CROSS-BORDER SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND AGREEMENTS: An ...

Cross-border social dialogue and agreements
In maritime shipping, social partner group strategies are closely tied
into the internal politics and global collective bargaining strategies of the
unions’ and shipowners’ international associations. A curious brand of
global trade unionism and industrial relations has emerged from the ITF’s
Flag of Convenience (FOC) campaign. The FOC campaign began in
1948, when seafaring unions first took notice of attempts by some
shipowners to “flag out” to developing countries with “flag of convenience”
4 ship registers. Since the 1970s, the campaign emphasis shifted
from ending the FOC system completely to wage bargaining for FOC
seafarers. Since 2001, it has involved explicit global industry-level wage
bargaining for seafarers on FOC ships (Lillie, 2004).
The leadership of the shipowners’ group has been closely associated
with IMEC, and IMEC’s policy of detente with the ITF. Part way
through the negotiations, an internal power struggle took place among
the shipowners. A new “hard-line” leadership emerged for a time, which
was no longer as close to IMEC, and was unsure whether it really wanted
the MLC at all. In the end, hard-line shipowner strategies did not prevent
the Convention from being signed, or result in significant modifications
to the text. The shipowners’ group finished the MLC negotiations
under its original conciliatory leadership. The disruption reveals factions
created by the variable influence of the ITF flag of convenience campaign
on different shipowners’ groups, and different understandings in the
industry of how best to react to ITF pressure.
Significance of the ILO Maritime Labour
Convention, 2006
When the MLC comes into force, this will signal an important
change in the way that global labour rights are governed in the maritime
industry, but even more significantly it sets a precedent for labour rights
and global governance generally. Although a logical continuation of current
and ongoing developments, it codifies maritime shipping’s fundamentally
new way of implementing labour standards. The MLC builds
on maritime regulatory experiences from PSC; on the IMO’s 1995 Standards
of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping convention and
4
Many shipowners prefer the term “open” register, but “flag of convenience” is probably the more
commonly used term.
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