[QUOTE=Number360;144966]I have heard from several different people in the OSV industry that new regulation is coming sooner than 2017. That among these changes there will be a Chief Mate OSV. This will allow large OSV operators a ladder to UL Master.
I know C. Captain will say it should be a restricted UL master but maybe it would be. I won’t judge it until I can read it.
Does anyone have any input to share on this? Or can you share if you have heard what other regulations may come down and how you think they will impact the OSV industry.[/QUOTE]
So… Not meaning to hijack a sweet rambling rant, but did this question ever get answered?
[QUOTE=c.captain;145130]well as I see it the vast majority here seem to believe Joe Boss is entitled to as much as he can keep as long as a nice sized coin is tossed to the worker. Seems that is exactly how Joe is playing it. Pay the stiffs enough to not rise up in arms and we’ll bank all the rest. But this isn’t just in offshore, it is more and more all over the US. This is why union membership is shrinking steadily. As long a workers don’t believe in the value of a union because they are happy with the deal they already have then there is no reason for them to ever want to be the member of one.
When unions were at their strongest in America in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, the US economy was booming but the profits earned by the bosses was not as high today on a per worker basis. People seem to believe it is only because of unions is the reason for American businesses moving overseas, but it is really because whether one’s workforce is union or not, Chinese or whatever other nation’s workers will do it for less and hence far higher profits and we have very weak trade protection. Germany has strong trade protections which maintain a strong national manufacturing base and also very high union representation of its workforce and guess what, it also has a strong and robust economy too! SHAZAM!
IN THE US, IT IS [B]ALL[/B] ABOUT PROFITS FOR THE OWNING CLASS BOTH THROUGH DIVIDENDS AND RAISING SHARE PRICES![/QUOTE]
C.Capt., they think that way because they have been brainwashed by media and the powers that control the country so it is not their fault.Hell, I went to school in the south and they taught us unions were evil. Why do you think there has not been a third party rise up to this challenge? The Tea Party had it right but got co-opted by the extreme right wing that ended up financing them to their own advantage. Folks forget that blood was spilled in the name of representation of us working folks to get what little remains today. Corporations used to not care about the stock price, they just built a business to last for a generation, not a quarterly profit so that the CEO could get his bonus, In the past companies respected the working people because they were forced to understand that without them they were nothing but a piece of paper [which is all a corporation is anyway] ask any shipping company owner if he/she has enough relatives to run the ships!. But now people have been brainwashed into thinking a corporation is sacred and must be worshiped even if it means their own demise. Other countries seem to not have a problem incorporating the working folks in their decision making. Germany, who seems to have weathered the recent financial storm well, even insists that workers be on the board of directors at some level yet the USA folks seem to insist on voting for idiots who would not dream of such a radical idea as that. They continue to vote Republican and Democratic as long as they promise them in “speeches” that they can keep their guns or get an abortion. Meanwhile these voters get screwed up the rear which is where their wallet is attached. Sometimes I think I have been alive too long. I am now witnessing the end of what was once a great country that at one time offered hope to everyone but now only offers more to those that already have more.
[QUOTE=tengineer1;145139]Sometimes I think I have been alive too long. I am now witnessing the end of what was once a great country that at one time offered hope to everyone but now only offers more to those that already have more.[/QUOTE]
so there you go…I agree that to watch the USA go down this path has been a very painful experience. This is the unfortunate reality of aging…we have the sad ability to look backwards to better times. You and I are not the first…progress isn’t always progressive!
That’s called a typo Johnny, thank God you caught it. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. Do you go around correcting everyone’s grammar? I bet you’re a blast to sail with. I mean you have such great opinions on EVERYTHING and you correct grammar on anonymous forums. You must feel so superior, I really hope you do, because where would the world of online forums be without grammar police. I mean everybody knows they teach classes in the academy on typing with your iphone… Your grammar corrections are like the school yard equivalent of saying “I’m telling”. Did you get picked on a lot? Here’s some sound advice for you, don’t post on here while you’re on your period…
I must’ve missed the anti union portion of Alabama public school curriculum. Seeing as how most of my family and family friends belonged to the various local shipyard and plant/refineries unions maybe my dad let me stay home on those days. My dad is the one who pulled strings and got me into piney point. He explained how awesome the school and the union were. I bought all the working man rhetoric while I was training up there went and protested in DC a few times at their request. Once I was out shipping and struggling to find a job I saw the seedy side of things. God bless all y’all who have had a great union career. I’m glad y’all were able to support your family and got a pension when you retired. It’s not a southern anti union thing I’d have no use for those thieving bastards if I was born and raised in Idaho. If the shipyards could quote a competitive price for a tanker or box ship all the unlimited guys would have a place to work. They wouldn’t be down here trying to convince everyone we need a union and unlimited ship structure an blah blah blah. We could go back to the days of them looking down their noses at us as backward, toothless, inbreds incapable of spelling our own names. We would continue to grin and bear it while working even time short hitches for a nice wage and no middleman bullshit from Guido and the gang. Instead of saying its a southern things lets go completely of the rails from new osv regs to shipyard industry issues. How can we build nice big state of the art osv’s for a competitive price am not a ULCC? Is it the unions or is it greedy shipyard owners?
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145146]We could go back to the days of them looking down their noses at us as backward, toothless, inbreds incapable of spelling our own names. We would continue to grin and bear it while working even time short hitches for a nice wage and no middleman bullshit from Guido and the gang[/QUOTE]
just know full well that except for the Jones Act each and every one of you toothless, backwards, inbred southern fried GoM slobs would be driving a FedEx truck (if you were lucky) or fixing clogged toilets or more likely begging on some freeway exit. The only reason you are making the kind of money you are is that the GoM supply vessel market is a protected business requiring American mariners. If it wasn’t protected, Joe Boss would not hold back building his vessels in Vietnam and hiring nothing but Fillipinos to man his boats to hold off the foreign owners flooding the market with their cheap to build ships and Fillipino labor. Just look at how HE runs off all but a couple Americans when he sends one his US flagged OSVs overseas. You are only a necessary evil he must employ and nothing more!
Joe D. Bayoo Mob Boss DOES NOT love you Fraq! Can your Lower Alabama educated brain understand that? It isn’t just Guido D. Union Mob Boss who thinks you are little more than a serf to perform his bidding.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145146]I must’ve missed the anti union portion of Alabama public school curriculum. Seeing as how most of my family and family friends belonged to the various local shipyard and plant/refineries unions maybe my dad let me stay home on those days. My dad is the one who pulled strings and got me into piney point. He explained how awesome the school and the union were. I bought all the working man rhetoric while I was training up there went and protested in DC a few times at their request. Once I was out shipping and struggling to find a job I saw the seedy side of things. God bless all y’all who have had a great union career. I’m glad y’all were able to support your family and got a pension when you retired. It’s not a southern anti union thing I’d have no use for those thieving bastards if I was born and raised in Idaho. If the shipyards could quote a competitive price for a tanker or box ship all the unlimited guys would have a place to work. They wouldn’t be down here trying to convince everyone we need a union and unlimited ship structure an blah blah blah. We could go back to the days of them looking down their noses at us as backward, toothless, inbreds incapable of spelling our own names. We would continue to grin and bear it while working even time short hitches for a nice wage and no middleman bullshit from Guido and the gang. Instead of saying its a southern things lets go completely of the rails from new osv regs to shipyard industry issues. How can we build nice big state of the art osv’s for a competitive price am not a ULCC? Is it the unions or is it greedy shipyard owners?[/QUOTE]
No chest beating union stance from this corner, I just know unions were not a contributing factor to the demise of American flag shipping that somebody else here would lead many of us to believe.
We build a few OSVs here and there that go foreign flag from the start (Bravante, etc.). What percentage of the rest of the OSVs constructed at yards between Houma and Jacksonville are not initially engaged in or likely to return from Brazil, T&T, W.Africa, etc.and serve in Jones Act trade? They don’t really have much of an option. If HOS had the option, seems like they would have at least considered building there own versions of those bastard child Strongline and Centerline ex-sulphur contraptions outside the US for a song compared to say the initial $60-70 mil they spent on the former williams and schmidt. It appears that price tag was WAY off base in the end, as well.
The only competition that US yards who build Jones Act ‘anything’ have is each other. All of us would love to see that change in order to grow US flag shipping, but not at the expense of the thousands of jobs we’d lose at shipyards across the country. It’s a shitty double edged sword, but at least shipping is holding ground and the GOM is booming with bigger boats and more billets. Can’t ask for much better.
Updated - - -
[QUOTE=TugNtow;145145]That’s called a typo Johnny, thank God you caught it. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. Do you go around correcting everyone’s grammar? I bet you’re a blast to sail with. I mean you have such great opinions on EVERYTHING and you correct grammar on anonymous forums. You must feel so superior, I really hope you do, because where would the world of online forums be without grammar police. I mean everybody knows they teach classes in the academy on typing with your iphone… Your grammar corrections are like the school yard equivalent of saying “I’m telling”. Did you get picked on a lot? Here’s some sound advice for you, don’t post on here while you’re on your period…[/QUOTE]
TNT… I racked my brain trying to figure out what the typo might have been, but just couldn’t make the jump. Just sounded like a made up contraction, and still does. 2 more days on the rag…
So the coastwise tanker/container market isn’t Jones Act protected? So what other competition do they have? If there is no market for moving products how does the barge industry stay working? Why move 100k bbls at a time when you can move a million? Why can’t we build more giant ships am use them here what’s stopping us? Why is it only tugs and OSV’s can do any of the work these days? What makes it so expensive to build jones act ships that a profit can’t be made by the owner?
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145151]So the coastwise tanker/container market isn’t Jones Act protected? So what other competition do they have? If there is no market for moving products how does the barge industry stay working? Why move 100k bbls at a time when you can move a million?[/QUOTE]
Yes they are protected and both are doing quite well thank you, but the foreign going US flag merchant marine is what has evaporated which everyone like you loves to blame on American union seamen and unionized shipbuilders. It wasn’t the unions or shipbuilders that killed the US foreign going fleet. It was the fact that a ship can be built in Korea for 25% of one in the US and manned my Indian officers and Fillipino seamen for 10% of an equivalent US citizen crew. It is only simple numbers that drove the foreign going industry to foreign ships and mariners…without any protection or incentives how can you blame business for fleeing the US flag? The same is true for all other high cost nationalities in ships. They too are becoming few and far between to find unless working under some form of a subsidy.
With protection, all US flagged shipping can not just survive but thrive and that includes unionized operations as well so quit blaming the unions for everything. You have no evidence to support that at all!
Ok so where are all the big US flagged ships? How come I’m up to my armpits in unlimited license guys showing up down here telling my I don’t know how to do my job. The job I was doing long before they ran out of places to work? Why did they run out of places to work? Why don’t the ship owners build more ships? It can’t all be blamed on cheap Asian slave labor can it? What does HHI have to do with building a jones act tanker? Why is the Navy and MSC the only ones that can afford to build a large ship?
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145151]So the coastwise tanker/container market isn’t Jones Act protected? So what other competition do they have? If there is no market for moving products how does the barge industry stay working? Why move 100k bbls at a time when you can move a million? Why can’t we build more giant ships am use them here what’s stopping us?[/QUOTE]
Of course it’s Jones Act protected, and that’s why it is doing well now. Burgeoning GOM oil business leads to new US coastwise product tankers that obviously have to be built in US (also in consideration of tankers that are now gone). Profits of Crowley and TOTE coupled with demise of ancient Horizon steamers leads to new Jones Act box boats to serve JAX/NY/HOU/San Juan.
Dredging issues, environmental laws, vessel regulations at certain size costing more money for P&I, more personnel, longer construction times, etc. come into play for no more tankers over 125,000DWT (roughly 55,000 GT) which is around 940,000 bbls
Like I said, US Yards who build anything Jones Act compliant only have to compete with each other. With a lot fewer yards, they obviously have ship owners/operators by the balls.
Where and when did I write there was no market for moving products? ATBS and regular barges are booming almost as much as OSVs. If you can move as much cargo as they do with fewer crew, I’m surprised we are even building US product tankers anymore.
We are not cost competitive with foreign yards; I’m just glad it’s not an issue for domestic trade vessels.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145154]What does HHI have to do with building a jones act tanker? Why is the Navy and MSC the only ones that can afford to build a large ship?[/QUOTE]
What is HHI?
They can afford it because it’s not a commercial enterprise. It’s our tax dollars and damn the cost! We absolutely need more CVNs, F-22 Raptors, Predator Drones, give away MRAPS to DHS, etc, etc.! Apples and oranges.
I came down here because I got sick of the long, shitty runs with little to no comms and never getting ashore. I’m not making anymore money down here and my living conditions are worse and so is the food, but I am happy to call home and even SKYPE at regular intervals. Can’t have it all.
Ship owners are only building the ships they do because the market is what it is. How big was HOS 5 yrs ago compared to what it is now? HOS total boats may not have increased by huge percentage, but I’ll bet the GT sure as hell has.
Fraq, you’ve got 8 armpits. Not my fault they are so cozy and inky black.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145154]Ok so where are all the big US flagged ships? How come I’m up to my armpits in unlimited license guys showing up down here telling my I don’t know how to do my job. The job I was doing long before they ran out of places to work? Why did they run out of places to work? Why don’t the ship owners build more ships? It can’t all be blamed on cheap Asian slave labor can it? What does HHI have to do with building a jones act tanker? Why is the Navy and MSC the only ones that can afford to build a large ship?[/QUOTE]
why are so many Yankee manners going south to eat deep fried froglegs every Friday? Well, we are still losing more merchant ships than being replaced, the schools continue to crank out more mates than there are jobs for them to fill on ships, the AMO is offering their membership a shit sandwich that few want to eat these days, nobody at all wants to go with MSC anymore and simply every young punk mate and his brother is all just agog with the thought of all that huge GoM money playing on the internet and occasionally doing DP on some drillship everyday for 28/28. Those who can’t get on a drillship are going to HOS et all to get their DP time and still make good $$$ waiting till they too can become an obscenely overpaid drillship slug
Maybe someday they will overwhelm you there like some tsunami that can’t be held back!
Btw, HHI has nothing to do with coastwise trade but everything to do with foreign. NASSCO, Aker/Phiily and Halter are doing gangbusters these days building Jones Act qualified tankers and containerships, which as a protected trade cannot be challenged by cheap foreign construction or mariners just like the OSV trade in the GoM. If they are nothing else, any GoM OSV is a small cargo ship of unique and particular design to their trade but they are a cargo ship all the same as any other. And you should thank God each and everyday that there is a Jones Act because without it imagine what a miserable world it would be being a US mariner today? I bet a bit like it was in the 1980’s in fact! Were you around in the 80’s? Let me tell you that they sucked eggs if you weren’t!
[QUOTE=Johnny Canal;145156]What is HHI?[/QUOTE]
Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan
SHI=Samsung Heavy Industries in Koje
DSME=Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in Okpo
So if they are building these ships like gangbusters why is everyone flying south for work? Not everybody looking for work is a new grad. If the Union is so great why are they preparing a shit sandwich feast for their members? Why can’t a coastwise ship work even time? Why can’t the union get wifi on all the ships? Johnny why are you down here if the money isn’t better? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SEAFOOD FRIDAY?!?!
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145162]So if they are building these ships like gangbusters why is everyone flying south for work? Not everybody looking for work is a new grad. If the Union is so great why are they preparing a shit sandwich feast for their members? Why can’t a coastwise ship work even time? Why can’t the union get wifi on all the ships? Johnny why are you down here if the money isn’t better? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SEAFOOD FRIDAY?!?![/QUOTE]
what are you some FNG? don’t ask a bunch of questions we’ve already covered here before…go back and read the old threads for Christ’s sake!
and seafood is fine but I don’t like goddamned deepfried catfish and frog legs every fucking Friday. I would love some beer batter halibut every once in awhile or a nice salmon filet
two menu items I do miss is the chicken and andouille sausage gumbo and the southern fried chicken Sunday supper
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145162]So if they are building these ships like gangbusters why is everyone flying south for work? Not everybody looking for work is a new grad. If the Union is so great why are they preparing a shit sandwich feast for their members? Why can’t a coastwise ship work even time? Why can’t the union get wifi on all the ships? Johnny why are you down here if the money isn’t better? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SEAFOOD FRIDAY?!?![/QUOTE]
I clearly stated why I came down.
Do not confuse the MMP for the SIU and the AMO.
Generally speaking, most officers do work even times. Especially coastwise tankers. 60-90 day rotations.
It’s a damn shame pics won’t post on here anymore. You must’ve got stuck with the wrong bunch we don’t have deep fried everything we get broiled and grilled also. I had Halibut and cod last hitch. I think the hitch before we had tuna steaks. Our lead galley captain is top shelf.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;145168]It’s a damn shame pics won’t post on here anymore. You must’ve got stuck with the wrong bunch we don’t have deep fried everything we get broiled and grilled also. I had Halibut and cod last hitch. I think the hitch before we had tuna steaks. Our lead galley captain is top shelf.[/QUOTE]
