‘UK seamen losing out to foreigners’

Published on Wednesday 8 February 2012 00:51

NORTH Sea trade unions yesterday launched a concerted campaign against the increasing use of low-cost foreign seafarers being employed in “flags of convenience” vessels supporting the oil and gas industry.

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), representing unions in the UK, Norway and Denmark, claims that the increasing number of non-EU registered vessels operating in the North Sea has led to a large number of British and other European seamen being thrown out of work.

Steve Todd, the national secretary of the RMT union, said: “The decline of British ratings in the North Sea over the years has been dramatic, and companies appear to be practising ‘under-the-table discrimination’ by refusing applications for jobs from experienced British seafarers while employing low-cost workers from outside instead.

“You see more and more British and European workers being put out of work and put on the dole at the expense of this.”

A spokesman for the ITF said European seafarers were being replaced by low-cost labour from countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, India, Romania and the Philippines on an increasing number of flags of convenience vessels.

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jerrymanders

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:24 PM

British Companies employing low cost "foreign" workers? - we only have ourselves to blame.

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Rob Royston

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 09:41 PM

The reason why they are cheap is because that is invariably what they are worth. They always answer every question with a yes, they break all your equipment and need lots of supervision. In any country that I have worked I would rather train local people than have to put up with these charlatans.

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Family guy

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 07:39 AM

It has ever been thus in the World of seafairing. Press Gangs, stowaways, the impoverished seeking adventure. Nothing new.

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CASHKING7

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 04:07 AM

And so it continues, eastern Europeans, Philipenos, Indians etc, willing to work for peanuts but beware in an emergency they will save their own skin, all this cheap labour will come back and bite us, time we looked after ourselves instead of others.

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