Will Europe deliver sustainable seas?

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محتوى الصفحة: Home > مجلة النقل الدولي "Transport International" > Issue 29 - October 2007 > Will Europe deliver sustainable seas?

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As the European Commission deliberates over a new integrated maritime policy, Philippe Alfonso AND Laila Castaldo set out the case for investing in Europe’s seafaring workforce.

At the end of June, the European Commission closed a year-long public consultation on future maritime policy for the European Union.

Hundreds of maritime stakeholders responded to the most wide-ranging round of discussion ever organised by the European Commission on this issue. The high level of participation and the debates generated over the future of our seas all along the consultation period showed the level of importance stakeholders attach to the prospect of an integrated maritime policy.

Industry associations, trade unions, NGOs, governments and policy makers at
all levels expressed their wish for a more comprehensive and better-coordinated approach to the sea in the EU and European Economic Area waters.

October 2007 was the date set by the European Commission to issue an action plan that will pave the way for concrete developments in this field. Now the Commission has the challenging task of considering and integrating the concerns and requests coming from the consultation respondents.

"The European Commission needs to come up with serious proposals to overcome the severe decrease in the number of EU seafarers"

The ITF’s European region, ETF, contributed to the consultation through a comprehensive paper which brings together the responses of port workers, seafarers and fishers’ representatives.

We pointed out that so far the European Commission has prioritised the importance of competition over social and environmental considerations. Its development plan for the EU launched in 2000 (and known as the “Lisbon strategy”) appears to mean “being efficient and competitive at any cost”.

Challenge to deregulation

Admitting deregulation and flexibility measures without taking into account the human element as being fully part of the competitiveness of maritime industry produces adverse effects on working and living conditions. The ETF position is that forcing open markets and laying waste to all “protectionist” regulations will only lead to the impoverishment of EU maritime standards.

An unfair business environment that embraces social dumping and salary under-cutting puts in serious danger the retention of our maritime expertise. Even 10 years ago, unions were defining seafarers as an endangered species. Now the situation is in danger of getting worse.

The European Commission needs to come up with serious proposals to overcome the severe decrease in the number of EU seafarers, especially in the lower positions and in the international trade. If it fails in this duty, our ships will be ever more dominated by foreign crews who are paid lower than the minimum wage, or by shipping operators who prefer to flag out to a “more convenient” country, with the purpose of bypassing EU and international regulations.

The ETF strongly believes that retaining an EU workforce at sea, and encouraging young people to initiate a maritime career, should be at the core of any future initiative by the European Commission. The question is: how to achieve it?
First of all, this should be by improving working and living conditions on board, by offering an attractive career path to young people leaving school, and by providing a legal framework to guarantee adequate social protection for all seafarers, regardless of their nationality.

We should be able to put an end to the discriminatory treatment of EU seafarers who are paid according to the economic conditions in their country of residence, and they should no longer be excluded from the social legislation applying to other sectors.

On the other hand, companies should be given incentives to re-flag, or to invest their profits into the EU by using both a European flag and by employing EU seafarers on board their vessels, instead of looking for the cheapest workforce – for example by employing third country nationals.

Reversing decline

Some progress is being made through state aid guidelines, which are the main instrument used to encourage the re-flagging of vessels to EU flags and decrease the number of substandard ships that trade in European waters. Most of all, more should be done to encourage shipowners to invest in human resources and in training.

Thus the Organising Globally programme must be accompanied by a programme of political education for leadership and members at a local, national, regional and international level, with the aim of developing new policies and strategies to fight for the interests of transport workers.

Supporting research, campaigning, networking and solidarity

For unions in the transport industry to take advantage of their strategic position, there is a need for an ongoing process of information gathering, analysis, campaigning and networking. For such a process to feed into and strengthen organising, workers and members themselves need to be actively involved.

"We hope that a revision of the current exclusion of maritime transport workers from core social legislation will be undertaken."

“We believe the Green Paper will only be a success if it manages to deliver policies that reverse the long decline in training and employment of EU-seafarers,” stated Dieter Benze, vice president of the ETF maritime section during a conference on the image of seafarers held in Poland last February.

Last but not least, the ETF deplores the fact that maritime transport workers are less protected than workers employed in other economic sectors, and is fighting to put an end to the systematic exclusion of seafarers and shipping from most European social and labour legislation (for example the “posting of workers” directive implicitly ranks seafarers as second class workers).

While social dumping practices are increasing, “the failure to agree in 2004 on proposals for a ‘Manning Directive’ to regulate terms and conditions on intra-European Ferry services makes the need for some form of control more urgent than ever”, said ETF general secretary Eduardo Chagas.

So what do we expect from the European Commission? We hope that a revision of the current exclusion of maritime transport workers from core social legislation will be undertaken. We hope that policies will be framed to enhance the maritime career and to promote the employment and the retention of an EU workforce, with fair and equal treatment also for non-European crew.

In the meantime the ETF is engaged in intense lobbying of the European Parliament through a massive campaign aimed at promoting employment for EU seafarers. Its motto is “more and better jobs at sea”.

We are calling on European policy makers to understand that the region’s maritime sector should better exploit its great potential for employment growth.
The ETF campaign states: “Let’s stop talking about flags of convenience and start talking about a ‘sector of excellence’.” This is exactly the principle that should inspire a new, socially sustainable vision of the sea in Europe.

Philippe Alfonso and Laila Castaldo lead the maritime transport section of the ETF in Brussels.

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Issue 29 - October 2007

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