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Thousands of Filipino workers at sea and at risk
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-
© April 17, 2004
Rey Tagle, Lugen T. Ortilano and James Bactat, three survivors of the Bow Mariner explosion, meet with members of the local Filipino community in Virginia Beach on March 19.
Ramon Ronquillo has been a seafarer for 25 years. But when he returns home to his native Philippines, he plans to find another line of work. “I cannot go back,” he said last week. “I have promised myself. I will get a job on land – a small business, maybe.” Ronquillo was a seaman aboard the Bow Mariner, the 570-
The near-
The cause of the Bow Mariner tragedy is unknown, and no one has publicly accused the ship’s owners, managers or crew of negligence. The four survivors who were still in Hampton Roads last week had nothing but good things to say about their employers. “It’s a good company,” said Lugen Ortilano, 32, the 3rd officer. He has worked for Odfjell Seachem, the Norwegian owner of the Bow Mariner, since he began his seafaring career nine years ago. Ortilano, who is married with no children, said his wife would prefer that he find a job on land. “But I said to my wife, 'I have to go back. I want to become a captain.’” The money he earns at sea is too good to give up, Ortilano said: His $1,853 monthly salary is five times what he could earn in the Philippines. And because it is earned offshore, under Philippine law, the money is tax-
The shipping industry has become one of the world’s first truly globalized industries. Along the way, it has generated the same kinds of pressures, debates and fears that have characterized other expanding sectors, from toys to textiles. There is almost no better example of globalization than the Bow Mariner. It was owned by Norwegians, managed by Greeks, flagged in Singapore and crewed by Filipinos. Overbuilding of commercial ships in the 1970s and ’80s led to depressed freight rates and downward pressure on labor costs – basically, a case of too many ships chasing after shrinking profits. One of the most effective ways of cutting costs, shippers found, was hiring seafarers who were willing to work for less money.
“It’s much more competitive today than ever before,” said J.J. “Jeff” Keever, executive vice president of the Hampton Roads Maritime Association. “There’s been a tremendous shift to crew members from less developed nations.” For the past two decades, the biggest beneficiary of this trend has been the Philippines, a developing country with a seafaring history and one of the highest unemployment rates in Asia. Today, more than one in four of the world’s 1.2 million seafarers are Filipino, according to the Seafarers International Research Centre at Cardiff University in Wales. No other nation comes close.
Odfjell alone employs more than 2,000 Filipino crew members, said Knut Dybvik, vice president for U.S. operations. At least 80 percent of Filipino seafarers’ wages are remitted home to their families, providing a significant boost to the nation’s economy. Seafarers’ remittances totaled nearly $1.3 billion last year, according to the Philippines Department of Labor and Employment.
“The No. 1 export of the Philippines is its people,” said Ron Villanueva, a Filipino-
The Philippines has more than 400 crewing agencies, companies that recruit and place seafarers on ships. Manila has been called the “crewing capital of the world.” Job seekers travel to Manila by air or ferry, often from islands hundreds of miles away, and gather by the hundreds in open-
The International Commission on Shipping, an independent group chaired by a former Australian transport minister, held hearings around the world and issued a blistering report in 2001, alleging widespread abuse of seafarers. In a conclusion that was denounced by the shipping industry as inflammatory, the commission declared: “For thousands of today’s international seafarers, life at sea is modern slavery, and their workplace is a slave ship.” The group estimated that 10 percent to 15 percent, or perhaps as many 20 percent, of the world’s commercial ships are operated under substandard conditions. It said seafarers suffer beatings, inadequate medical treatment, poor accommodations, insufficient food and nonpayment of wages. Even on the best-
Seafarers also face risks from modern-
A typical entry in the chamber’s weekly piracy report, describing an incident last Sunday off Taganak Island in the Philippines, read: “A group of 8-
A new worry for Filipino seafarers is competition from countries like China, Russia and India as shippers seek even cheaper labor sources – a “race to the bottom,” some critics have called it. A comparison of wages by two Cardiff University researchers last year found that the average Filipino seaman earned $1,001 a month – about 12 times the Philippines’ average per capita income. The average Chinese seaman was paid $611, nearly 40 percent less than the average Filipino.
A recent survey by two Filipino crewing groups found that 80 percent of their member agencies had lost jobs to other Asian, East European and Chinese competitors over the past two years. This loss of competitive edge, coupled with a global glut of seafarers, has created a situation where Filipinos and other international seafarers are increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, according to the International Labor Organization. Moreover, the continuing influx of low-
The increasing international competition for labor has prompted a critical look at the quality of maritime training in the Philippines. The Cardiff researchers reported a wide range of quality, from state-
Gerhardt Muller, a professor of intermodal transportation at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., said he believes shippers ignore the personnel issues inherent in a globalized work force at their peril. “Seafaring used to be a profession that had a certain romance to it,” he said. “That’s gone. What we have now is a sense that it’s a job. Companies look at it strictly as a bottom-
“The business concepts and the technologies are moving so fast that we’ve sort of left the human element in the dust. And the long-
There are no comprehensive worldwide statistics on shipwrecks or crew fatalities. Incomplete data collected by the Cardiff research center indicate that on average, more than 2,000 seafarers die at sea each year. There were 128 tanker accidents in 2003, according to Intertanko, an association of ship owners. Most serious in terms of human casualties were five explosions that resulted in 13 fatalities. Odfjell says it is determined to find out what caused the Bow Mariner disaster. But four of the six surviving crewmen, acting on the advice of lawyers hired by the ship’s managers, have refused to speak to the Coast Guard, the agency responsible for investigating the accident.
The men did agree to testify before a federal grand jury after being subpoenaed. They say they have been unable to shed any light on the cause of the accident because they were not in the immediate vicinity of the explosion.
After 19 years at sea, Edimar Aguilar, 48, signed on with Odfjell in January, joining the ill-