Mick Cash
RMT demands government action for seafarers on the Atlantic Container Line fleet
SEAFARERS’ UNION RMT has written to the Shipping Minister, Kelly Tolhurst MP demanding government action over the lack of jobs for British Ratings and the crew change crisis on ACL’s five state of the art roll-on roll-off container ships working trans-Atlantic routes from Liverpool port.
The ACL fleet was registered in the Port of Liverpool from 2016, when the Atlantic Sea was christened by Princess Anne, the first in Liverpool for fifty years. Yet earlier this week, ACL re-flagged one of its sister ships Atlantic Sky to the Maltese register – a Flag of Convenience and the biggest shipping register in the EU. ACL’s owners Grimaldi Group have warned that the rest of the ACL G4 ships on the Red Ensign are also likely to be re-flagged.
The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) issued a warning to ACL earlier this month over the failure to repatriate largely Filipino crew when the ships are docked in Liverpool. Crew are being worked beyond their nine month contracts. All Ratings on the ACL fleet in question are paid below the UK National Minimum Wage and many have been working at sea periods well beyond the legal maximum of 11 months stipulated in the Maritime Labour Convention.
In the letter to the Shipping Minister RMT General Secretary, Mick Cash said:
“One of the key causes of foreign seafarer exploitation and exclusion of UK Ratings is the lack of requirement to employ UK seafarers on the Red Ensign. Indeed, the UK Ship Register continues to present this to shipowners as one of the advantages to registration. This must change, and quickly.
“This tale of the shipping industry co-opting national registers to ride roughshod over seafarers’ rights, UK Ratings jobs and the needs of workers in the port cities and towns of an advanced island economy is all too common. The Government must take the following actions, inside the Maritime Restart and Recovery Group and beyond to tackle these injustices:
• Demand ACL commit to UK Ratings jobs on their UK registered fleet.
• Demand the Port of Liverpool tackle the crew change crisis.
• Introduce UK seafarer employment requirements on the Red Ensign.
• Ban nationality based pay discrimination against non-UK seafarers.
• Train thousands more UK Ratings over the next two years.
“RMT remain committed to the DfT’s Maritime Restart and Recovery Groups but the mess in our maritime industry illustrated at ACL must be sorted out to the benefit of Ratings in the UK and our battered skills base.”
