ITF West Coast coordinator Jeff Engels explains the docker/sailor solidarity FoC campaign to delegates at a Convention workshop.  Photo by Steve Stallone.

About 50 Convention delegates took their lunch break one day to learn more about the mutual solidarity campaign of dockworkers and seafarers.

For more than 50 years the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), a global organization of docker, sailor, trucker and rail and aviation unions, has run what it calls the Flag of Convenience (FoC) campaign. The term refers to the practice by shipowners to have their ships fly the national flag of some country other than their own, some country that—conveniently and for a small fee—exempts them from taxes and labor and environmental laws. Shipowners conveniently avoid national sailor unions and operate their vessels nearly like 17th century slave galleys, paying their seafarers very little and often subjecting them to starvation conditions.

ITF U.S. West Coast Coordinator and former IBU Puget Sound Regional Director Jeff Engels, an able bodied seaman by profession, explained to the assembly that this system has almost devastated American and Canadian union sailors.

"In the early 1950s coming out of WWII, the U.S. had over 2,000 deep sea merchant ships under its flag," Engels said. "Today there are less than 200."

With a PowerPoint presentation Engels explained that the ITF’s goal is to set up a global regulatory system for the shipping industry with minimum standards of pay and conditions. The concept is simple, but getting tramp ships scurrying over the oceans signed onto enforceable contracts isn’t. That’s where longshore unions like the ILWU come in.

Dockers have a stake in making sure sailors are treated well and aren’t required to do cargo-handling work. The FoC campaign relies on mutual aid, the practice of solidarity as a two-way street.

While a ship is in port, longshore workers can help seafarers convince their owners to sign ITF agreements. The contracts not only set the minimum standards, but include a clause prohibiting the seafarers from doing any cargo-handling work, requiring the union dockworkers to do it. By doing all the cargo work themselves, including and particularly the lashing and unlashing, the longshore workers guarantee their work is safe, while the seafarers are guaranteed decent wages and conditions. Both benefit from the arrangement.

Peter Lahay, the Canada ITF coordinator who makes sure ships that call there are covered by ITF contracts, told stories of how ILWU Canada longshore workers had worked with him to enforce those agreements. It’s a constant struggle with unscrupulous maritime employers in today’s free trade system, he said.