowley’s Alaska contract sailing as Chief Mate. Now after a solid 2+ months of job searching I feel I’ve exhausted every single option possible. Joined the AMO list and have some good contacts there, but seems to be another dead end. Submitted countless applications, e-mails, voicemails, etc to every single maritime company I can think of. I check every sites career postings every day and am on LinkedIn and indeed and gCaptain job search every day.
So my question is this… after working for Crowley Valdez for 4 years I gained decent seniority with the MMP inland division, but that does’t seem to help me out at all in finding a new job. Has anyone transferred from MMP inland division in to the offshore division? I believe I would then have to start going to the hall of course, but could I transfer in with any seniority? Is it even worth a shot? I haven’t been able to get a clear answer on this from anyone in the union yet.
From what I have been told, the seniority does not transfer over between the different divisions of the union. I didn’t even know the inland group had levels of seniority…
I’ll have to check the rules again.
I’ve been sailing in the UIG the last 5 seasons on the Lakes with Grand River Navigation. As far as I know there’s only seniority within our company and not the Inland group itself. However, a couple seasons back I spoke to the Union Rep for the G. Lakes and Gulf Region, Tom Bell, asking about seniority between Inland and Offshore. He mentioned that if you wanted to transfer from one to the other you would have to pay difference in union group fees (in this case the added fee for offshore) for membership, and then depending on how many years you have with inland group that would then transfer to a book rating with offshore. I think there’s a matrix or table floating around somewhere, but from what I recall 2 years with UIG would transfer to a D Book and then having 4+ years would transfer to a B Book. Hope this helps.
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From the Offshore Rules:
Transferees from other Membership Groups shall be eligible for membership in the Offshore Membership Group. They may be admitted directly into Group Classification C membership provided that they meet the Constitutional criteria for transfer, have completed the Offshore Familiarization Course and have at least as many years of active membership in their Membership Group as the least senior Offshore Membership Group Classification C Member who is admitted to Group Classification C membership at any given General Executive Board meeting.
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