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

The ILO Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 – Lillie
legitimate alternative to ITF contract rates. Since 2005 this wage has been
$500 per month. 7 The ITF views the ILO rate as an appropriate minimum
only for national flag shipping (and presumably only on shipping
flying the flags of developing countries). It is used as a benchmark for collective
negotiations in some countries, but is not vigorously enforced by
the ITF, or anyone else. There have also been half-hearted attempts at
business self-regulation. The ISF publishes “good employment practice”
guidelines for shipowners, which incorporate ILO Conventions and Recommendations,
as well as the ISF’s own policies. According to Lloyd’s List,
these “guidelines were in part designed to underline the organization’s
positive agenda”, and deflect criticism that the ISF was resisting a regulatory
agenda put forward by others (Lloyd’s List, 1 January 2001).
During a disagreement in the ILO MLC talks over the use of PSC to
enforce labour standards (discussed later), some shipowners approached
the labour standards certification body Social Accountability International
about an alternative private labour rights certification approach.
From the ITF’s perspective, however, regulation through ILO or
CSR standards would be weaker and more laxly enforced than through
ITF standards.
Furthermore, maritime shipping is mostly a market for producers,
rather than directly for consumers. CSR-based standards tend to depend
on the demands of consumer markets, and except in a minority of cases
involving passenger ships, it is not clear that there is a consumer market
in which pressure for “voluntary” corporate standards could be organized.
As long as the ITF has the industrial power resources available to enforce
its agreements, it has little reason to accept laxer means of standards
implementation, and in any case it may not have appropriate pressure
tools available to enforce consumer-based standards. Shipowners’
attempts to move to a more ILO- or CSR-based model can be seen as an
attempt to shift the political struggle to a field more advantageous
to them.
In the struggle to shape the developing private regulatory regime of
the shipping labour market, the ITF is in many respects ahead of the
shipowners. Although the regulatory starting point — an open market in
which it is very difficult to enforce non-market-based regulation —
7
The ILO rate is calculated on base pay, and does not include overtime and benefits, unlike the ITF
contract rate. With overtime and benefit pay added in, the total labour cost figure is $817. This figure, and
not the $500 figure, is more comparable to the ITF rate (Lloyd’s List, 29 July 2003).
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