PARLIAMENTARY COLUMN

Parliamentary column RMT’s campaign to protect and increase jobs and training for UK seafarers continues to be supported by MPs in the RMT Parliamentary Group. The number of UK seafarers working on ships again fell in 2013, by five per cent to 22,850. Contained within this was an eight per cent fall in ratings numbers to 8,590 meaning that ratings numbers have fallen by nearly 30 per cent in the last two years. RMT members are well aware of the tactics shipping companies use to chip away at the number of UK ratings and the Parliamentary group recently raised in the Commons with Business Secretary Vince Cable the government’s failure to enforce its own guidance on seafarers and the national minimum wage (NMW). The reluctance to protect seafarers in cities and towns around the UK and Ireland from disreputable companies like Irish Ferries and Condor Ferries and big operators like P&O, is a mark of shame on this Government and it was interesting that Vince Cable agreed that the maritime industry should be investigated for paying seafarers below the national minimum wage. As Convenor, I will be leading a delegation from the Parliamentary Group to meet with the BIS Minister responsible for the national minimum wage Jenny Willott MP on May 7 and we will be making the case for immediate enforcement action against shipping companies that we know and the government know are paying seafarers well below the national minimum wage. Elsewhere, there are two other policy areas where the union has made progress since the start of the year. The Shipping Minister will shortly announce a Working Group (on which RMT will be represented) to look at the effect of the Equality Act 2010 regulations to protect EU seafarers from nationality based pay discrimination. The regulations encourage shipping companies to employ non-EU ratings in order to cut crewing costs and all forms of nationality based pay discrimination against seafarers should be banned, as recommended by the Carter Review which reported just after the last General Election and was rejected by this government. It is also encouraging to see progress in RMT’s campaign to secure a link to ratings training in the Tonnage Tax scheme and we in the Parliamentary Group will urge Shipping Minister Stephen Hammond to get a move on with amending the regulations to allow shipping companies in the scheme to train UK ratings as a way of meeting their training commitments. As a Labour MP it is also good to see the Shadow Shipping Minister, Gordon Marsden MP using the legislative process to support RMT’s campaign against the government’s attempt to abolish the duty on the Transport Secretary to re- open maritime investigations in light of new evidence. As Gordon has stated: “Reinvestigations can be crucial in improving safety, even decades later. The Government’s claim in Committee that if we discover a wreck many years after an accident, safety insights would be irrelevant or out-of-date was disproved by the case of the MV Derbyshire. That’s why I’ve tabled an amendment to the Deregulation Bill which says the government will have a duty to reinvestigate whenever new evidence is found that has the potential to provide answers for families or to provide new safety lessons. Ministers and all MPs should put justice for seafarers before ideology and support this amendment.” The amendment is likely to be debated in the House of Commons in June and the RMT Parliamentary group will do its utmost to support this basic guarantee of government support for the families of seafarers as well as the safety of future seafaring generations. John McDonnell MP for Hayes and Harlington PROTECTING SEAFARING JOBS AND SAFETY RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april/may 2014 :: RMTnews 9 RMT’s Parliamentary group of MPs demand government action against shipping companies paying below the national minimum wage