Maritime Diary

By National Secretary Paddy Crumlin

In the shipping industry a shabby and grubby scenario not dissimilar to the Patrick lockout of 1998 has been playing out for a century or more. Australian, US, NZ, European and Japanese Flag seafarers and their standards have been thrown down the gangways in favour of crew on Flag of Convenience shipping from countries like Liberia, where murder, slaughter, torture and rape has accompanied the degradation of basic services like water, power and sewerage for its people.

Global solidarity

This edition of the Maritime Workersą Journal focuses on Globalising Solidarity, the 2nd International Mining and Maritime Conference held in Los Angeles in May, and three very different Americas - Canada, the USA and El Salvador.

The following is the second part of my address to the conference:

The MUA welcomes comrades from rail, road, mining and maritime unions in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, South America, Japan, Canada and the US, along with the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Chemical Energy and Mining Federation.

We're the people who deliver the goods and that's why we're under the hammer. There's no room in free trade for the worker. There's no room in free trade for unions. And there's especially no room in free trade for strong transport unions.

Murder, crime & shipping

In the shipping industry a shabby and grubby scenario not dissimilar to the Patrick lockout of 1998 has been playing out for a century or more. Australian, US, NZ, European and Japanese Flag seafarers and their standards have been thrown down the gangways in favour of crew on Flag of Convenience shipping from countries like Liberia, where murder, slaughter, torture and rape has accompanied the degradation of basic services like water, power and sewerage for its people. Or other great buttresses of public distinction and ethics like Panama, where corruption is a vocation and seafarers' competencies are purchased like a commodity. Countries where the owner is unknown in order to avoid regulation compliance which countries like ours have built and maintained in the spirit of greater national and international good. Countries that prostitute their flags to harbour tax avoiders, drug smugglers, organised crime, terrorists and multinational shipping and corporate interests. Countries and their flags now openly embraced by governments like ours that have brazenly vacated any observance of genuine national interest.

A demonstration of just how far our government has fallen came for me at the US Merchant Seafarers' Day in Washington DC in May, where the role of merchant seafarers in war and peace was celebrated by all political parties, by the other services, particularly the navy, and whose dead lost in battle are kept eternally respected by the maintenance of cabotage as a bastion of national security.

In Australia, the one in eight merchant seafarers who died in the WWII are disgraced by a government which declines to mention them on our remembrance day and which supports Flags of Convenience to increasingly dominate our domestic shipping trade.

The Australian embassy was invited to this huge Remembrance Day in the US, but must have been busy down at the Panamanian or Liberian embassy, and it was ironically left to me to carry the day in honouring the US patriots of the merchant service.

Corporate greed & power

What causes this change in public responsibility? What could possibly cause this dreadful distortion of human values of remembrance, generosity, compassion, charity, sympathy and empathy - qualities that the majority of humanity aspire to?

A thing of monolithic greed does.

The greed of shipping multinationals, manufacturing multinationals, mining and transport conglomerates increasingly controlled by single companies.

They are collaborating to mine and move raw materials, make the goods, transport them to the retail outlets and increasingly dominate each sector.

Sectors like oil. Does anyone doubt what the chaos in Iraq is really about?

Or what Halliburton or Dick Cheney are really about? This manipulative, grubby war that daily kills more young men and women is about commerce and oil and the needs of corporations and their dutiful political sycophants.

Companies that use war as a business tool are adept at identifying enemies and dealing with them, cynically, methodically and increasingly effectively.

In Australia the Howard Government is using their political power not to improve national and community values, but to undermine workersą rights and minimise entitlements. They see political power solely as a vehicle to give their business mates a free lift. They are prepared to attack anyone who stands in their way. Because we prepared to block their road unless we can drive on it too, the working men and women who mine, transport and make the goods that create wealth have been particularly targeted. Especially

unions that fight, that stand at the gates and pickets in LA and Sydney and around the world demanding a fair go and inspiring others in the community to do the same. Unions that stick, unions which share. Unions like the ILWU who sent a scab loaded ship back to NZ to be discharged and loaded again by union labour. From our membership, our union and our hearts, thank you for that.

Unions that force FOC ship-owners to pay decent wages and provide decent conditions. Unions that help the weak and reinforce the strong. Unions that are locked out, fined, their activists imprisoned. And unions that are assessed and reassessed by these companies and their odious governments on how they should be weakened or broken next contract, next agreement , next opportunity. Unions like us. We are their enemy. And it is the essential importance of our labour to their interests, which make us the target.

For as long as we want to join together, think together, act together and fight together. For as long as we organise ourselves in our workplaces and unions, between our industries, organise nationally and internationally. But most importantly, for as long as we are proud to be called the enemies of corruption, elitism and greed. As long as we are proud to be called enemies of the corporate and state power that is destroying genuine democracy. As long as we do and are proud of these things, we will prevail.