Would someone be kind enough to explain Union and Non Union as regards US shipping please? I’m from the UK and we just work for whatever shipping company we like the look of and who will employ us.
Just google “UK maritime union”
That because Maggie did the NUS and the GCBS in 35 years ago. And The MNAOA or whatever it calls itself today never really was a Union most of its members regarded it as a professional association and voted for Maggie.
Without realizing most of thier jobs were on her hit list to.
How many British ships actually have British crew?
Fortunately some unions still exist in the USA.
I did as you suggested and it came up with Nautilus, of which I am a retired member. It has no control over who does what or on what ships they serve. I’m sorry if my question is badly worded but I would be interested to know why the manning of ships in different areas of the US and with different companies seems to be controlled by all sorts of different unions.
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It’s simple. The US owners want to have a lot of different unions to play off again each other in a competition to see which union will supply the cheapest seafarers.
The thugs running the US unions just want to keep collecting fat salaries and under the table payoffs from the owners. They don’t give a shit about the members. They sure as hell don’t want to merge the unions into one or two effective voices for seafarers that might raise wages. That would mean some of the union thugs would lose their fat pay checks and under the table payments.
This situation is simply beyond belief.
Deep draft foreign going ships are virtually all union. The Great Lakes fleet is about 85% union. The deep draft coastal fleet is virtually all union. Smaller vessels are a mix of maybe 20% union and 80% nonunion.
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Thank you. That has made it clearer for me.
Minimum legal manning is by COI or minimum manning document. The unions can negotiate contracts that require a higher manning level above the legal minimum.
A couple examples are contractual agreements for the minimum manning of the steward’s department which in the U.S. at least is not required by regulation. The other example is negotiating for an extra third mate to on some short coast-wise runs.
Unions can also lobby regulators and government with regards to required minimums.
In our case, that’s not the union’s doing. The mates are non-union. That extra guy is there to ensure the ship’s cargo operation is not limited due to watchkeeper limits. Many times the terminal is a 6+ hour maneuver up a river which burns up the mate’s hours. Seems to me the company could get around that for cheaper by having a “cargo mate” meet the vessel in the load/discharge ports to solve this problem without having to pay him for all the transit time in between ports. That is IF someone would be willing to do this type of hit and miss work…maybe a mate who is on vacation and wants some extra cash?
This guy cannot be any more correct in his assertion.
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And so we have AMO and SIU. Two profitable turds to those who sit at the top and it’s fucking sickening. God how much I fucking hate them…