Shipping companies pay staff €1.31 an hour

LEADING shipping companies regularly operating on the Irish Sea are paying staff members as little as €1.31 an hour.

That is according to the International Transport Federation which has claimed it has information on all the major culprits. It will soon launch a campaign exposing the rogue employers, several of which are Irish companies.

Ken Fleming of the ITF said: “We have had intensive looks at many vessels and have a good database of what is going on and it does not make good reading. I have the contracts. This is not disputable. It is being managed from a country in the Mediterranean by one of the big shipping managers in the world. They know what the industrial relations laws are like in the UK and Ireland and think we cannot do anything. We are devising ways that we can do something about it.”

Mr Fleming was speaking from the Merchant Brilliant vessel which, along with it sister ship, the Merchant Bravery, regularly operated between Dublin or Belfast and Heysham. He has secured €150,000 in arrears owed to the crew of Merchant Brilliant by owner ADG Shipmanagement.

Both ships have been drastically underpaying their crews and both have been chartered by major shipping company Norfolk Lines.

“Since last November there is a more immediate awareness of what is going on,” said Mr Fleming.

“High exploitation is taking place. This is not going to India and America. This is between Ireland and Britain or France. People are not aware the person serving them on a ship is earning less than the minimum wage because the ship is flagged somewhere else. That has to stop. We have been on the vessels, we have a good database of what is happening around the place and we have identified the ship managers and owners and we are giving them an opportunity to sign up.”

In April the ITF will begin its campaign of exposing the shipping giants who are sacrificing the rights of their crew members.

“My co-ordinator Norrie McVicar is in Greece speaking with Greek owners and is coming back through France to speak to French owners. We have English ship managers that we are in contact with and are trying to set up a regional agreement for the Irish Sea that has reasonable rates of pay, reasonable hours of work and reasonable returns for the employers and we are going to try to encourage the good employers to sign up to this and bury the bad ones,” said Mr Fleming.