Incidents involving unfair treatment of seafarers continue to happen worldwide, and BIMCO is maintaining its focus on this area to try and improve the situation both for seafarers and the shipping industry in general. A series of three consecutive articles mark the International Maritime Organization’s “Year of the Seafarer” by focusing on general trends, implications for seafarers, and the international legislative perspective and future outlook

The year 2010 has been designated as the “Year of the Seafarer” by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to give the organisation and the international maritime community at large the opportunity to pay tribute to the world’s seafarers for their unique contribution to society and in recognition of the risks they shoulder in the execution of their duties in an often hostile environment. BIMCO attributes much importance to the human element of shipping and considers that IMO’s decision will further support global measures aimed at safeguarding seafarers and recognize their work. The fact, however, that a number of maritime incidents in recent years continue to show examples of unfair treatment of seafarers – and perhaps even more significantly that these incidents appear to demonstrate a drifting towards a stricter liability regime – underlines the importance of maintaining this issue high on the agenda.

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Every year, the International Maritime Organization chooses a theme for its World Maritime Day, which is generally celebrated during the last week in September.  In 2009, the IMO chose “Climate Change” as the theme.  This year, 2010, will be named “Year of the Seafarer”.   In a message posted to their website, the IMO states:

The International Maritime Organization has decided to dedicate next year to you by choosing, as the theme for World Maritime Day, “2010: Year of the Seafarer”. Our intention is to pay tribute to you, the world’s 1.5 million seafarers – men and women from all over the globe – for the unique, and all too often over-looked, contribution you make to the wellbeing of all of us….

At IMO, we are ever-conscious of the important role you play in helping us achieve safe, secure and efficient shipping on clean oceans – the goals that we, as the United Nations specialized agency charged with the regulation of international shipping and as a member of the global maritime community, have set ourselves.

And so, we will celebrate next year’s World Maritime Day theme with much pride in your contribution to our objectives, to the facilitation of more than 90% of the world’s trade, and to sustainable human development.

You can read the full message from the IMO to the world’s seafarers, HERE.

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Upon arrival in the office this morning, I had the following press release from about 4 people sitting in my inbox.  It reads:

The impact of proposed changes to the Jones Act and the use of foreign flagged vessels in the US offshore sector is already being felt by seafarers according to international shipping recruitment agency Faststream, with companies rushing to replace their non-US crews.

Should the proposals by the US Customs and Borders Protection (CBP) first issued in July 2009 be implemented, they would radically change the interpretations of rules for vessels transporting specialised equipment used by the offshore oil and gas industry and revoke foreign flag exemptions to the Jones Act including pipe and cable-laying, diving support work.

“Some of our offshore service companies that we work with are already making moves to man their vessels with US crews in anticipation of the proposed changes,” said Fort Lauderdale based Craig Johnson, President of Faststream’s US operations.

“Foreign crews are being shifted away from the US and replaced with American citizens. We think that around 70 vessels could be affected by these proposals, but there still remains a good deal of uncertainty as to how far these proposals will go. We haven’t as yet seen a jump in salary expectations from crews with salaries remaining relatively stable thus far.” [Continue Reading →]

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We recently ran across some interesting statistics from a 2005 joint study on manpower from BIMCO and the ISF.

Q: How many officers are currently employed aboard ships? [Continue Reading →]

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