This is a really good editorial, yes really, no I’m not being snarky, this is good.
but…
you’re preaching to the choir here.
Any chance this editorial could be published in the WSJ? NYT? USA Today?
OK that’s a bit of a reach, so how about The San Francisco Chronicle? San Jose Mercury? Boston Globe? LA Times? Seattle Times?
OK still to much?
How about The Dig? Seattle Stranger, SF Weekly? Modern Drunkard Magazine?
But here’s the thing, we can all pick on Capt. Konrad, one guy who seems to have spent to much time at Merchant’s did just that, but Capt. Konrad does what he can, he’s one man.
If we wait for Capt. Konrad, or MARAD, or David Heindel, or Tony Poplawski, or Paul Doel, or Don Marcus, or…
we will fail, it is up to all of us.
How many people reading this have made or at least attempted to make, contacts with their local press? How many have spoken at schools? Spoken to their local Sea Scout Chapter?
Have we pushed our Unions (and especially the unlicensed Unions) to take out adds in the Navy Times?
Has anyone here offered to write an article for Task & Purpose?
for over forty years I’ve been hearing how our industry is dying, and if we don’t recruit new seafarers, it will die.
I wrote a rather long winded reply here, I’ll thank you in advance for taking the time to read it.
No that’s not why I’m writing again, my motive this time is simple, I’ll ask you the same thing I asked you on Twitter;
Where is the section on GCaptain that outlines how to become a merchant mariner?
I’m being sincere, I know you’re busy, but I hear all the time from people who might like to ship, but have no idea how to go about it.
just a thought.
I think there should be a major push amongst maritime officers to refuse employment or to apply at OSG until the CEO resigns. His rhetoric is just an excuse to outsource labor and pad his own golden parachute.
Almost all the deck officers I know with a valid PIC / or had a valid PIC don’t work on tankers.
Tankers mates have one of the most stressful, legally risky, and unhealthy jobs in the industry. And the wages for c/m and master at OSG are comparatively low. When you combine the wages with the lack of/ crap benefits, no wonder why they can’t find people.
And you can’t blame junior mates for not wanting to work for OSG when the company doesn’t immediately reimburse for c/m upgrade classes.
Giving the same sob story that there’s no mates with PICs or this generation doesn’t want to work is bull crap. I don’t work on a tanker but how come there seems to be no problem signing on second and third mates with a tankerman PIC !?!?!?
If OSG unionized with the MEBA things will change but not overnight.
Alot of deck officers on the ships want to be Union and submitted pledge cards. There is a union Vote for ATC with MEBA and MMP on the ballot that’s ending this January. MEBA pledge cards for the rest of OSG have been submitted to the NLRB for a vote but no info if MMP will intervene yet and attempt to split the union vote.
Here’s some back story for those who want to know:
Months ago at the beginning of the union drive MEBA and AMO had a conversation and AMO wouldn’t interfere as MEBA already/ was first collecting pledge cards and it would be better to be union than split the union vote. Then MMP heard about the MEBA collecting pledge. The conversation between MMP and MEBA was not productive. MMP said the MEBA was making them look bad and that they would rather split the Union vote than have OSG/ATC be MEBA.
MMP was never going to have enough pledge cards to call a vote for OSG and ATC combined. MEBA did and was going to. However, MMP blindsided the MEBA by barely getting enough pledge cards to call a vote for just ATC. (The MMP had to convince the NLRB that ATC was a separate and distinct unit which the NRLB agreed with against OSG which said the units should be together).
MMPs actions of splitting the units was detrimental. If the MEBA was able to call for a vote for both ATC/OSG combined and won they would easily be able to argue the units are one in the same and all wages on the OSG ships should immediately be raised to whatever the any new negotiated ATC wages would be. In other words 16 OSG ships would get a bigger pay raise because they as of now they are getting paid less than ATC.
The MEBA is also pissed at the MMP for several other reasons. Maybe I’ll outline those in another post.
This is obviously more MARINE ENGINEERS BENEFICIAL ASSOCIATION misinformation. MEBA is actually titled the intervening union because they didn’t show majority support. The definition of an intervenor is a union that has atleast 10% of the pledge cards.
Below are the links to the NLRB documents that prove MM&P are full petitioners and involved parties in both the ATC and OSG election while MEBA is a intervenor union.
OSG NLRB Record that shows MM&P is the involved party while MEBA is the intervenor (10% of pledge cards):
And this right here is why the American mariner will never have a leg to stand on. When the unions are cutting each other’s throats how does that help anybody?
To me unions will never be a viable option untill there is just one union left.
There are almost no employment rules in the UK sector of the North Sea and the employment market has become in large part become dominated by people from Eastern Europe (Poland, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Ukraine etc.) and the Philippines.
Many of the seafarers from these places will work for low terms and conditions compered to what someone from the UK would want, so are favoured by a lot of vessel operators. There are still a lot of UK seafarers working on vessels in the UK sector, but the numbers are dwarfed by the number of people from Eastern Europe and Philippines. It is hard to find hard data on it because it is a sensitive topic.
With no rules I would imagine the US Merchant Marine would possible follow a similar pattern, a lot more mariners would be hired from the Philippines and Eastern Europe etc. They would get the job done for a fraction of the cost of hiring an American.
Your on this Bug. A question I have as well. I do agree that there should be one union for mariners in USA, but that will be almost impossible due to infighting .My choice to lead them would be Paul Doell from AMO. ILA is almost there for dockworkers, they ain’t doing too bad ,crazy good money Son dealt with many outfits when he was in the port container business. ILA paid much more. The private outfits were decent, but you could tell from the parking lot who was union and who was not.
The metric we would need, but could never find would be “How many people in the UK are not seafarers because the wages are low” but you can’t count something that isn’t there. This isn’t a problem measured over days, but years.
The only example that is close to demonstrating the average American mariner’s concern is the situation with all skilled labor in the state of Florida. a combination of being a Right to Work state (no union) and a very large immigrant population leads to wages in all sectors from Electricians to Medical trades being in the bottom 5 in the nation, despite having some of the highest rents in the nation.
While this conversation has been giving me second hand embarrassment for months watching these two unions have brand new accounts show up to type propaganda in all caps, the question remains, why isn’t AMO sending goons to gCaptain? Either someone is looking at the forecast of funding a pension and needs more people to keep it alive - and is fighting to do so, or someone is saying “Fuck, we don’t have enough people in the job pool to crew 16 more ships” but either way I suspect something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I’ve heard this from a couple of people. Several MEBA companies have different pay scales for different class vessels. Why should the Alaska class pay scales not be able to differ from the Veteran class?