New Zealand seafarers welcome New Zealand adopting Maritime Labour Convention

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has wel­comed news that New Zealand will be rat­i­fy­ing the Mar­itime Labour Con­ven­tion.

The Mar­itime Labour Con­ven­tion 2006 (MLC) is an inter­na­tion­al treaty adopt­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­i­sa­tion and lays out min­i­mum rights for sea­far­ers and pro­motes good employ­ment prac­tices across the ship­ping indus­try.

It has been described as a “sea­far­ers bill of rights.”

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the Union has been advo­cat­ing New Zealand become a sig­na­to­ry to the MLC for some time.

“Most devel­oped nations includ­ing Aus­tralia are signed up to the MLC and it was an anom­aly that New Zealand was not.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the MLC has a num­ber of impli­ca­tions for New Zealand.

“The Mar­itime Union works with the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) to recov­er wages and deal with crew wel­fare issues. We note that this work is done by the unions, not by the Gov­ern­ment, and we deal with con­stant issues on flag of con­ve­nience ves­sels on the New Zealand coast.”

The Mar­itime Union is an affil­i­ate of the ITF which works to ensure the safe­ty and well­be­ing of sea­far­ers glob­al­ly.

Mr Fleet­wood says that ships that have prob­lems with crews often had mul­ti­ple issues includ­ing safe­ty and sea­wor­thi­ness.

“The dereg­u­lat­ed approach to this and oth­er aspects of the mar­itime indus­try has been recog­nised as a fail­ure, so now the move is back towards prop­er over­sight of the indus­try by Gov­ern­ment.”

More about the MLC – back­grounder

The MLC incor­po­rates and builds on 68 pre exist­ing mar­itime labour con­ven­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions to ensure decent work­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions.

The MLC has been described as the fourth pil­lar of ship­ping reg­u­la­tion, along­side Solas (Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion for Safe­ty of Life at Sea), Mar­pol (Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion for Pre­ven­tion of Pol­lu­tion from Ships) and the STCW (Stan­dards of Train­ing, Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and Watch­keep­ing), and is intend­ed to be strict­ly enforced by flag states and port state con­trol.

It should pro­vide a ‘one-stop shop’ for labour stan­dards, so all sea­far­ers should be able to enjoy com­pre­hen­sive pro­tec­tion of their fun­da­men­tal rights.

It should also ensure good employ­ment prac­tice across the indus­try, cre­at­ing a lev­el play­ing field in which good ship oper­a­tors are not put at an eco­nom­ic dis­ad­van­tage by bad ones.

The MLC address­es a range of mat­ters, includ­ing: the oblig­a­tions of ship­ping com­pa­nies with respect to sea­far­ers’ con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments; the respon­si­bil­i­ties of man­ning agen­cies; work­ing hours; health and safe­ty; exist­ing ILO mar­itime stan­dards; and accept­ed good employ­ment prac­tice.

Under it, every ship over 500 gross ton­nage oper­at­ing in inter­na­tion­al waters or between ports of dif­fer­ent coun­tries will have to have a mar­itime labour cer­tifi­cate issued by its flag admin­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing an inspec­tion. There will also be a require­ment for ships to com­plete and main­tain on board a dec­la­ra­tion of mar­itime labour com­pli­ance.

There are also sig­nif­i­cant pro­vi­sions on wel­fare. States will be invit­ed to set up wel­fare boards, as well as to con­sid­er the upgrad­ing of exist­ing sea­far­ers’ wel­fare facil­i­ties and the estab­lish­ment of new ones.

The MLC stip­u­lates that every­one work­ing on board a cruise ship mak­ing inter­na­tion­al voy­ages is a sea­far­er and enti­tled to the pro­tec­tions it guar­an­tees – the first time ever that work­ers on cruise ships have fall­en under such a def­i­n­i­tion.

The Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) has worked along­side ship­ping organ­i­sa­tions, the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­i­sa­tion (ILO) and gov­ern­ments for over a decade to joint­ly cre­ate and shape the MLC, and is com­mit­ted to mon­i­tor­ing and assist­ing its imple­men­ta­tion and per­suad­ing many more coun­tries to rat­i­fy it.