IMEC: Industry needs to treat crew welfare as a strategic investment

Additionally, Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) should be approached from a strategic perspective as a key method to expand the pool of qualified officers. In this regard, IMEC has implemented associated initiatives to empower women and increase their participation. For example, it has established a dedicated D&I Working Group and implemented several Key Performance Indicators to monitor progress, particularly in terms of the recruitment of female cadets and their advancement to officer positions.

SAFETY4SEA: What are currently the key challenges of the maritime workforce from your perspective?

Francesco Gargiulo: The maritime industry is on the verge of a perfect storm of potential disruptions to the mechanisms that provide it with its qualified workforce.  We have a vocational crisis particularly amongst qualified officers from OECD countries who are no longer keen to spend long time at sea away from their loved ones and opt for different careers ashore. This crisis was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, and the appalling treatment reserved to seafarers by many port states which discouraged even more potential candidates from choosing seafaring as a career and has seen the industry struggle to retain and recruit talent. The war in Ukraine, political instability and an expanding conflict in the Middle East have further contributed to highlighting the risks involved with this profession that is often collateral damage in such events. In addition to this the war has introduced severe limitation to access to two of the key pools of officers for the global population of officers in Russians and Ukrainians. The urgent need to protect a deteriorating global environment has meant that the traditional propulsion systems are no longer seen as viable long term and as such the industry is intent on exploring alternative fuels and engines that will see it try and comply with the recently announced IMO targets in this area. These new technologies along with rampant digitalization of the industry have the potential to completely revolutionize the way seafarers are trained and will probably be the biggest challenge the industry has even faced.

S4S: What are the top priorities on the IMEC agenda for the next five (5) years?

Fr. G.: IMEC’s key priority continues to be ensuring a level playing field in the industry encouraging a growing percentage of the global fleet to adopt the sustainable and fair terms and conditions of employment for seafarers that we negotiate with the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Clearly, in light of the key challenges described above we are also committed to continue to enhance the training of new officers through our 3 cadet programs in the Philippines, India and South Africa. In this area we have also recently embarked on visiting countries that could provide Members a possible alternative to the more established and traditional manpower supply countries. As part of this project, we have visited Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Turkey and will be visiting a selection of South American countries next. In most cases the output of such visits is the publication of a “country report” to help Members establish their own operation, South Africa however had such potential that we decided to go further and establish an IMEC Cadet program in cooperation with the local government.  We are also working on the training on new propulsion systems and decarbonization though our recent partnership with ITF and ICS and our active support of the Just Transition Task Force. This will soon become our major focus for the foreseeable future.

S4S: Where should the industry focus on improving crew welfare today from your perspective?

Fr. G.: Crew Welfare has long been “part and parcel” of our cooperation with ITF as we work hard on making sure seafarers’ welfare is at the hearth of what we do. Through our International Bargaining Forum (IBF) we ensure that the 20% of ITF fees that our Members can claim back is spent solely on welfare activities. Last year alone we re-distributed in excess of $6M to Members that could demonstrate to have invested in their people’s welfare. This is part of our working model where we utilize “Funding Elements” in our CBAs to funnel funds towards activities that may otherwise not be prioritized by the most budget-conscious part of our Membership. Naturally most of our Members spend far in excess of this figure to look after their most prized assets so this is simply an incentive for more of them to join in.

S4S: How can we ensure that crew welfare issues are on top of all ship operators’ agenda? Is there a need for a regulatory update? What are your suggestions?

Fr.G.: In terms of where the industry should focus, we feel that fatigue and isolation are two of the problems associated with employment at sea which prevent us from being able to attract and retain talented individuals to the sector. Key priorities hence should be to review maximum tour lengths and work towards reasonable access to the internet in order to make working conditions at sea closer to working ashore. It is no coincidence that, following the most recent IBF settlement with the unions we committed to work on both aspects as part of a focus group on the “Future of Work” at sea. Of course, having suitable living quarters and recreational facilities are also at the center of our Members’ focus as the other distinguishing feature of working at sea is that you can’t go home at the end of your daily shift.

S4S: What steps does IMEC take to promote diversity and inclusion within the maritime industry, and how does it encourage member participation in creating an inclusive environment?

Fr. G.: Our industry is traditionally quite old fashioned and historically man dominated so diversity and inclusion are certainly areas for improvement. The key challenge is the extremely low number of female seafarers we are able to attract to the cargo sector, mainly due to the previously discussed issues of fatigue and isolation but also the lack of a critical mass that would normalize the presence of female seafarers in an industry that generally counts on small teams. It is no coincidence that the sector that sees the most female participation is the Cruise sector where larger teams also benefit from a much larger participation of females. D&I is even more important from a strategic perspective if one considers that by not attracting females, we are missing out on roughly half of our potential target audience at a time when the industry is so focused on expanding its pool of qualified officers. IMEC has taken the significant step to encourage this societal change wherever we can, we have gone as far as creating a D&I dedicated Working Group that focuses on initiatives to incentivize and facilitate the employment of more female seafarers. We have added several Key Performance Indicators that are focusing on this very aspect of our business and can see slow but steady progress being achieved particularly with the number of female cadets being recruited and making it through to officer positions.

S4S: What is your message to industry stakeholders to address the issue of crew welfare?

Fr.G.: The key change the industry needs to make is to stop considering seafarers welfare initiatives as a cost but rather an investment in the future of the business. A large number of our Members do see this and are committed to ensuring the welfare of seafarers is prioritized, unfortunately this approach is not as widely spread as we would like and our focus is on ensuring that a growing number of maritime employers join us in this crusade.

 The views presented are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.