Long-Term Neglect of Mariners Continues to Haunt Maritime Employers

Last week’s pledge by the Overseas Shipholding Group (OSG) to make berths on its international vessels available to U.S. cadets was hailed in most circles as good news for the tight marine labor market. The public-private partnership is one more sign that the marine industry is well aware of the problem and more importantly, that it's got to be part of the solution. And there’s no question that marine operators have stepped up to the plate, in more ways than one. According to some mariners, it may be too little, too late.

We received a fair amount of mail responding to last week’s editorial about the MARAD/OSG deal, most of it from mariners or former mariners who had a lot to say about the matter. You can read their responses elsewhere in this e-newsletter, but in short, the general consensus was that whatever the improvements now being provided by industry, they are clearly not enough, and come far too late to salvage the services of a generation of mariners who may pack it in before they might have otherwise, under better conditions. It is tempting to dismiss this as seafarer whining, but maritime executives everywhere had better strap on their hearing aids and listen to what their employees have to say. To do otherwise will only exacerbate the current crisis.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine from MMA just this week. We’ll call him Ralph -- he wants to continue working a bit more. (Captain) Ralph sails as Master for a large U.S.-flag operator and has sailed continuously since we both graduated almost 28 years ago. He called me (probably on that free broadband connection provided by his employers) to talk about the article I wrote last week and told me pretty much the same thing that most of our other MarEx readers had said: conditions may be improving but they are not yet anywhere near where they need to be in order to keep people at sea. Gathering that he was earning well in excess of $100,000 per year with about six months vacation, I chided him for complaining about a job situation that a lot of people would kill to obtain. My comments were NOT well received.

Ralph’s response to me was telling. After almost thirty years of clawing his way to the top -- from a position of deck hand in the early 1980s -- he didn’t feel that he had gained any significant advantage to anyone working ashore, and in fact was probably lagging in most respects. “I spend six months at sea running an $80-million vessel, carrying cargo that is worth far more than that, running the regulatory gauntlet in so many ways and am separated from my family for long stretches at a time. They ought to be paying us twice as much for this level of responsibility.” Without a doubt, he has management peers ashore making more, with far less headaches and responsibility. There was certain merit to his argument.

In 1982, six months at sea as Second Mate netted me about $55,000. At that time, I made almost three times as my roommate -- a graduate from Yale in the same year that I left MMA -- who was working as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments. It WAS worth it to go to sea, at one time. These ratios are no longer valid, especially when a shoreside plant engineer can start out making the same pay as his third engineer counterpart on a merchant vessel.

As the number of working platforms became fewer, employers could not only pick and choose who they wanted to work for them, they could also do so at drastically reduced pay and benefit scales. And so, they did. We’re reaping the downstream results of those policies today.

This week, I was on the Gulf Coast conducting various interviews for our next print issue of MarEx. In Fourchon, Louisiana, I boarded an offshore specialty vessel moored there to take a tour and talk to some of the mariners. What I saw and heard was simply incredible. The Master of this sophisticated, state-of-the-art U.S.-flag vessel and his mates were earning a very good living. His pay had been augmented three or four times in the past 18 months and his employers had confirmed that pay scales had at least doubled during that period.

Beyond the improved pay scales, the living conditions on the vessel, in virtually every category you could think of, were nothing short of first class -- all of it paid for by the operator. 24/7 satellite television, e-mail, voice comms, excellent food (I had seconds) and the theater-quality media room with at least twenty seats wasn’t too bad, either. As I departed, they were in the process of deciding which kind of exercise gear to install -- shopping online in their off time, of course. I almost hated to go back down the gangway, but alas, I’m not STCW compliant.

It is getting better out there. I leave it to those who actually do the work to tell me if that is good enough, but clearly, this is not your father’s merchant marine. From where I am sitting, it all looks pretty good. There’s no doubt that employers are rapidly coming around to the fact that working conditions and pay are going to have to continue to improve -- maybe to the standards described above -- if they are to expect that qualified mariners will want to stay at sea.

The shoe is clearly on the other foot now and regaining the trust of today’s potential mariners who may someday make up the bulk of our marine workforce is plainly a work in progress. Last week, we reported that the collective product of today’s maritime academies is a graduating class of which only about 61% chooses to sit for a license. These numbers are not enough. But, as one of our readers so eloquently put it, “The academy graduates are voting with their feet and those feet aren't going up gangways.”

2008 is an important election year here in the United States. Presidential candidates are trying to convince us that a vote for them will be the right thing to do, and ultimately, will bring a better life for all. It’s a tough sell. Today’s maritime employers have a similar task ahead of them.

Like our crowded field of presidential hopefuls, time is quickly running out for marine employers to get their message across to potential employees. In the world of politics, often it is enough to promise a few things in order to stay in office or actually get there. Unlike the politicians, however, marine employers will actually have to deliver on those promises. Those who don’t can be assured that their former employees will be surfing the Web from their laptops while talking to their sweetie in the media room of their competitor’s vessel, or failing that, from their own living room on dry land. For the jilted marine operator, neither prospect can be particularly appealing. - MarEx