The Internationalisation of Maritime Employment: Factors and Remedies

Abstract

The internationalisation of maritime employment is mainly associated with the freedom in ship registration, for which reason this chapter analyses, first, the establishing of open registries and thus the flourishing of the flag of convenience issue (Sect. 2.2). But second, it draws attention to the consequences arising out of second and international registries set up by the traditional maritime nations to counteract the flight of their fleet towards flags of convenience: vessels registered therein may also be manned by seafarers or fishermen residing in third countries and whose working conditions can be submitted to a law other than the law of the flag state (Sect. 2.3). The new issue is known as crews of convenience and is driven by business cooperation such as the resorting to manning agencies in labour-supplying countries or groups of companies. Maritime employees and in particular employers are thus studied with a view to identifying them (Sect. 2.4). Against this background, the internationalisation of maritime employment has been followed by different attempts to stop legislations’ race to the bottom. Once the difficulty in establishing a genuine link between a vessel and a flag state has been made clear, the international community, and in particular the ILO, has sought for levelling the playing field by laying down minimum international standards. This effort has somehow come to fruition with the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, and the Work in Fishing Convention, 2007. Their contents are addressed in this chapter (Sect. 2.5), including the balance between flag states’ and port states’ responsibilities that both conventions aim to achieve. Despite this, it is clear that ILO Conventions seek to reinforce the role of the flag state to the extent that other states only intervene by default.