Last year, 2006, the General Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) put together a new International Convention dealing with the issue of seafarers’ rights.
In an important two-part article Ireland’s senior International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) inspector Tony Ayton welcomes the new Convention as an important advance in the fight for seafarers’ rights, but warns that it has major shortcomings.
Ayton has for the past seven years been the senior inspector for the 32 Counties of Ireland for the ITF, which is the worldwide federation of 650 different trade unions around the world, including SIPTU in Ireland, involved in the Maritime sector.
Many public representatives, media personnel and trade unionists in Ireland will be aware of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) and the fact that it should come into effect soon.
Without doubt, for those of us involved in the fight for seafarers’ rights, this is a very welcome development as it creates a single coherent instrument which revises and embodies as far as possible, all up-to-date standards of existing international Maritime Labour Conventions and Recommendations and other fundamental principles to be found in other labour conventions.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), which is bringing forward the MLC, operates on a tri-partite basis, which means its activities have Governmental, Employer and Workers organisation involvement.
The various maritime trade unions of the world, including SIPTU here in Ireland, were represented in the work to put this convention together by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF).
Of course, since it was and had to be a tri-partite exercise, as always and just like in our own national agreements between the social partners here in Ireland, there had to be a considerable amount of compromise by all parties in order to arrive at an agreed document.
Nobody, at least not those on the trade union side, is claiming that the MLC is going to be a panacea for all the problems of seafarers.
A shortcoming is that it does little, if anything to force, or even encourage ship owners to operate under their own national flag.
Furthermore the Convention does nothing to enforce or even encourage compliance by ship owners with the United Nations Convention on the Law Of the Sea (UNCLOS) that requires that there be a ‘Genuine Link’ between the ship owner and the country where the ship is registered.
I have to say that those of us with hands-on experience of working with the politics and the employment laws in Ireland, coupled with an intimate knowledge of the workings of the international shipping industry, would feel that this effective continuation and preservation of the notorious Flag of Convenience (FoC) system will prove to be a serious impediment to effective enforcement of the MLC and consequently a large proportion of the world’s seafarers, including many who visit Irish ports, will be no better off.
There are other matters affecting the MLC of a domestic Irish nature that trouble me and I will begin with these.
1. Successive Irish Governments have over the past fifty or more years ratified most of the important International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions and Recommendations.
Ratification of such Conventions by member states is intended to create binding obligations on those states to put their provisions into effect.
In simple language that means the introduction of domestic legislation. (ILO Recommendations are a bit different to Conventions in that they only provide guidance on policy, legislation and practice).
It is rare indeed for any Irish Government to follow-up the ratification of any ILO convention by putting something meaningful into the legislative code that would give real effect to its provisions.
For example, the Irish Government has ratified two very fundamental and very important ILO Conventions, which are applicable to all workers and not just seafarers.
These are the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention 1948 (No 87) and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention 1949 (No 98).
Both these conventions were ratified by Ireland on 4th April 1955 and if any of the Governments we have had since then had put something on to our statute books, then for example, Ryanair could not get away with its bullish attitude towards its workers who want to be represented by trade unions and most of what Irish Ferries have done would have been preventable.
2. The new MLC encompasses both ILO Conventions 87 and 98 and many more. Because of the inclusion of 87 and 98 alone, I would not be confident that the MLC would be given any proper legislative support to make it effective.
Successive Governments here have always run scared about doing anything to enhance workers’ rights to trade union representation, lest it scare away existing and potential overseas investment, and I doubt if any meaningful laws giving effect to ILO 87 and 98 are going to be introduced now through the backdoor of the MLC.
It would of course be a breach of domestic anti-discrimination laws if the Government were to introduce laws to give effect to the MLC in a way that made it applicable to one category of workers, in this case seafarers, to the exclusion of others.
3. We have seen in recent times a perfect example in the Gama scandal of what happens when activity to back up workers’ rights is not supported, or fully supported by proper legislative measures.
In the Gama case, the Government at the request Joe Higgins TD and the trade union movement ordered an investigation into the abhorrent and downright illegal employment practices of this Turkish based construction company.
The Government inspectors carried out what was, by all available accounts, a very competent and thorough investigation, but it all came to nothing because the company were able to get the High Court to rule that the Government inspectors, in conducting the investigation, exceeded their statutory powers.
The report was shelved and never published and seemingly cannot now be acted upon.
4. The MLC itself relies heavily on Flag States – the State in which the vessel is registered and flagged – adopting and enforcing its provisions.
Under the provisions of Article IV of UNCLOS the flag state is responsible for the social conditions, pay levels and conditions of employment on board all vessels flying its flag.
I have no doubt that most of the states whose flags we see in Irish ports, including FoCs will adopt the MLC, because it’s an easy thing to do and it would look bad if they did not.
However, about half * of the vessels visiting our ports, including many Irish owned vessels, operate under the FoC system.
In simple language they use the flags of countries, some of which are many thousands of miles away from the normal operational area of the vessels and are often small, poor and underdeveloped.
Consequently, it is unrealistic to expect that these countries on their own would be able to enforce anything.
Indeed, if they were able and did conduct thorough inspections of vessels flying their flag in the manner described in the MLC, and by so doing demonstrated that they were even half serious about enforcement, then their attractiveness as places for ship owners to register their ships would greatly diminish and there would be a substantial loss to these countries of what for them is badly needed revenue.
Of course, it is relatively cheap and quick for a ship owner to change flags and unfortunately there are countries out there that will allow the use of their flag, with a promise of minimal regulation/enforcement as long as they get the taxes and registration fees from the ship owner.
* Note
The ITF has 91,863 live commercial vessels on its electronic data bank and 24,207 of these (26%) are operating under Flags of Convenience. If one studies the data for vessels operating into Irish Ports one finds that about one in every two ships are FoCs.
Consequently, Ireland’s ports seem to have a disproportionate involvement with the FoC system.
The ITF and its affiliated trade unions have managed to put good trade union agreement on many of these FoC vessels coming and going from Irish ports, so the situation is not as bad as the figures would suggest – but some ship owners who sign these agreements still try to get away with not honouring those agreements.
All of the Irish Ferries and many of Irish owned Ro-Ro services operate under FoCs. The biggest Irish Shipping Company, Arklow shipping, has four FoC vessels listed on its fleet of about forty ships. Thirteen of the Arklow fleet operate under the Dutch flag.
• Continued tomorrow
