Sea Control - Sea Control 411 - The Seafarers' Wages Bill with Dr. Zoumpoulia Amaxilati

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Link:Seafarers’ Wages Bill: Are Good Intentions Enough? by Dr. Zoumpoulia Amaxilati, The Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law (IISTL) Blog, December 7, 2022.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Today I'm joined by Dr. Leah Zampulia to discuss the Seafarer's Wages Bill and its potential impact on mariners and maritime industry. This episode was edited and produced by David Syeda. SimSec is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We are looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations would also be helpful, so please reach out to content at simsec.org to share your background and discuss. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean.

Chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website at simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Matt. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International and Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control.

My guest today is Dr. Zampulia Amakselati, and we're going to be discussing her article for the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law blog entitled, Seafarer's Wages Bill Are Good Intentions Enough? So, Leah, welcome. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? Well, welcome. Thank you for having me today. I'm a lecturer in shipping and trade law at the International Institute of Shipping and Trade Law here at Swansea University. Well, I started working in

this field back in 2013 when I started my postgraduate studies in the field of maritime law and then I continued with my PhD at the University of Southampton. Before joining In Swansea, I worked a little bit in London and at Queen Mary University. And now here in Swansea, I'm teaching mainly admiralty law, but also carriage of goods by sea, land and air. And my main research area is international maritime labor law and shipping regulation. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions today are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So the second paragraph of your post was about the most concise example that I found online of how complex and international the maritime domain is from a legal perspective.

So what is the seafarer's wages bill and to whom does it apply? Well, the story goes back in March 2022, when one of the leading UK ferry operators decided to dismiss almost 100 seafarers and replace them with agency workers that were mainly migrant workers that were to be paid at a range. I think it was something like four or five dollars per hour, which is way beyond the national minimum wage here in the UK. So in the aftermath of this case, the UK government announced a nine action plan in order to protect the rights of the seafarers who work in UK waters. And the Seafarers' Wages Bill is the first piece of legislation that came to Parliament in this respect. Now, the aim of this bill, basically, is to ensure that seafarers who ordinarily work in UK waters are paid at least at a rate equivalent to the national minimum wage, regardless of whether they work on board a UK registered vessel

or regardless of whether they're ordinarily residents in the UK. Now, basically, what that means is that this bill will protect those seafarers who work on board vessels that carry out services in international routes, but mainly that will cover routes between the UK and the European Union. Now, to whom it applies? It basically applies to the service operators that perform cards of persons or goods by SIP between the UK ports and a place outside the UK. It basically requires for the service operators to provide a declaration before entering a UK port that they comply with this act and that they pay the seafarers working on board their vessels an equivalent to the national minimum wage here in the UK for the time that they provide their services within the UK waters. Now, this is the main core of this bill. The bill also provides that if the service operators fail to provide this declaration,

then the port authorities will have the right to impose a surcharge to the service operators. And also the bill provides that if the operators fail to pay this surcharge, then the ports will have the right to refuse entry into ports. So it has different stages with regard to the protection offered to seafarers. I guess I'm a little more unclear on the way British bills become law, if you will. Where is it in the approval process at this point? So now it has completely completed the second stage in the House of Commons. we still have another reading that will probably take place later this month there is still the

possibility that some amendments will take place after this reading in the house of commons and then after that the the voting process will take place and after that the the bill might be enacted. So we still have some stages to go through before it becomes a law in the United Kingdom. Well, because of the international nature of work done at sea, and I think what we're talking about here is you can have a vessel leaving from one port, going to another port in a second country, possibly be registered in a third country, and then the personnel on board can be for a mix of all sorts of different countries. Is there any sort of international legal standard for mariners wages well we do have international standards we do have the

maritime labor convention which is the main convention that is relevant in this field the problem is that the convention includes specific provisions with regard to the right to be paid wages for example regulation 2.2 of the convention provides that all seafarers should be uh shall be paid for their work regularly and in full the standard a 2.2 also provides details as to how this payment should be made the problem is that the convention does not provide anything in the binding parts with regard to the minimum wages that the seafarer should be paid we do have provisions with regard to minimum wages but these are only included in the guidelines and this part of the convention is not binding to member states now we also have based on these

guidelines we do have a guideline from the international labor organization with regard to the minimum wage for able seafarers but this is something like 600 dollars per month but as i said it is only a guidance it's not compulsory for states to follow so the there is a gap in this particular area when it comes to the international standards as well. What is the regulatory mechanism for verifying appropriate wages are paid? You talked a little bit about this before, and I understand they have to, quote unquote, declare, but someone has to actually go and check the declaration in some way. And how strictly is that actually in force? So at the moment, the Maritime Labor Convention, in its last part, it creates

a system of inspection and certification which is dedicated to labour issues. Now, based on this dedicated enforcement system, every vessel should have that it is bound by the convention, should have a maritime labour certificate and a declaration of maritime labour compliance that are issued by the flag state after the flag state has inspected the vessel and it is assure that the vessel complies with the requirements of the MLC.

Now, payment of wages is one of the issues that the flag state should inspect before issuing that certificate. The question is how diligently the flag state will carry out these inspections, especially when we talk about flags of convenience or flags of non-compliance. And I think this is where the problem starts. And for example, in the P&O case that sparked this bill, the problem was that all the vessels were registered in flags of convenience. So this is one part of the inspection process. We also have the port state control, of course, which is a mechanism to counterbalance the deficiencies when it comes to inspections from the flag states. But under the MLC, the inspections, the port inspections are mainly paper based. So as long as a vessel has the maritime labour certificate and the declaration of maritime labour compliance,

the port state control cannot do much unless there is a specific complaint from one of the crew members. And this is where the problems start when it comes to port inspections, because the crew members might not feel comfortable enough to pursue and raise a complaint. Because even though the convention says that the complaint should be treated anonymously, there are some gaps there again, and there are some uncertainty as to how safe that would be for the crew member in terms of their prospects and their employment. Well, can I ask who is actually advocating for the seafarers in this case? Because I hear a lot of this moves through the government.

Is there a seafarers union that is helping push this that would also provide some of the protections for the seafarers long term as they make the complaints and kind of hold companies accountable to pay reasonable wages? Yes. So when it comes to the complaint process, this can be raised by the seafarers union. and I think in most cases it will be raised by the seafarers union because that kind of protects the individuals so yes it is the union usually that will raise the complaint with the respective authorities in the port state and then the port state inspectors will carry out the inspection on the vessel and then under the convention they have to notify the flag state and then again the problem starts you know it's kind of a vicious circle because the port state cannot do anything other than notify the flag state to take any measures to ensure that the vessel complies

with the requirements and then again it all depends as to how proactive the flag state will be into taking measures to remedy the situation and of course the last resort will for the vessel to be detained if no measures are taken to remedy any deficiencies on board. So if this is all going to come back to the flag state, we've already discussed flags and convenience, which a lot of those countries just lack regulatory capacity, is my impression from having talked to you and a lot of other experts about this subject.

Is there any chance that this drives reform in the flag convenience world to maybe start to turn away from flags of convenience or look for other regulatory means? I have a hope that this might actually put some pressure at least to the operators to ensure that they comply at least with a minimum that they should comply, for example, when it comes to payment of wages, especially if they fear that they will not be able to enter certain ports from which they usually operate their services. But the problem with the specific bill is that it might create some sort of a port hopping practice for the operators,

especially since the bill says that the declaration will be necessary from operators who use a specific port for more than 120 times per year. So, although they take some steps towards the right direction when it comes to the protection of the seafarers, they kind of leave some loopholes that can be exploited by the operators if they want to avoid being bound by the specific legislation. For example, they might alter the routes that they ordinarily use in order to make sure that they don't reach the 120 times threshold that is required for the bill to, for the legislation to apply. Yeah, it's not hard to imagine someone in an operations office at a shipping company developing an Excel spreadsheet that just tracks how many port calls each vessel is making and turns red every time they get to 119. Was any of this previously regulated by the European Union? Well, interestingly, not, because the European Union is quite proactive when it comes to labor issues. It's been very proactive even when it comes to seafarers, because, you know,

unfortunately, the protection of the seafarers' employment rights has not been as good as the protection of the shore-based employees. And I think this is general practice, not just in the UK or the EU. And surprisingly, the EU legislation has been silent when it comes to the payment of wages and the working conditions. And this matter has been left to national law to a great extent. Unlike, for example, to health and safety matters or matters with regard to personal protective equipment, because we do have a long list of directives dealing with that, but we don't have anything with regard to the right to be paid wages. Interestingly, I recently found out that there are some countries

from the European Economic Area that are also considering similar legislations. For example, Norway is now discussing the possibility of passing an act that will ensure that foreign seafarers are paid at the same rate as Norwegian seafarers when they are working within Norwegian waters and I think also the exclusive economic zone of Norway. So I'm pretty sure that more countries will adopt a similar attitude towards this matter. And how has the bill been received to date?

It has been a positive. Most of the comments have been positive when it comes to the bill, not just by the members of the parliament, but also by unions, the international chamber of shipping. However, there have been some concerns, some of the points that I mentioned earlier, for example, the 120 days limit, which was actually 50 days at the beginning, but then the government changed that into 120 days. And also there have been many comments with regard to why it is only limited to the right to be paid an equivalent to the national minimum wage. And it does not cover, for example, roster routines or other issues that are also very important when it comes to ferry industry.

Now, as I said, we still have the possibility of some amendments, especially after the report stage and the third reading and before the third reading of the bill that will take place later this month. So it will be interesting to see whether any of that will change after the concerns that have been raised. And also there are other concerns with regard to the fines, why the fines will be collected by the individual port authorities especially since some of the ferry operators, they also own the ports

So how will that work when basically they will have to find themselves and this will be a little bit odd. And that's why when I wrote my piece, I said that probably that's not the best way to deal with this issue. And probably a more centralised approach would be better instead of leaving the individual port authorities to take that responsibility. So, yeah, that should probably be something to consider. Well, unfortunately, that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Drs. Ampulia and Max Salati. Leah, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Well, you can find me on the Swansea University website and also on my LinkedIn or Twitter.

And I'm actually working on some research projects dealing with labor exploitation at sea and also research projects dealing with the implications of green tech on crew members. It will be some interesting events coming up in the next few months from the Institute of International Sipping and Trade Law here at Swansea University. So if you keep an eye on our website, it will be, and our blog as well, you will receive the news. Well, I look forward to reading and we'd love to have you back on as you publish more work there. Thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021