The percentage of seafarers who have to stay onboard ship beyond their contract has decreased slightly and the percentage of seafarers who have been vaccinated has risen slightly. However, for the first time, ship managers are reporting a...
Human biosecurity
Ocean shipping industry has repeatedly demonstrated anti-COVID measures
Global ocean-going shipping companies have repeatedly demonstrated to the authorities in general that the shipping industry is taking a great number of measures to keep its crews and shore side communities safe from COVID.
Back in July 2020, using our connections with international shipping associations, world shipping bodies and global shipping...
COVID waterfront testing and reporting rules in Victoria
Victoria’s Workplace (Additional Industry Obligations) Directions (No 18) require that in-scope workers undertake surveillance testing for COVID-19, as listed in the Surveillance Testing Industry List.
All ports of entry workers who are in scope must get tested once each week as follows:
- A person who interacts with multiple crews/ships each day requires testing once per week;
- If workers only...
https://shippingaustralia.com.au/covid-waterfront-testing-and-reporting-rules-in-victoria/
NSW officials and maritime sector meet to tackle COVID
After 10 months of the COVID-19 crises and plenty of uncertainty over the management of maritime workers and seafarers, medical care, seafarer crew changes and access to medical care real consultation started yesterday. NSW public health officials, other transport and maritime officials and industry representatives met to tackle some of these tricky public issues confronting the...
https://shippingaustralia.com.au/nsw-officials-and-maritime-sector-meet-to-tackle-covid/
Deliver seafarers home for Christmas
Santa Claus, or, if you prefer, Father Christmas, is a much-known character beloved by kids the world over for bringing them wonderful presents.
Santa, of course, ain’t real (sorry kids!).
The people who really do bring you wonderful presents from the other side of the planet are seafarers.
Sadly – tragically – they’re more unfairly maligned than beloved, especially by many (but not all) governments and officials that prevent seafarers from accessing much-needed medical care, from taking shore...
https://shippingaustralia.com.au/deliver-seafarers-home-for-christmas/
Against the odds – maritime industries work to protect seafarers’ health
Credit: Sebastian-Herrmann / freetousesounds / Unsplash / Jim Wilson
Australians can be reassured that ocean freight shipping companies are acting to protect the health of waterfront workers at the international, national, company and ship levels.
The most pressing issue right now is the unreasonable intransigence of governments that refuse to help crew changes take place.
Globally, over 400,000 seafarers are either stuck on...
New crew-change policy is neat, plausible… and wrong
Shipping Australia is very concerned about the ongoing crisis caused by a lack of crew changes. Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped at sea and hundreds of thousands of people are waiting (without pay) to go to sea. It is a humanitarian crisis.
We have long advocated that measures should be taken to enable crew changes to occur as this is in the health and safety interests of the crew and in the vital economic...
https://shippingaustralia.com.au/new-crew-change-policy-is-neat-plausible-and-wrong/
Regional WA crew changes now virtually impossible
Credit Skeeze from Pixabay.
Western Australia’s almost complete re-write of its crew change rules earlier this week now means it is almost impossible to carry out a crew change anywhere in WA except Perth. And even there, it is not easy.
Crew changes now really only possible in Perth
On-signing seafarers can fly into...
https://shippingaustralia.com.au/regional-wa-crew-changes-now-virtually-impossible/
Denmark, Singapore and Sri Lanka lead the way in dealing with the global crew change crisis
A small number of countries around the world are stepping up to provide leadership to deal with the growing humanitarian crisis.
Denmark, Singapore and Sri Lanka are taking steps to alleviate the seafarer crew change crisis.
Sri Lanka
The island nation is open for crew changes, which can be facilitated at the ports of Galle or Colombo. Seafarers can be repatriated via isolation centres. For further details contact the Crew Change Consortium: [email protected].
Denmark
The International Chamber of...
Waterfront strike threat: how the industrial relations environment has been – legally – manipulated to Australia’s detriment
Widespread strike action on the waterfront is now possible. Transport unions have arranged matters so that all of the major container stevedores are now operating with expired enterprise agreements.
The last major container stevedore had its enterprise agreement expire in June. Nation-wide and sector-wide protected industrial action by unions is now therefore possible under the Fair Work Act.
Some of those enterprise bargaining arrangements have in fact been expired for years because the unions...