Along with the buddy system and to include the good ole boys clubs the Ships Funded Leave policy doesn’t help either. The favorites come and go as they please while a “4 and go” person can’t get off on time.
It’s stupid when bodies ready to go are in the pool but positions are held vacant on the ship.
The admiral wants/demands for the uniforms and no beards are his perogative. Many shipping companies have similar policies. But this is what the civmar should demand if the admiral wants to go in that direction.
Timely relief, increased leave schedule commiserate with the industry.Terminate the SFL. Dispand and prohibit the cliques on all platforms. Make most of the positions rotary with select officer and unlicensed positions resident for resident continuity. Stand up relief positions to vice the residents for vacation. Might make the work force more professional, better rested and perhaps healthier. R/T airfare to your home of record anywhere in the world. Any other place its on your dime. If he squaks at the numbers, tough shtt, cost of doing buisness. No more something for nothing.
Concur with your comment that every effort made you leave on your relief date. The day you EOD you know your LPI date. Get off the ship. Its your place of work not your home. Fall off the planet for more than a couple of months.
You are far too indoctrinated to present a relevant argument.
Outside of the Unrep stuff, that is all simply peanuts. Your argument is not valid, as much as you would like to think it is. That stuff is day to day on GOCO ships and a minor part of the workload.
You must be a deck CivMar, attempting to justify the glut of mate jobs on CivMar vessels.
No, it does not take years for an already competent senior officer to learn the specific skills required for your unique operation. It may take years for people to learn the skills in house, because there is no formal and effective training regime. “Learn as you go” iOJT (on da jerb training) is what our society has turned into, with the gatekeepers screaming “MUH skillz R speeecIAL3!” But of course, keep chanting “it’s different here”, the battle cry of the ignorant.
Professional airline pilots are taught to fly completely different airframes in a matter of months. Surgeons move around and operate in different hospitals world wide. People go get a rental car on vacation and somehow figure out how to drive a different brand/style. I think a skilled mate/engineer could quickly be trained to handle the super special missions that MSC somehow seems to complete…with it’s super high quality sailors /s.
Your observation of the specialized training is spot on. The ammo handling procedures are very clear and well written. Same with Fueling snd Replenishing at sea. Just different cargo movement/storage and ship handling. Any curious,competent and skilled AB or Mate will figure it out. If he can’t move on. From the engineering side its the stations and elevators but again its getting familiar with gear normally not found elsewhere to keep it running at sea. We’re not talking intricate brain surgery here. Any major station and elevator anomolies are handled by shore staff in Philidelphia or Port Hueneme. Like the navy gas turbines its proprietary. So the " but we are specialized ignorance" does not fly.
I heard that same crap my 1st year at msc, mainly from the ammo mafia on what was then the only AE in MSC. In their distorted world you had to be a special individual for assignment to the Kilauea. It was the higest paid platform in the outfit at the time, 10% ammo pay, duty section pay, boo-koo overtime. The P-ways lined with gold. Very hard to get assigned to. No one wanted to leave that cash cow. B.S. I sailed with more than a few of that group on tankers and cable ships. They were ok but not the (AE) superman they thought they were.
Yeah, but the suggestion wasn’t AB and Mate, it was Captain and C/E.
Maybe if they send said direct hire Captain to a full course of training first and maybe a week long ride on the east coast duty oiler.
But that’s hardly the most cost effective/efficient route. If they want to maintain any remaining respect from current mariners they’d be better served by continuing to promote from within for captain/chief.
Are Captains/C/Es currently amongst the positions having trouble getting relief?
The model that could be followed for commercial Masters and CHENG’s coming into MSC to get them up to speed could be modeled along the lines of how former usaf, usn and usmc pilots transit into the airlines. Lots of classroom and simulator time before they even get into a seat of a passenger or cargo configured airliner. Driving an AO/AKE along side a Nimitz class for many hrs with the escorts taking turns on the other side simultaneously is a lot different than “bus driving” a big box boat or vlcc point to point. Engineers wouldn’t need the level of sim time but intensive training on the specialized equipment is the must.
Training cost money, simulators cost money. Cost of doing buisness.
MSC is so dysfunctional it is hard to believe it is even an actual federal entity. Are other federal agencies this bad? The lack of support or any response at all from the shore side staff is the worst part. They seem to have an endless supply of inspectors to come onboard nearly every month but there is not a single employee who can answer when you will get your safety shoe reimbursement money which you submitted a receipt for a year ago.
No, we are leaving ships without C/M in the yard to try to make up for our shortage there. 2nd mates are getting the short end of the stick. Just as undermanned as C/M but being forced to wait to be relieved.
Huge lack of personnel with Cargo Mate experience. 3rds are being promoted without much experience, fully expect a few more Alan Sheppards in the next few years.
Yeah the good old boys clubs gotta go, but ship’s funded leave was extremely useful when done right. It increased your vacation pay so the measley vacation days you did earn actually got paid at a rate that wasn’t entirely insulting. It also helped continuity which I believe is important. With the right people on board you could get a decent rotation going keeping the same people and getting everyone time off. The couple times we attempted this we were shot down by the office because they wouldn’t allow temp promotions to make the rotation work, though everyone was well qualified and more than capable. All these well qualified and capable people are no longer with MSC. Fixing the leave, pay, rotations, etc would render SFL unnecessary; it just gets used now because it’s the only tool in the box. And that’s kind of MSC in a nutshell, it works because the mariners make it work, not because of the policies it has in place or the way it’s structured. If they strictly enforced their own policies they would cease to operate in a very short amount of time.
You’re right that all the Navy bs is the admiral’s prerogative… and it’s my prerogative to avoid that stuff like the plague. Beggars can’t be choosers and the admiral needs to figure out who is who in this market. I know all their programs and a good chunk of their platforms, but I won’t look their way unless they fix their long list of issues, even if I were to be in the beggar position. It’s possible, but I don’t realistically expect them to do it, ever.
I sailed with a lot of intelligent hard working people during my time at MSC and I’m grateful for all I learned and the time we spent working together. Not a single one of them, including myself, are still there. Every single one of us got screwed over one way or another (in ways I haven’t seen anywhere else) and moved on.
I expect the saiIor got to go home. I don’t know if this was a particular in your experience here but I learned during a similar incident that no one, wheter a purser of a master, can prevent a crewmember access to his passport as it is property of the State Department. On an MSC ship, although not prevented from leaving, he could have been reported to the CG to be noted in his file.
MSC has always been like this. It will never change. I worked there from 1980-1997. The unlicensed are treated like “unwashed scum” The office cares nothing for any of the seamen They have always had the attitude that the seaman’s jobs only exist because the office jobs exist I have seen guys whose reliefs have been over three months late I personally went over 45 days late
I did just get a job offer from MSC for First Radio Electronics Technician, so all of these answers are really appreciated (and worrisome!).
Thanks, everyone!
