LONDON – Seafarers unions and employers have taken a major step toward an international agreement covering wages and working conditions on ships flying so-called flags of convenience.
A group of about 30 major shipowners and ship managers, based in London, said it will negotiate with the International Transport Workers Federation on the criteria needed for the ITF to issue a certificate of approval to a flag-of-convenience vessel.
The ITF has condemned flag-of-convenience, or open-registry, vessels as providing inadequate wages and working conditions to crews.
It has issued certificates of approval, known as blue certificates, only to vessels meeting benchmark wages and other conditions that it has set unilaterally.
Possession of a certificate helps a shipowner avoid secondary boycotts and other trouble from local seafarers and docker unions when its vessels call at certain ports.
Until now, the ITF has set the benchmark wage for an able seafarer at $1,200 a month, but it plans to raise the benchmark to $1,400 a month as of January 2001.
Rather than continue to set the criteria for a blue certificate unilaterally, the ITF decided to recognize the shipowners’ group, called the International Maritime Employers Committee (IMEC), as representative enough of global shipping to have a voice in setting the benchmark rate.
This will help the ITF avoid criticism that its benchmark wage rates are unilateral and irrelevant to prevailing wage rates in many seafarers’ countries of origin.
IMEC, the employers’ group, agreed to the talks to acquire more control over setting the benchmark wage rates. IMEC members were concerned that, even if the benchmark rates are unilateral, the ITF can enforce them through the threat of secondary boycotts at ports of call.
Most nations have outlawed secondary boycotts of the sort that could impede a vessel not carrying a blue certificate. But a few nations, notably in Scandinavia, still allow such union action.
