GOM/Oilfield Pay

[Saltine]

I've often kicked around the way pay is structured at different companies operating Supply Vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. There are some that structure around longevity, others around experience and some that pay by credentials. If I were on the shore side my idea would be this:

Master's and Chief's would be very well taken care of, say with pay in the $650-$700/day range. Maybe also throw in paid benefits or a salary option for these guys. Pay the rest of the crew below market rate to make up for the high rates of the Master and Chief. To me this would do a couple of things that would greatly benefit the crews work ethic and tenure with a company. The Master's and Chief's would do a good job knowing that they probably won't find a job paying that well in the Gulf elsewhere. This would also encourage the rest of the crews to move up to secure one of these positions and not be a career deck hand, A/B or oiler. The guys you would lose in the process because of pay would be someone you wouldn't want around anyway. You may lose a few good hands that don't have the capacity to move up but overall it seems as if your crew would be more competent and ambitious.

I know this may sound unconventional to most but it seems that it may work. Yeah, you have 2 very well paid members of each vessels crew but you can decrease the rates of the rest of the crew by $10-$20/day to make up for it.

What's your thoughts?

[c.captain]

Not at all...the companies should pay EVERYBODY fairly and honestly and in exchange expect them to perform to the best of their abilities for the company and their vessel. An even exchange where all parties benefit equally. Those who can't perform or cause trouble get cut by the companies and those companies who don't treat their mariners with respect as professionals need to have their people walk away as form of protest. That is at least how it should be.

Of course, the problem has always been that there are ALWAYS mariners who will NOT walk away from a lousy deal and thus the companies who do not treat their mariners fairly and with simple respect are able to get away with it in perpetuity. Thus we are left with the never ending ways of the GoM and most of the US maritime industry as well.

I know that there are companies who do treat their mariners with that simple respect and as a result, those are the companies where it is virtually impossible to get aboard because nobody ever leaves. Money alone does not make for an excellent maritime job.

[anchorman]

I've often kicked around the way pay is structured at different companies operating Supply Vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. There are some that structure around longevity, others around experience and some that pay by credentials. If I were on the shore side my idea would be this:

Master's and Chief's would be very well taken care of, say with pay in the $650-$700/day range. Maybe also throw in paid benefits or a salary option for these guys. Pay the rest of the crew below market rate to make up for the high rates of the Master and Chief. To me this would do a couple of things that would greatly benefit the crews work ethic and tenure with a company. The Master's and Chief's would do a good job knowing that they probably won't find a job paying that well in the Gulf elsewhere. This would also encourage the rest of the crews to move up to secure one of these positions and not be a career deck hand, A/B or oiler. The guys you would lose in the process because of pay would be someone you wouldn't want around anyway. You may lose a few good hands that don't have the capacity to move up but overall it seems as if your crew would be more competent and ambitious.

I know this may sound unconventional to most but it seems that it may work. Yeah, you have 2 very well paid members of each vessels crew but you can decrease the rates of the rest of the crew by $10-$20/day to make up for it.

What's your thoughts?

I agree with the Masters and Chief making considerably more (it should be that way), but I would not advocate cutting someone else's pay to make it happen - that would go against your reasoning in the first place. That has been thought of before, but the main reason of it being the way it is now is client driven believe it or not.

[Capt. Lee]

Master's and Chief's would be very well taken care of, say with pay in the $650-$700/day range.

What's your thoughts?

I couldn't take that kind of pay cut.

[Conspearasea]

2 guys overpaid w/ the rest of crew paid less than standard ( so the overpaid can stay overpaid) = Resentment......

This reminds me of an AB I had that considered me a "hardass" because I expected the deck crew to work during most of their 12 hour shift. His 'genius' idea was he would buy his own workboat, the captain would not be allowed to "tell them what to do"; INSTEAD, the crew would only do what they "felt like they should do and be doing". At no point would they be made to do something they either did not feel like doing, or otherwise thought didn't need to be done.

I guess he really had a problem w/ authority, thinking the "man" was out to get him! I should have drug tested the pipe dreamer.

Anyways I personally would not work for less money, for an undetermined amount of time, just in hope of getting paid better at some point in the future....that $20 a day, adds up to almost $5000 yearly w/ a 28/14 rotation.

[anchorman]

2 guys overpaid w/ the rest of crew paid less than standard ( so the overpaid can stay overpaid) = Resentment......

This reminds me of an AB I had that considered me a "hardass" because I expected the deck crew to work during most of their 12 hour shift. His 'genius' idea was he would buy his own workboat, the captain would not be allowed to "tell them what to do"; INSTEAD, the crew would only do what they "felt like they should do and be doing". At no point would they be made to do something they either did not feel like doing, or otherwise thought didn't need to be done.

I guess he really had a problem w/ authority, thinking the "man" was out to get him! I should have drug tested the pipe dreamer.

Anyways I personally would not work for less money, for an undetermined amount of time, just in hope of getting paid better at some point in the future....that $20 a day, adds up to almost $5000 yearly w/ a 28/14 rotation.

Overpaid? Never heard of that before....kinda like "extra money".....never heard of that either.

[Conspearasea]

...kinda like "extra money".....never heard of that either.

Yep, I'm married too....never have extra money.

[steelbeach]

For a commercial divide don't think it would work.
Let's all go "yachting" - I think thats the way they settle up on a trip.
They also make sure the shades are drawn and the lights are out during the payout.

[EbbTide]

I grew up and began working on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Started with fishing boats. Never sure if you would catch enough fish to get paid, or if you would get paid after a hard days work. Twelve feet across the pier was the crewboat landing for the dredge boat crew deepening Egmont channel.
Hard working guys putting in 12 hr days, but they always had a huge pocketful of money compared to us and real health care benefits for when they got bruised up in bar fights. We had the VD clinic. A sympathetic Doc, who would stitch us up and write scripts for anti-biotic. Hey, Pass-A-Grille Beach in the ’70’s
So I crossed over to the dark side, dredging, and a union deckhand at that. Thirty years later, I realize that it was an excellent move for a dumb ass mullet fisherman.
I earned my license, just a modest 100 ton, but all I need to apply my craft. By working for a union, I have accumulated a guaranteed retirement benefit. I get a yearly vacation check equal to about six weeks straight time pay. With employer contributions’, I have a six figure 401k. (for the Boudreaux, that’s over a hundred G’s).
Imagine that! A freaking mullet fisherman from the west coast of Florida with a six figure 401k and retirement benefits!
My union health/retirement/vacation plans are portable; meaning that as long as I’m working for a union signatory contractor, I haven’t lost anything when the job ends and they send us down the road to the unemployment office or another company.
My union’s medical plan is excellent; I pay $25.00 to visit the best and the brightest in the medical community. The prescription plan covers everything but Viagra. (not that I might admit using it)
My son is second year engineering student with a prepaid tuition plan that I was able to pony up for because of my union wages, and he has a union scholarship.
Not everyone who is on G Captain, will earn an Unlimited Masters license, but we all share the horrors of working for companies who treat us poorly because they think they think they can get away with it.
Are unions perfect? No. They are run by people.
Will maritime unions be exactly what we expect, need and deserve? Probably not.
Will crossing twelve feet to the other side of the dock and joining a union help working guys like you and mariners in the Gulf of Mexico?
Absolutely
I am a former commercial fisherman. I’ve worked non-union tug deckhand jobs from Tampa to Louisiana and have nothing to show for it. If you think you’re doing yourself a favor by helping a non-union company out? Forget-about-it! They will throw you under the bus faster than you can say, “Who Dat?”
We are all brothers upon the ocean. Bill Miller, EbbTide, a member, IUOE Local 25<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
<o></o>

[Saltine]

I grew up and began working on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Started with fishing boats. Never sure if you would catch enough fish to get paid, or if you would get paid after a hard days work. Twelve feet across the pier was the crewboat landing for the dredge boat crew deepening Egmont channel.
Hard working guys putting in 12 hr days, but they always had a huge pocketful of money compared to us and real health care benefits for when they got bruised up in bar fights. We had the VD clinic. A sympathetic Doc, who would stitch us up and write scripts for anti-biotic. Hey, Pass-A-Grille Beach in the ’70’s
So I crossed over to the dark side, dredging, and a union deckhand at that. Thirty years later, I realize that it was an excellent move for a dumb ass mullet fisherman.
I earned my license, just a modest 100 ton, but all I need to apply my craft. By working for a union, I have accumulated a guaranteed retirement benefit. I get a yearly vacation check equal to about six weeks straight time pay. With employer contributions’, I have a six figure 401k. (for the Boudreaux, that’s over a hundred G’s).
Imagine that! A freaking mullet fisherman from the west coast of Florida with a six figure 401k and retirement benefits!
My union health/retirement/vacation plans are portable; meaning that as long as I’m working for a union signatory contractor, I haven’t lost anything when the job ends and they send us down the road to the unemployment office or another company.
My union’s medical plan is excellent; I pay $25.00 to visit the best and the brightest in the medical community. The prescription plan covers everything but Viagra. (not that I might admit using it)
My son is second year engineering student with a prepaid tuition plan that I was able to pony up for because of my union wages, and he has a union scholarship.
Not everyone who is on G Captain, will earn an Unlimited Masters license, but we all share the horrors of working for companies who treat us poorly because they think they think they can get away with it.
Are unions perfect? No. They are run by people.
Will maritime unions be exactly what we expect, need and deserve? Probably not.
Will crossing twelve feet to the other side of the dock and joining a union help working guys like you and mariners in the Gulf of Mexico?
Absolutely
I am a former commercial fisherman. I’ve worked non-union tug deckhand jobs from Tampa to Louisiana and have nothing to show for it. If you think you’re doing yourself a favor by helping a non-union company out? Forget-about-it! They will throw you under the bus faster than you can say, “Who Dat?”
We are all brothers upon the ocean. Bill Miller, EbbTide, a member, IUOE Local 25<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
<o></o>

If you are saying that you can't have good benefits (I.e. 401k and health insurance) working for a "Non-Union" company you need to get off the drugs. I would be willing to bet that the majority of operators in the Gulf offer benefits, whether they are good or bad or debatable. And if they aren't good then the people that continue to work there have to deal with it. If you don't like the benefits go elsewhere, it's pretty simple. Unions in my opinion are absolutely the worst thing that can happen to the market in the Gulf. Look what they have done to the auto industry! They made it so that every employee was "entitled" to good wages and benefits. In turn the labor costs ultimately were a major factor that led to their demise. I don't feel bad for anyone that became jobless in the automotive unions because they caused this in the first place. The same applies to those in Maritime Unions.

[Capt. Lee]

The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different...
Two Different Versions ... Two Different Morals
OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!


MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.





America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper
and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN
stages a demonstration in front of the ant's
house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome."

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames
President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the
Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper,
and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper
and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which,
as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,
crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has
disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken
over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of
the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2010.

[tengineer]

I grew up and began working on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Started with fishing boats. Never sure if you would catch enough fish to get paid, or if you would get paid after a hard days work. Twelve feet across the pier was the crewboat landing for the dredge boat crew deepening Egmont channel.
Hard working guys putting in 12 hr days, but they always had a huge pocketful of money compared to us and real health care benefits for when they got bruised up in bar fights. We had the VD clinic. A sympathetic Doc, who would stitch us up and write scripts for anti-biotic. Hey, Pass-A-Grille Beach in the ’70’s
So I crossed over to the dark side, dredging, and a union deckhand at that. Thirty years later, I realize that it was an excellent move for a dumb ass mullet fisherman.
I earned my license, just a modest 100 ton, but all I need to apply my craft. By working for a union, I have accumulated a guaranteed retirement benefit. I get a yearly vacation check equal to about six weeks straight time pay. With employer contributions’, I have a six figure 401k. (for the Boudreaux, that’s over a hundred G’s).
Imagine that! A freaking mullet fisherman from the west coast of Florida with a six figure 401k and retirement benefits!
My union health/retirement/vacation plans are portable; meaning that as long as I’m working for a union signatory contractor, I haven’t lost anything when the job ends and they send us down the road to the unemployment office or another company.
My union’s medical plan is excellent; I pay $25.00 to visit the best and the brightest in the medical community. The prescription plan covers everything but Viagra. (not that I might admit using it)
My son is second year engineering student with a prepaid tuition plan that I was able to pony up for because of my union wages, and he has a union scholarship.
Not everyone who is on G Captain, will earn an Unlimited Masters license, but we all share the horrors of working for companies who treat us poorly because they think they think they can get away with it.
Are unions perfect? No. They are run by people.
Will maritime unions be exactly what we expect, need and deserve? Probably not.
Will crossing twelve feet to the other side of the dock and joining a union help working guys like you and mariners in the Gulf of Mexico?
Absolutely
I am a former commercial fisherman. I’ve worked non-union tug deckhand jobs from Tampa to Louisiana and have nothing to show for it. If you think you’re doing yourself a favor by helping a non-union company out? Forget-about-it! They will throw you under the bus faster than you can say, “Who Dat?”
We are all brothers upon the ocean. Bill Miller, EbbTide, a member, IUOE Local 25<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
<o></o>

Unions are working folks banding together to help each other out, it's democracy in action. I've worked with and without unions but I'm always surprised that the most vehement union opposition comes from those who have never been associated with a union. If you don't like your union reps you throw them out. Are unions perfect? Of course not. Are the corporations that decide your fate without you having representation perfect? Of course not.
The United States IS a union.
Tengneer

[c.captain]

If you are saying that you can't have good benefits (I.e. 401k and health insurance) working for a "Non-Union" company you need to get off the drugs. I would be willing to bet that the majority of operators in the Gulf offer benefits, whether they are good or bad or debatable. And if they aren't good then the people that continue to work there have to deal with it. If you don't like the benefits go elsewhere, it's pretty simple. Unions in my opinion are absolutely the worst thing that can happen to the market in the Gulf. Look what they have done to the auto industry! They made it so that every employee was "entitled" to good wages and benefits. In turn the labor costs ultimately were a major factor that led to their demise. I don't feel bad for anyone that became jobless in the automotive unions because they caused this in the first place. The same applies to those in Maritime Unions.

oh so very typical...exactly what the LaFourche mafia wants you to regurgitate for their benefit. Please clearly state in logical terms the facts that support your premise?

[c.captain]

moral of the story:
Be careful how you vote in 2010.

for god's sake man...keep your personal politics off of this site!

thank you...

[Capt. Lee]

for god's sake man...keep your personal politics off of this site!

thank you...

I am not really a political kind of guy....I just thought it was a funny story.

[c.captain]

I am not really a political kind of guy....I just thought it was a funny story.

As far as my reading of it...an utterly political story which does not belong here.

again, thank you for your forebearance

[Capt. Lee]

I knew you wouldn't be able to help yourself!

[Kennebec Captain]

I think tengineer has it right. People form groups to look out for their interests. If your interests diverge from the groups you can leave, split off, etc.If you go to work for Backwater Bayou Tug and Barge you are joining a group , if you think they are looking out for your interests, give you raises and promotions, invite you to the Christmas party, call your spouse by first name and so forth fine. But if Backwater Bayou Tug and Barge gets bought out by Consolidated international Towing and your crew, your pay get cut and your workload goes up you might come to the conclusion that perhaps they are not looking out for your interests anymore.

[anchorman]

As far as my reading of it...an utterly political story which does not belong here.

again, thank you for your forebearance

Don't worry. You comprehend in your own unique way.....the gcaptain community didn't even notice.

[Saltine]

oh so very typical...exactly what the LaFourche mafia wants you to regurgitate for their benefit. Please clearly state in logical terms the facts that support your premise?

In my opinion unions attract lots of employees who want to do nothing and get paid really well for it. Let me be very clear that I am not saying everyone in a union is like this but my experience has seen most of them do. As I said earlier the auto industry was a perfect example, you have a guy that makes $60,000/year and his only job may be to put a hub cap on. And don't ask him to maybe put a door handle on occasionally because "that's not his job." Unions typically drive the price of labor so high that lot's of companies have to raise the price for their services so high that demand drops.

After Katrina boat companies were throwing money to attract and keep workers and ultimately had some effect on the down turn. No, it is not the main reason but companies started to slow projects down because they just costed too much. Don't get me wrong, the boat business was not the only one's doing this but just an example. If costs stay at an even keel then companies are more likely to do projects that they may have passed on. This creates stability in the job market for everyone.

This is just my two cents.