Right, so we’re discussing two different situations? I’m referring to the predominantly deep sea unions.
Most senior officer positions aren’t filled via a hall or posted on a job board. Filled by promotion, a company wants to ensure they trust you for higher-level roles.
Yes, these jobs do hit the board/hall from time-to-time, but thats the exception and not the rule.
No, we’re comparing maritime officer unions to the airline pilot union.
There are 31 senior officer positions open on the Job board right now.
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Yes, which isn’t normal just like being able to change airline companies as captain isn’t normal.
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Through my career most of the jobs in the board have been senior officers. It’s been notoriously difficult to get a 3rd/2nd’s job off the board. This has changed within the last year or so.
In the airline world, seniority is EVERYTHING. The sailing equivalent would mean you quit or get fired as a captain at one place, you start over as 3rd Mate in the next company at that pay rate and work your way up again. Mobility between major airlines is very low, almost unheard of.
Why do you care if you aren’t a pilot? Maybe you don’t, but it helps to understand why pilots get paid what they do. The path to that paycheck is narrow and beset with traps every step of the way. Kind of like a chutes and ladders game.
What you can take from it is one STRONG union that will go to the mat for their members beats the hell out of 5 unions that don’t do much 
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What board is this?
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Mariner jobs vs pilot jobs, and maritime unions vs pilot unions comparative job status and employer perception of their value as indicated by salary, job security, and union representation.
The thread title is (or should be) pretty clear to most people, even those whose grandparents lack wheels.
I think he was asking about this, i.e what board has 3rd mate jobs 
Through my career most of the jobs in the board have been senior officers. It’s been notoriously difficult to get a 3rd/2nd’s job off the board. This has changed within the last year or so.
Worth noting their is really no such thing as a “board” for pilots, you can’t hang around the airport and get a job very often.
Wait so how does a 3rd mate get their first job? I thought boards were the only way?
In AMO it was always backdoor hiring. You knew someone at a company or you knew which bar a certain dispatcher hung out at.
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Oh man the whole reason I’m looking into maritime is because of the apparent ease of getting a job without having to get lucky with networking. Please Tell me if I’ve been misled.
You are not being misled. It tends to be feast or famine. At the moment shipping is good. Just be aware it is a niche industry that requires the right credentials. Once you have them finding work usually isn’t a problem.
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It’s easy right now because there are more jobs than mariners. Seven years ago every employer had hundreds of applications/resumes coming in weekly with no job openings. When there was a job opening advertised they got thousands of applications.
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The feast or famine nature of being a Mariner, and the fact that we had a famine a few years ago, is why we need to be feasting on much better money now before the next famine hits.
A 50% raise over the next five years is a minimum just to catch up with the true rate of inflation over the past few years. Although a 50% increase in wages over five years really wouldn’t be much of an increase in buying power.
A 100% increase in wages over the next five years could be very easily afforded by vessel owners who have raised their day rates and are doing very well.
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Anyone that chooses maritime over flying big jets is a fool.
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Well if you have 2 solid job offers, one from Southwest and one from Big Al’s Big Tugboat Company, I think the choice is clear.
Very few people are in that position.
If you are talking starting out from scratch, the aviation industry is very cyclic and there are a lot of ways to do nothing but barely avoid starvation your whole career if you are at the wrong point in the cycle. It is also important to realize that there is no transfer of seniority, a 20 year captain laid off from Airline A is a FNG at any other airline, last in line for everything including money.
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Sounds exactly like the maritime industry except seniority counts for zip in shipping
That is a plus and a minus. If you are a captain of tugboat for Big Al, you can probably quite and be a captain of a tugboat for Big Bertha.
If you quit being a Southwest Captain, it would be a miracle to get on as a captain at another airline. You go to the back of the line again.