Time to raise seafarers up the social scale
Posted on | May 5, 2010 | 1 Comment
The week before I joined my first ship, there was an encouraging headline in the local paper.
“Seafarers the scum of the earth, says judge”. He was, if I recall, dealing with the aftermath of what appeared to me a low-level riot in Southampton, with a Cunarder’s crew celebrating in an unrestrained fashion, in the course of which part of the city was wrecked.
Well, that was more than a half century ago, but it often seems that in a world even more dependent upon shipping for its food, fuel and fashionable consumer goods, the seafarers does not appear to have greatly advanced up the social scale.
Nobody knows any seafarers, so ships might be manned by Martians for all they believe. If they did, or if they had some inkling of their dependence upon them, they might appreciate seafarers more.
There is a first class barrage of good sense about the need to lobby on behalf of seafarers available in the latest issue of Alert!, the International Maritime Human Element Bulletin.
Written by Lloyd’s Register CEO Richard Sadler, this is on the issue of all the stakeholders in shipping recognising their shared responsibilities.
But he rapidly focuses on the need to empower seafarers and stop the erosion of their social status. He suggests that the Marine Labour Convention will help in their social conditions, living conditions, working conditions and rewards. But it is the attitude of others to seafarers which he says need to be changed, and this Year of the Seafarer is not a bad time to implement this attitudinal shift.
The seafarer (Sadler describes them as “the bedrock of the industry”) are still woefully treated. Why, he asks, are they treated by immigration officials with such comparative discourtesy to aircrew, who even have their own dedicated channels when they arrive at airports.
You do not, he says, see aircrew forced to remain aboard their aircraft, and have their shore leave denied.
“Are seafarers such a security risk and so unwelcome that they cannot be offered the same courtesy? – he asks – was the brave pilot of the aircraft which landed in the Hudson River arrested and held under bail?
“You cannot” he points out “have a safe, sustainable or responsible business without sound technology that is suitably managed and operated by suitable people in a suitable culture and environment”.
And that perhaps is the operative word – culture. If we have a downright oppressive culture in ports, with officials swaggering aboard ship throwing their weight about, we will not retain the good people we need to operate our ships safely.
Somebody has to grasp this nettle, rein in the jobsworths stamping up the gangways, and teach them some plain, honest manners.
They need to recognise that they are in somebody else’s home, they need to realise they are dealing with important people whose job is every bit as essential as theirs.
That way, we might lever up the social status of seafarers just a few notches.
See www.he-alert.org Issue 23, May 2010
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May 10th, 2010 @ 2:17 am
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