Navigating Uncertain Seas: Maritime Sector Unions in the Fight against
Decline through Cross-border Merger – the Nautilus International Project
Victor Oyaro Gekara
Abstract
Unions in the UK maritime sector are caught-up in the vicious cycle of decline which
has characterised global labour around the world, especially in advanced capitalist
countries, in the past three decades. Because successive governments have sought to
encourage tonnage retention partly by enabling ship-owners to recruit seafarers from
low-wage developing countries, many of these countries, including the UK and
Netherlands, have experienced a huge loss of seafarer employment. This, in addition to
reduced cadet recruitment and training, led to drastic decline in the number of qualified
officers and a general fall in the maritime skills base both ashore and at sea. The
detriment, to unions, has been loss of members, decline in their resource base and an
increasing inability to effectively organise and represent members. In response the two
unions representing maritime professionals both in the UK and Netherlands have, over
the past ten years embarked on a project aimed at revitalising its organising and
representation capacity through cross-border integration - the Nautilus International
Project. This paper discusses the development of the project and examines some of the
major challenges involved in such a unique experiment.
The Current Debate
The precarious position in which labour finds itself presently arises from a combination
of political and economic developments in the 1980s and 1990s related to globalisation
and neo-liberalism and the consequent restructuring of labour markets (Fairbrother et al
2007:31). An important part of the current debate on union organising is about how
labour may effectively responded to the challenge of internationally mobile global
capital so as to enhance its organisation and representation capacity. A big problem for
labour, resulting from these developments, has been the rising tide of employer
opposition and hostile national policies on labour (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003; Heery
and Simms, 2003; Lévesque and Murray, 2006; Waddington, 2006a; Fairbrother et al,
2007).
Beginning from the late 1970s onwards, unions have had to operate within an
environment characterised by powerful multinational capital, hostile public policies
adopted by states in pursuit of neo-liberal ideologies and rapid transformations in the
labour market, especially with regard to the type of work people do, the nature of their
employment and the socio-demographic composition of workers (Hyman, 2005; Clarke
et al, 2006; Lévesque and Murray, 2006; Fairbrother et al, 2007). As a result unions
worldwide have experienced steady membership decline and contraction of resources,
both of which resulted in reduced ability to effectively organise and deliver the
necessary services to members (Fiorito and Gallager, 2006). Many are therefore caught
in a vicious cycle of decline in which diminishing membership leads to declining
resources which, in turn, leads to reduced ability to effectively serve members and
therefore further loss of members.
In recent years however labour has attempted to fight back in a bid to recapture and
enhance their position in the global socio-economic arena. Some of the ways, identified
in recent studies, through which unions in many sectors have attempted to achieve this
goal both at a local and international level, include reinvigorating union efficiency and
instrumentality, restructuring governance and internal organisation, expanding and
consolidating resources, partly through expansion of membership base, building crosssector and cross-border alliances and renegotiating relations with national states (see
Waddington, 2006; Fiorito and Gallagher, 2006; Grenier, 2006; Havien, 2006;
Lévesque and Murray, 2002, 2006; Fairbrother et al, 2007; Tattersal, 2007). In the
process of, however, unions have faced a number of challenges, particularly relating to
transformations in work, work-places and employment. The exercise of expanding
membership and increasing retention is often hampered by the extent of deregulation of
labour markets in many sectors, the casualisation and flexiblisation of employment and
the trans-nationalisation of production activities by multinational corporations (Fiorito
and Gallagger, 2006; Lévesque and Murray, 2002, 2006). Expanding and consolidating
union resources and membership base, especially through mergers, presents
organisational and representational problems due to the fact that, in the process, the
essential elements of ‘ownership’ and ‘sense-of-belonging’ are diluted, which might
lead to member discontent and possible withdrawal. As Lévesque and Murray (2006),
quoting Waddington (2006b), explain, there is a risk of alienating some members ‘who
no longer find adequate space for their particular needs and identities within these larger
structures’ (2006:9). Nevertheless, unions must continue to find new ways of renewing
their capacity for effective representation and, certainly, considering the environment in
which they operate and try to reposition, cross-sector and cross-border alliances and
partnerships become an essential strategy by which labour can counter the growing
power of multinational capital and accommodate the trans-nationalisation of
employment.
This paper examines the potential for union renewal through cross-border mergers using
the Nautilus International experiment which forms a unique example of two unions
representing maritime professionals in two different countries, that is the Federatie van
Werknemers in de Zeevaart (FWZ) of Netherlands and the UK’s National Union of
Marine, Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers (NUMAST), coming together to
create a single transnational union. There are some examples of different forms of crossborder union alliances in various sectors, including the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU); the Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurants, Catering, Tobacco
and Allied Workers Association (GUF); International Metal Workers Federation (IMF);
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF); the Building Workers International
(BWI) (see, Tattersal, 2007; Stevis and Boswell, 2007 and Lillie, 2004). However,
actual mergers have not been successfully attempted yet. In the maritime sector, apart
from the ITF, there are cases of unions working together on an ad hoc or partnership
basis. In all the examples available, individual continue to retain national bases and
identities while collaborating with cross-border allies. Some of the examples include the
International Organisation of Master, Mates and Pilots (MM&P), which is the marine
section of another a bigger US-based international union organisation called the
International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA)1, and the Seafarers International
Union of North America (SIU)2. In all these cases the unions are essentially national
1
The ILA organises marine workers in the US’s East Coast, Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes and
Puerto Rico. For more information on the ILA and MM&P refer to their websites at www.bridgedeck.org
(MM&P) and www.ilaunion.org (ILA).
2
SIU represents US merchant mariners sailing aboard US-flagged vessels in deep sea, Great Lakes and
inland trades. Refer to www.seafarers.org.
organisations which operate and organise across several states and countries without
necessarily merging.
Nautilus International is, for this reason, a unique experiment and it is what makes an
interesting case to study.
The Study
The material used in this paper is drawn from a larger body of data collected as part of a
PhD project (Gekara 2008). The project examined the UK government’s response to the
globalisation of the shipping industry and the consequent decline in the local seafaring
labour market via a tonnage tax. The study was conducted between October 2004 and
October 2007 and it involved semi-structured interviews with top union officials in the
UK, government officials, industry HR managers, Training company managers and
administrators and staff of cadet training colleges. Although unions formed an
important source of information for the study because of the central role they played in
the design of the UK tonnage tax strategy and also because of their on-going ‘fight’ to
influence favourable policies for UK seafarers, unionisation and union organising was
not a major focus of this initial study. However, a significant and important body of data
on the struggles of maritime unions against decline was generated which set the
platform for a further and more detailed examination of the challenges facing maritime
sector unions and their response strategies. One particular case was singled out for
further study – the Nautilus International experiment which brings together two unions
for maritime professionals in two different countries in a process of establishing the first
ever cross-border union merger. In order to understand the origin, the process and
challenges and anticipated outcomes, a series of in-depth interviews were held with
officials of the Nautilus Federation both in the UK and the Netherlands in January 2009.
The Nautilus Project against a Background of Decline
After many years of ad hoc collaboration between the two principal Dutch and British
maritime professionals unions the idea merging to create a single cross-border union
was introduce about a decade ago. Three factors seem to have triggered this initiative:
firstly, memberships in both unions had drastically declined leading to diminished
resources. Secondly, many decades of reduced government support for labour and
increased promotion of capital interests by successive governments had left the unions
weak and, thirdly, the growing power of multinational shipping companies over labour
and an increased capacity for employers in the industry to play seafarers from one
country or region against another to achieve reduced costs and increased profits.
Because of the globalised nature of shipping capital, the great disparities in international
seafarer wage levels and extensive deregulation in the shipping labour market, shipowners have, since the 1970s, sought to reduce operating costs by seeking cheap labour
from low-wage developing countries at the expense of their traditional home sources
(Alderton and Winchester 2002; Selkou and Roe 2004). Ship-owners are traditionally
responsible for training seafarers and replenishing the pool hence, the massive flagging
out of European owned vessels from national registers to Flags of Convenience (FoC)
(see Metaxas 1985) between mid-1970s and mid-1990s created a situation of
diminished employment and training opportunities for European seafarers and,
consequently, a huge decline in the pool of seafarers and other maritime professionals
(Gekara 2009).
This is aptly illustrated by the decline in the shipping industries of both UK and
Netherlands, with respect to both the total number seafarers and registered tonnage,
during this period. The shipping industry in the UK declined steadily between the 1970s
and the late 1990s. The total registered fleet fell from 33 million GT (3,822 ships) in
1975 to 3.4 million GT (1,391 ships) in 1999 (Lloyd’s Fairplay - World Fleet Statistics
various years). The number of officers serving on-board British vessels dropped from
28,000 in 1980 to 7,000 in 1998 (Brownrigg et al, 2001) while the decline in the actual
number of British officers dropped from about 99,000 to about 17,000 during the same
period. Cadet intake levels also fell from around 4,500 in 1970 to less than 1000 in the
late 1990s (House of Commons Employment Committee, 1993). A similar downward
trend was also experienced in Dutch shipping industry where the total gross registered
tonnage dropped from 5.7 (1,348 ships) to 3.4 (1,059) million between 1975 and 1995
(Lloyd’s Fairplay - World Fleet Statistics various years). The total number of Dutch
seafarers employed on Dutch vessels declined from around 9,400 in 1976 to 6,000 by
mid-1990s. These two cases are not unique since the downward spiral affected most
major industrialised maritime countries in Europe during the 80s and 90s.
The impact of this decline on local unions like NUMAST and FWZ and their capacity
to organise was great. The diminishing number of seafarers and other maritime
professionals meant reduced members and consequently resources for the unions.
Tables 1 and 2 shows the extensive loss of membership experienced by the two
maritime professionals unions, in the UK and the Netherlands:
Table 1
Year
Source: Created by author from field data
2009
2007
2005
2003
2001
1999
1997
1995
1993
1991
1989
1987
1985
1983
1981
1979
50000
45000
40000
35000
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
1975
Total Membership
NautilusUK Membership 1975 - 2009
Table 2
NautilusNL Membership Trends 1975 - 2009
Total Membership
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
Year
Source: Created by author from field data
The figures indicate that the decline in the membership of Nautilus NL from 7,347 in
1975 to 5,824 in 2009 was neither as great nor as dramatic as that experienced by their
UK counterpart which saw a membership drop of about 11,000 members over the same
period. This is, however, mainly due to the fact that the UK always had a larger number
of seafarers and thus experienced a higher rate of overall decline than most of the other
European maritime countries. The last bar on both figures represents an estimated figure
anticipating expansion after the creation of Nautilus International and pooling together
the resources of both partners from May 2009. However, clearly, even after this the
collective membership will be less the number in 1975 by almost half in the case of the
Nautilus UK while Nautilus NL stands to gain by a large margin of more than half.
Nevertheless, the joint union will be able to benefit of an enlarged membership base of
about 24,000members thus making a union larger than any other maritime union in
Europe.
Building the Common Union
As already indicated the move to create a common cross-border union for maritime
professionals was initiated about a decade ago. According to Nautilus officials, the first
2009
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1995
1990
1985
1980
1975
0
signal was given by NUMAST officials. This, however, was apparently not the
beginning of cooperation between the Dutch and British maritime professional unions
as the two sides had collaborated for many years on many issues concerning the welfare
of their members. What was new, however, was the idea of fussing the two, hitherto,
independent unions into a single entity.
Although, due to the long history of collaboration between the two unions, the choice of
partner has been described as "natural", the officials admit that there were many things
that had to be considered to ensure compatibility. Apparently NUMAST had once, in
the early 1990s, explored the possibility of building an alliance with one of the local
unions representing workers within the wider transport sector but the attempt had failed.
Apparently, the two most important considerations in the choice of partner were, first,
…remaining a maritime union for maritime workers or going in with a
general union or going in with another transport union and diluting our
unique selling point [UK Interview January 2009]
And, secondly, compatibility with respect to “… organising strategies, and general
outlook, [one] we can work with [NL Interview January 2009]. Another likely candidate
for an alliance with NUMAST alliance had apparently failed on this test of
compatibility, especially with regard to organisation strategies:
Their attitude to industrial relations doesn’t really sit that well with the
majority of our members… Well you know, socialist, left wing, you know. I
mean, there is virtually always a strike involving some part of their
membership. That’s not really our style … that doesn’t tend to be the first
thing that springs to our mind when we’ve got a problem [UK Interview
January 2009]
Furthermore, according to the official, “all the maritime unions that mattered here in the
UK were already part of us by 1985”.
The decision to look beyond British borders for a partner was, therefore, driven by these
considerations - the need to find “an organisation that has similar outlooks and similar
type of membership; professionals” [UK Interview January 2009]. The decision was
also influenced by the need to survive and successfully represent members on a global
stage against a well organised multinational industry, hence, there was “urgent need for
unions to begin building strong international alliances” [UK Interview January 2009].
FWZ therefore fitted perfectly because they had the same specialised membership as
NUMAST, they had been collaborating partners for many years and both unions shared
a common believe in “working with companies and government departments in order to
effectively negotiate the best deals for our members” [UK Interview January 2009].
Mergers and take-overs, albeit locally, were apparently not a new phenomenon to either
of the unions. Their existence had been shaped by these very processes over a period of
many years. Nautilus-UK traces its roots to the creation of the Mercantile Marine
Service Association (MMSA) in 1857. By 1920 the association had transformed greatly
through splinters, mergers and take-overs involving many other smaller marine unions.
Further similar processes of restructuring over the following years resulted in the
creation of NUMAST in 1985 when MMSA joined with Merchant Navy and Airlines
Officers Association (MNAOA) and the Radio and Electronics Officers’ Union
(REOU) to create a broad union representing Ships’ and airlines’ officers and other
shore-based maritime professionals. The name changed to Nautilus UK on 2nd October
20063 when it joined with the Dutch FWZ to establish the Nautilus Federation. On the
other side of the border FWZ had also gone through similar restructuring processes.
Formed in 1901 by a group of officers at a bar in Amsterdam, the union grew and
developed though mergers and take-overs culminating in FZW in 1995 when Algemene
Vakbond voor Zeevarenden (AVZ) the trade union for masters, officers and ratings on
small merchant navy vessels and Vereniging van Kapiteins en Officieren ter
Koopvaardij
(VKO),
mainly
representing
masters
and
officers
on
large
merchant navy vessels, merged to form an all-inclusive union representing workers in
the broad maritime profession4. The primary driver for these structural processes has
always been the decline in membership for unions over time. In the case of the Nautilus
project an official explained:
3
For a detailed history of Nautilus UK refer to http://www.nautilusuk.org
4
For a detailed history of Nautilus UK refer to www.nautilusnl.org
But, I think what triggers the coming together is that every year there are
fewer seafarers. We really know how to organise them but if there is less to
organise and it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller then what do we
organise? [NL Interview January 2009]
Also very significant is the consideration of diminished resources and, consequently, a
significant loss in the capacity to effectively organise and negotiate with employers on
behalf of their members. The merger is therefore viewed as a way of “pooling resources
from both sides in order to increase our strength” [UK Interview January 2009]. The
official further explained:
That remains the issue today with many of the unions, it’s about, you know,
often the mergers are because they reach a critical mass and they know they
can’t go on like this, they’ve got declining membership and rising costs they
need to do something about it [UK Interview January 2009]
Additionally, there seems to have been an awakening to the realities of globalisation
and its implications for a more trans-nationalised shipping labour force. The fact that a
large proportion of workers within the maritime sector operate within a highly
globalised setting means that they are open to employment terms and working
conditions regulated more at the international and less at the national level. Forging
international collaborations and alliances was, therefore, seen as a way of ensuring that
members are effectively represented both at the local and international regulatory
platforms such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International
Maritime Organisation (IMO), as explained by one senior union official:
We’ve got any number of reasons to accept the world is shrinking; national
boundaries mean less than they did and, particularly, in the context of the
European Union and so you’ve greater and greater integration, political,
economic and the rest of it. You know, massive amounts of laws affecting
our members don’t start off in the UK. It starts off in Brussels and Strasburg
and you end up dealing with something that is international and complex;
you are applying something that has been agreed somewhere else and then
you get into the debate where do we need to be more effective. Well we
need to be more effective in Westminster but we also need to be more
effective in Brussels and more effective in the European Parliament; more
effective in Geneva and more effective at the IMO because these are where
the framework of the legislation and the rules and the regulations that
impact on our members’ professions are being laid [UK Interview January
2009]
The Process and Challenges
According to officials on both sides the process of creating Nautilus has been lengthy
and complex. It involved lengthy campaigns to raise awareness among members and
seek their views and support and apparently took some six years, starting from 2001, to
establish the Nautilus Federation. This was the first concrete step towards creating a
single union, achieved on the signing of a federation agreement on 2nd October 2006.
After the creation of the federation the two unions still needed to convince their
members about the necessity to advance the relationship further into a single
international union and about the benefits to be expected from such a move. This,
according to the officials, was not easy because members were anxious about many
issues.
On the UK side members were concerned about issues relating to national identity and
focus on the issues specifically affecting the local maritime labour:
Generally some were opposed to it because they said this is a British
shipping industry, this is a British seafarers union, I am a British seafarer
and that is the way I want it to stay …
Many could, for instance, not understand how uniting with the Dutch union could
protect their jobs which were being ‘shipped’ abroad by multinational shipping
companies or boost seafarer training at hope. The best way to fight for British seafaring
jobs, according to some members was, apparently, “to fight for [British] jobs and not for
the Dutch jobs”. Some apparently concluded that the union would not “be able to fight
for [British] jobs because you will have to look after them as well” [UK Interview
January 2009]
Furthermore, prevailing anti-Europe sentiments presented an additional problem in
convincing NUMAST members of the merits of joining and working with FWZ. The
official further explained:
And there was also an anti-Europe element. People were getting confused,
the fact that we are about to create an international trade union and it’s most
obvious stage is the European stage, and in some ways, it is a reaction to the
deepening integration which they oppose and therefore they oppose Nautilus
because they oppose the European integration [UK Interview January 2009].
On the Dutch side, as explained by one of their senior officials, the members were
apparently also concerned about the same issues but, mainly, they feared that being the
smaller union in terms of numbers and overall influence, they would be swallowed up
and, therefore, lose all identity and focus to the British side:
Mostly members worried about maintaining national identity. In terms of
numbers, resources and overall influence, we are a much smaller union and
therefore our members worry that, well, they are so much bigger than us;
they are going to eat us all and we won’t have a voice… [NL Interview
January 2009]
Obtaining support from members for the Nautilus International project, on both sides,
was therefore hard and involved mainly three stages; firstly, both unions held several
campaign drives to educate the members about the benefits of the intended cross-border
union “we had to convince them that an international union would have a much stronger
voice than a local one… and the message was gradually getting through” [NL Interview
January 2009]. Secondly, they held a second round of meeting to seek views on the way
forward because “we are a member-driven union so our every move had to be approved
by our members. It is there union” [UK Interview January 2009]. The third step was a
ballot which gave members the opportunity to elect between the proposed single crossborder union and maintaining the status quo. The result, on both sides was, apparently,
overwhelming support for the project. In the UK there was a 28% turnout for the ballot
of which 80% voted yes. To explain the implications of the seemingly low turnout an
official said:
As a matter of fact, that was a very high turnout for a union ballot in any
union on any issue … I mean, you get general secretaries being elected in
some of the big unions on a 10% turnout, you know, a very low turnout.
We take the view that members are very good at letting you know when
they are unhappy, if there is something going down they are not happy
about they will let you know. So if they are not bombarding you with emails, letters, faxes and telephone calls then you know in the main they are
happy [UK Interview January 2009].
On the Dutch side a vote was held at the general meeting of members and, apparently,
the idea was unanimously supported.
Another challenge for the architects of the union was to establish democratic structures
to ensure effective integration. Apparently some of the issues which had to be
streamlined, in this respect, included the differences in organisational structures,
administration approaches and the legal frameworks. With regard to differences in the
legal frameworks the aim and challenge was to design a governing constitution which
capitalised on the strengths of the different legal frameworks while circumventing the
bottlenecks in order to enhance the strength of the new union. Furthermore, the two had
different structures and approaches to administration which required extensive
streamlining. The administrative structure at Nautilus UK is, apparently, more
hierarchical whereby the general secretary makes the decisions and is responsible for
them while at Nautilus NL they use what was described as the ‘Polder Model’5 whereby
decisions are arrived at through an even-ground consultative process in which
responsibility lies with all the members of the governing board:
We have a hierarchical Anglo-Saxon approach while they have a very flat
egalitarian approach to everything. Some basic things like we have a general
secretary and he is the chief executive officer and once he has decided
something that’s it, end of story. They have a Voorzitter and that is sort of
translated chairman and I think that is quite an interesting term, Voorzitter –
chairman, because they have meetings and the Voorzitter will chair a
meeting and sum up the debate and the objective is a consensus and that’s
why I think he is called the Voorzitter, chair, - he chairs the meetings.
Whereas we have our equivalent, a general secretary, and his job is … he
5
The phrase ‘polder model’ is derived from the flat nature of the Netherlands which constitutes of large
flat areas of reclaimed land known as polders. It is apparently an ideology on public governance which is
being adopted widely in the country.
has the responsibility, his job is to get the job done, and he will call us
together and he will listen to what we have to say and he will say thanks,
he’s coordinating nothing, he is taking a decision and it is up to him who he
listens to and it’s up to him whether he takes on anything they say [UK
Interview January 2009].
In order to address this disparity an inclusive cross-border decision-making structure
has been put in place which merges the two approaches and maximise the advantages of
both models. This consists of a General Meeting of all members every 4 years, at the
top, followed by the Council of the Union made up of 32 elected members, that is, 24
British and 8 Dutch. Below this are two national committees comprising of the elected
council members plus extra members from the national secretariats in the two countries.
And that represents the 2 branches … so you have got all the members
coming together; the elected council that supervises the operations of the
union between meetings of the general meeting and then you’ve got
domestic policy issues to be debated in the 2 national branches which have
committees and then that is it essentially [UK Interview January 2009].
This new approach leans more towards the Dutch ‘polder model’ so that decision
making is done through “a participative, consensus building approach”:
My instinct tells me that the participative consensus building approach is
better. My determination is that we probably need to find the best of both
those approaches. We need to get to decisions quickly … I’ll be the new
general secretary and I don’t want to erode my new powers but … I do want
to take people with me and I do want people to do it on the basis of
consensus; that we all determine what is the right thing to do whatever the
issue is [UK Interview January 2009].
The day to day running of the union, as shown in figure one, will be in the hands of the
secretary general, based in London, aided by two assistants based in Rotterdam and
London each in charge of several administrative departments. These will be in charge of
coordinating the activities of an internal senior management team that will have
membership drawn from staff on both sides and several committees including a policy
coordination committee, an industrial coordination seminar between the 2 teams, a
finance committee and a Human Recourse committee.
Figure 1: The Nautilus International Administrative Structure
General Secretary
Assistant general Secretary
Assistant General Secretary
NL
UK
Administrative
Administrative
Departments
Departments
Being such a unique experiment it is faced with many structural challenges but the
greatest of all, as one official explained, has been the fact that there is no existing model
to guide its formation:
The big problem has been that we have no example to follow. Nothing of
this kind … So we meet and talk and by the end we have more problems
than progress and then we start again tomorrow and again… It is like
inventing the wheel [NL Interview January 2009]
Assessment
The data here show that the most important driver behind Nautilus International is
membership decline, shrinking resources and the consequent diminished capacity to
effectively organise. The architects of the merger are convinced that in order to
effectively counter global capital, labour must reach across borders and build strong
alliances capable of presenting an influential voice at the bargaining table with
multinational employers, international policy organisations and national policy makers.
By virtue of the strong position hitherto occupied by the British shipping and the UK’s
seafaring sector, NUMAST has always been a strong and influential union. However,
with dwindling membership and resources, this influence had been declining. Merging
with FWZ, another hitherto strong union within Europe promises a quick boost on
membership and resources. Despite the long and challenging process, a lot of progress
has been made and the new union is expected to come to life on the 14th May 2009. The
general mood is therefore one of excited anticipation. However, as the only example,
anywhere, of two independent unions in two different countries merging completely
into one so far, it is an interesting case to watch and it will certainly be interesting to see
how it develops with regard to achieving its most important objectives, that is, (1)
gaining a more influential position at the international bargaining arena vis-à-vis
multinational employers, (2) achieving and maintaining a stronger membership base, (3)
achieving an enhanced capacity to organise and represent at local levels and (4) tackling
some of the thorny issues like job losses currently facing the local industries.
Considering the main driving objective for the merger two important questions need to
be posed: firstly, how much more influence, both locally and internationally, is to be
gained through a two national union merger? And, secondly, how does the new union
intend to maintain a strong membership base in a situation of continuing decline in
pools of seafarers, and by extension, shore-side maritime professionals, in the two home
countries? Unions in the maritime sector, especially in industrialised maritime
countries, continue to operate in very difficult circumstances, especially as regarding
membership. Starting for the 1970s, the number of seafarers and other maritime
professionals in countries like Britain and Netherlands has steadily declined, as a result
of companies cutting down training activities at home and turning to low-wage
developing countries for their crewing purposes. At the same time, many of the
companies have increasingly outsourced many of their shore-side management
operations leading to job losses and further decline in local labour (Klikauer 2003). In
such a situation mergers, as a way of expanding membership, seems highly temporary
and artificial and leaves big question mark about the future of the union’s strength.
In some sections of the literature mergers have been criticised as an attempt by unions
to temporarily secure their positions in the face of prolonged decline and growing
opposition rather than a genuine and lasting organising strategy (Waddington et al,
2003). Seemingly, the problem with this approach, especially with regard to seafarers
unions, is that, whereas it might succeed in consolidating and expanding membership
and increasing union resources, it might not necessarily translate into increased
influence for local seafarers with employers and the state. There is also the possibility
that, although unions, through cross-border mergers may succeed in addressing
seafarers’ issues at an international level such as wage rates and working conditions, as
has been done by the ITF, they may not necessarily succeed in tackling some of the
pressing issues specific to local labour markets such as loss of employment and
declining numbers of qualified seafarers. Moreover, it might not necessarily enhance the
capacity of individual local unions to influence government policies and legislation
favourable to seafarers in their individual countries. This, clearly, is the basis for some
of the concerns raised by Nautilus members about loss of identity and focus. According
to an Anglo-German Foundation report there is “little evidence to suggest that mergers
are a satisfactory response” to changing union fortunes resulting from globalisation (see
Waddington et al 2003:iv).
In order to achieve greater influence with employers, states and international
Furthermore, policy institutions like the ILO, IMO and the EU, a more inclusive voice
is required. There will be need to expand the union and bring in other maritime
professional unions within the EU. This way, maritime employers will be forced to
acknowledge the strength of a united European workers’ voice. The greater part of
maritime employers power over workers comes from the fact that, because of the
deregulation of labour in many of the industrialised maritime countries, they are able to
employ cheaper foreign seafarers without any restriction. Therefore, within Europe,
many ship-owners opt to employ Polish, Croatian or Romanian seafarers instead of
British, Dutch, Danish or Germans. A Europe-wide union in the maritime industry
would dilute this power and greatly strengthen seafarers’ voices. At the moment
Nautilus International is going to present seafarers from only two countries in Europe.
The officials at the centre of the project are aware of this but, as explained by one,
bringing in more unions from other countries is not going to be easy because:
Among all trade unions in Europe that represent seafarers, there is hardly
any that is independent...we are independent… we are not part of any larger
union and Nautilus UK is also independent, so it is easy to merge. We are
also specialised as representatives of maritime professionals, same as
nautilus UK. In many of these countries, especially in the Scandinavian
countries, there are too many splinters ... a union for engineers and for deck
officers and for ratings and it makes no sense. And also it is difficult to find
unions in Europe where we have compatible structures, have similar
strategies, views etc...[NL Interview January 2009].
The challenges involved in developing international union alliances have been
highlighted and discussed in recent literature (e.g. Lillie, 2006; Tattersal, 2007).
Tattersal has, for example, underlined incompatibility as key element and suggested
that, for such alliances to succeed, the unions involved must have “…common concern,
structures, organisational commitment, organisational capacity and culture, and
campaign scale” (p. 155). Seemingly, whereas the two Nautilus partners share most of
these elements due to the nature of their membership and as a result of many years of
collaboration, it will be “difficult to find other likeminded unions in Europe with whom
we have similar synergy” (UK Interview January 2009). One thing, however, which
makes the prospect of global unionism feasible in the seafaring sector, is that, unlike in
many others, there is a well established global labour market whereby workers from
different countries have more or less the same level of global mobility. For this reason
it would be much easier for maritime workers’ unions to work towards meeting the
essential criteria for successful alliance and collaboration suggested by Tattersal 2007. It
is for this reason that the International transport Workers Federation (ITF) has been very
successful in fighting ship-owners for improved wages for seafarers working on FoC
flagged vessels (Lillie, 2004). Yet, this quality of seafaring as a global labour market
presents its own difficulties with regard to international organising; although seafarers
from different countries and regions share the same global workplace and face similar
issues, there exist many regional disparities with respect to wage levels, training
standards and numbers. These disparities are particularly pronounced when considering
the divide between industrialised high-wage and developing low-wage regions where
stiff competition has, for example, threatened to break up the ITF a few times (Lillie
2004).
Conclusions
Attempts to renew the strength of organised labour in recent years after a prolonged
period of decline and the growing coercive power of multinational capital has raised a
lot of academic interest. The main focus has been on the strategies being adopted by
labour in the process of countering the influence of employers and influencing positive
change in national policies on labour. The viability of some of the strategies, therefore,
becomes an important point of debate in the literature (see e.g. Harrod and O’Brien,
2002; Bronfenbrenner, 2007). The great international mobility acquired by capital as a
result of economic globalisation over the past few decades has meant that firms are able
to organise factors of production globally and, hence, maximise profitability. Labour on
the other hand has remained largely confined within national borders. At the same time
the gradual withdrawal of state support for labour in many countries, from the 1980s
onwards, as a result of growing neoliberal politics has greatly eroded the power of
organised labour (Hall, 2003; Harvey 2005).
Few other industries illustrate the great extent of global capital mobility and,
consequently, the growing vulnerability of labour, like shipping. Paradoxically,
however, it also presents a unique exemplar of an industry in which a relatively well
defined global labour market has emerged (Wu 2003, 2005). The industry is dominated
by highly globalised, mobile and footloose capital in the sense that the ownership,
registration, management and operation of the primary capital assets – ships, is ‘truly’
global (Sampson and Bloor, 2007; Sampson and Kahveci, forthcoming; Sampson and
Schroeder, 2007). As Nichols and Kahveci (2006) point out, ownership and nationality
of assets in the shipping industry is both vague and fictitious because they can be
changed with extreme ease. Furthermore, the crew onboard shipping vessels is not only
multinational but the source of labour for the global merchant fleet is also international
in nature, though increasingly drawn from low-wage developing countries (Alderton et
al 2004). This has enabled firms organise their factors of production, especially labour,
globally in order to cut down the overall cost of production. Consequently the demand
for shipping labour from high-wage developed countries has reduced drastically leading
to the decline the hitherto strong pools of shipping labour in countries such as Britain
and Netherlands. The consequence for unions in the sector has been diminished
memberships, reduced resources and consequently declined organisation capacity.
The Nautilus International project is a response to this situation of increased
globalisation and sustained decline and it certainly presents a unique experiment of
cross-border mergers as a possible avenue for renewal to be explored. Amanda Tattersal
(2007:155) has pointed out that “the means by which global union alliances can be
effectively sustained is less apparent”. This is perhaps less so in the case of cross-border
mergers as being attempted by Nautilus International. However, a lot of ground has so
far been covered and essential structures have been established which will, hopefully,
sustain the merger and enhance the voice of workers in the maritime sector in the two
countries. How successful the merger is and how effective the union is in its quest for
enhanced organisational and representational capacity locally and internationally
remains to be seen.
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