TUC DEMANDS PROTECTION FOR SEAFARERS

RMTnews :: february 2006 :: www.rmt.org.uk 14 SHIPPING F ollowing the recent Irish Ferries dispute, the British TUC has called upon the government to close a loophole in the law which allows employers in the shipping industry to pay migrant seafarers much lower wages than UK crews. Speaking at the annual TUC/Equal Opportunities Review discrimination law conference at Congress House, TUC deputy general secretary, Frances O'Grady said that under UK law it is completely lawful for ship owners to pay migrant seafarers substantially less per hour than the British crew members they work alongside. “This allows shipping employers who want to keep their costs down to do so by employing migrant workers on poverty pay, and laying off workers to whom they are legally obliged to pay the minimum wage. "This is because the Race Relations Act contains an exemption allowing ship owners to blatantly discriminate on pay rates on the basis of nationality. This practice is widespread in the shipping industry,” she said. She said that it was simply not acceptable that Indian, Polish, Portuguese or other migrant workers can be paid lower rates on British ships than their colleagues who are British nationals. “It leads ship owners to try and sack their workforces and replace them with workers of different nationalities at lower rates. "Just before Christmas, at Irish Ferries, we saw all too vividly what this means in practice. When - in scenes reminiscent of a James Bond film - security guards took control of the company's two ships, with some crew fearing a terrorist attack was taking place. “All to allow East European workers - reportedly on £2.60 an hour - to replace the existing workforce,” she said. The TUC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions backed large scale campaigns and staged days of action to highlight the plight of the 543 seafarers deemed too expensive to employ, and to expose the inadequacies of UK law. Eventually a successful settlement was reached - but all too often the underlying pay practices are hard to eliminate. The TUC will be pressing ministers to amend the Race Relations Act so that racist pay practices against seafarers can be outlawed for once and for all. RMT general secretary Bob Crow welcomed the TUC endorsement of the campaign to amend the Race Relations Act. He said that the union had formally submitted complaints to the International Labour Organisation and the International Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights over the matter. TUC DEMANDS PROTECTION OF SEAFARERS’ JOBS AND MIGRANT WORKERS £5000 FOR THE MERCHANT SEAMANS WAR MEMORIAL SOCIETY DONATION: RMT general secretary Bob Crow and EC member Mark Carden hand over £5,000 to Springbok secretary Trevor Goacher. The donation came from redundancy agreements for P&O staff negotiated by RMT solicitors Bridge Macfarlands.