The ‘cheapskate option’

While we have every sympathy, and applaud the initiatives shown by the industry to build and run ships in a more efficient way in order to cut costs, we do feel that there is one valuable resource – manpower – that needs investment in quality rather than opting for the lowest common denominator.

As I write this, I am looking at a press release just in from one of the UK transport unions, saying that another large ship management company intends to flag out from Germany so that it does not have to pay European rates to its seafarers, arguing that meeting nationally controlled rates of pay is no longer “economically feasible”. This follows on from action by the same union – RMT – against well-known ferry companies around the UK which manage to pay their crews at far below the European minimum wage.

Quite apart from the injustice, and the words like ‘social dumping’ ‘cheapskate’ and ‘ships of shame’ bandied about – with some justification – by the likes of RMT, there are deeper, longer term, consequences. Ships, and their machinery and equipment, are getting ever more complex and technologically advanced. This is accepted by classification societies – Bureau Veritas, in its role as chair of IACS for this year, has named it as an action point. Yet the levels of training and competence of those engaged to operate such systems is being lowered by owners and managers replacing well-qualified personnel with cheap crews.

Surely there are implications with respect to safety, and while the complex equipment keeps going, and satellite links allow responsible operators to use shore-based condition monitoring, there may not be problems using cheaper operators onboard, systems can fail and things go wrong. Then costs are likely to increase way above the savings made in manpower. And are the responsible shore-based jobs with those ship owners and managers going to filled in future by former ‘cheap’ engineer officers coming ashore?

RMT points out that seafarers are dismissed as ‘the human element’, i.e. an inconvenient cost that must be reduced. The horror stories we hear from welfare organisations like Apostleship of the Seas are likely to increase in number and frequency if this treatment continues.

Bill Thomson