Federation: a historic global vision

Our serialisation of Andrew Linington's history of Nautilus International continues with a look at early efforts to improve the treatment of seafarers worldwide

Shipping is an inherently international industry, and the need for global cooperation has run strongly through the work of the maritime unions. British seafarers' complaints about being undercut by lower-cost foreign labour stretch back more than 200 years, and they accelerated sharply in 1849, when requirements for three-quarters of a British ship's crew to be British were abolished.

In 1896 the International Federation of Ship, Dock and River Workers was created, changing its name just two years later to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). Its founders had the stated aim to 'establish, so far as may be possible, a uniform rate of pay for the same class of worker in all ports and to establish a recognised working day and other regulations in the ports of the world'. They wanted to see 'a steady levelling up' of pay, in part to address shipowners' complaints that British workers were paid well in excess of those on the Continent.

International bodies

Conscious of the owners' abilities to play off one national group against another, seafarers' organisations had been seeking for some time to secure international machinery to govern maritime labour issues. The creation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1919 offered just such an opportunity – and in some dedicated maritime sessions of its International Labour Conference, seafarers were successful in making the case for 'the very special questions concerning the minimum conditions to be accorded to seamen' to be dealt with on a separate basis; in 1920 the International Labour Office agreed to the creation of a maritime section and a Joint Maritime Commission (JMC), consisting of equal numbers of seafarer and shipowner representatives.

Before the ILO had held that first conference in Washington in autumn 1919, UK seafaring unions including the Mercantile Marine Service Association (MMSA) presented the British government’s delegate to the meeting with a programme of demands including a minimum wage, working hours, manning scales, and better food. They also participated in international maritime union conferences which sought to shape the ILO agenda alongside delegates from countries including the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

UK union delegates attended the ILO meeting in the role of technical advisers. The conference came painfully close to agreement on a convention to limit working hours in line with the unions’ demands – it took until 1936 for international regulation of working time to be eventually agreed. However, in 1928 the unions – who had been making the case for an International Seamen's Code, to provide a 'uniform law' for the world’s seafarers – were successful in securing the adoption of three conventions, covering the establishment of facilities for finding employment for seamen; the fixing of the minimum age for admission of children to employment at sea; and the provision of unemployment indemnity in case of loss or foundering of the ship.

Imperial and global

The sheer scale of the British Empire meant that British masters and officers worked across the globe, and from an early stage UK unions had strong relationships with such organisations as the Australian Merchant Service Guild and the China Coast Officers' Guild.

The Officers' (MN) Federation was established by Captain William Coombs to represent members across the Commonwealth, and in December 1938 he visited India in an attempt to improve conditions for officers serving on the Indian coast and to explore the possibility of opening an NEOU office in the country. However, this failed to get off the ground because of differences over the gap between pay rates for British and Indian officers.

In January 1936 the Officers' Federation affiliated with the International Mercantile Marine Officers' Association (IMMOA), which had been established in 1925 by Dutch, Belgian, French and Scandinavian officers to 'defend and safeguard the interests of mercantile marine officers, and to foster the ties of
friendship and cooperation between organisations of mercantile marine officers of all nations'.

IMMOA's core aim was to provide an effective voice for officers at the ILO, and in 1932 discussions about the possible affiliation of the Officers' Federation had begun against a background of fears that European shipowners were making concerted attempts to cut the pay of officers.

The federation rapidly became an active member of the IMMOA, with Captain Coombs elected to the post of president in 1937. He soon gave particularly strong support to its efforts to secure a global agreement to reduce the threat of criminalisation by reserving criminal jurisdiction in collision cases to the country of the vessel's flag. Stressing the importance of such work, Capt Coombs told NEOU members: ;We have long recognised that your wellbeing is
inseparably linked up with the wellbeing of ships' officers the world over and that we cannot do our job on your behalf properly if we fail to realise that shipping is essentially an international industry.'

In October 1936, the NEOU took part in the ILO's Joint Maritime Conference in Geneva, which discussed proposals for six new conventions – including hours and manning, holidays with pay, minimum professional qualifications and sickness insurance – as well as a recommendation on seafarers’ welfare in ports. The union lobbied strongly for the UK to implement these measures, and former ILO director Sir Harold Butler wrote in 1939 that ‘it is curious to note that Great Britain is behind countries like Australia, Belgium, Sweden and the United States in adopting the international standard of hours and manning at a time when complaints are constantly heard that enough men cannot be induced to go to sea'.

 

British seafarers’ complaints about being undercut by lower-cost foreign labour stretch back more than 200 years