Fair Practices Committee
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The Fair Practices Committee (FPC) is an ITF body, comprising seafarer and docker trade union representatives world-wide. The FPC manages the FOC (flags of convenience) campaign policy and oversees ITF minimum collective agreements for seafarers which ensure decent salaries and conditions for FOC seafarers, thus helping to prevent unfair wage-based competition, which contributes to the tendency for vessels to be flagged out.
The FPC is the forum where ITF affiliates from developed countries, which tend to own FOC vessels but whose members’ job opportunities are declining, and unions from developing countries - often labour supplying countries - adopt common policies.
The key policy for seafarers internationally is to stay unionised and resist the tendency for shipowners to displace national crews in order to reduce labour costs, and replace them with exploited, stateless FOC crews.
FOC ship owners and those who charter their vessels know that, by not having an ITF-approved Collective Agreement in place, they risk industrial and other forms of action in many of the world’s ports. Some less respectable operators are ready to take this risk although the majority are not. The very existence of the minimum ITF conditions over the years has meant that many ship owners now offer better employment than that which would have existed if the free market were the only factor involved.
In the shipping industry, where disreputable ship owners get rich by exploiting the expanding global maritime labour market, the ITF exists to guarantee a balance.
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