Seafarers’ salaries to go up January ’08

Source: Buisness Mirror
By VG Cabuag
Reporter

THOUSANDS of Filipino seafarers —from ratings to officers—employed by the members of the International Maritime Employers Committee Ltd. (Imec) are expected to receive increases in their salary starting January next year after the group of ship employers and the local union agreed to revise the terms of their collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

The agreement, signed late Friday, capped months of a rigorous negotiation process that involved international seafarers’ unions and the employers themselves. The agreement covers January 1, 2008 through end of 2009.

Both Imec and the Associated Marine Officers and Seamen’s Union of the Philippines (Amosup), the local group that negotiated in behalf of the seafarers, declined to give the details of how much the increases would be since they still have to inform their principals about the changes.

Capt. Gregorio S. Oca, president of Amosup, said the increase would be “good and substantial,” but also declined to give further details.

Those who signed on the agreement were Oca; Ian C. Sherwood, president of Imec; Michael Estaniel, member of Imec’s executive board; and Stephen Cotton of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).

Sherwood said they have increased the total crew-cost benchmark to about $4,063 per month based on a “model ship” with 23 crew members. The benchmark was $2,173 per month.

Despite the agreement, “there is still a lot of work to be done. This [CBA] is just a thorny issue that we need to address,” Sherwood said.

Imec has 116 member-companies operating more than 6,380 ships in over 40 different countries. Its member- companies employ a total 51,829 Filipino seafarers, or about 35 percent of its total work force, the single biggest block by nationality.

Filipino officers, on the other hand, comprised 17 percent of Imec’s total work force or about 10,323, followed by the Russians at 16 percent or 9,448, and other European nations at 12 percent or 6,994.

Sherwood said some 13,000 Filipino seafarers are under the CBA.

With the agreement, Imec is creating two major programs that will have an initial seed fund of $1 million. The said programs should focus on how to support the career development of the seafarers, and the other is the cadet- training enhancement.

“To develop the operating rules of the two new programs, it was agreed that a joint meeting would be arranged in the first quarter of 2008 in Manila,” the agreement said.

The said negotiations have followed the system of the International Bargaining Forum (IBF), which involves central negotiation at the international level and the local negotiation at major labor-supply countries.

Imec’s local agreements currently cover India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, the Philippines, Russia, Poland, Romania, Germany and Greece.

The same negotiation process is being done by the labor unions, which was handled by the ITF.

An IBF agreement was already reached in September, which covered increases in wage levels and changes in contractual clauses to reflect the provisions of the International Labor Organization’s Maritime Labor Convention, among other systemic and structural changes.