As a result of the heightened immigration situation in the United States, “mariners are afraid of getting off their ships in the United States because they are worried, they might not be able to get back on,” according to Robert Wilkins, Executive Director, Seafarers’ Ministry of the Golden Gate.

On May 21st, Wilkins spoke at the Propeller Club of Northern California (PCNC) Maritime Day luncheon at Scott’s Seafood, Oakland.

Plight of Mariners

Wilkins said the plight of mariners is getting worse, not better: “For seafarers, these are very, very volatile times on a lot of different fronts. And seafarers feel that in a very, very unique and profound way. Primarily because they live and work maritime 24/7, live and work in the same place for months and months at a time, isolated away from their loved ones and under some pretty difficult circumstances. They conduct their work on behalf of all of us. I like to say that we all depend on seafarers.”

Wilkins said that recently, the International Labor Organization (ILO) convened groups of shipowners, seafarers, and governments “to monitor progress and lay out provisions for working conditions and rights of seafarers. Just recently, they met and made some agreements on several things that advance the welfare of seafarers, namely that seafarers should be granted shore leave, regardless of their status in terms of visas or the flag registry of their particular ships.” There are also supposed to be provisions for medical attention on ships; however, “There are … ships I have boarded … where there are not medical provisions and there are all kinds of injuries, small nagging injuries, and other kinds of medical things that take place. And there are no provisions for that.”

Surveys of mariners reflect tougher times. “There are several organizations in the world that ask seafarers how they are doing. The primary index for that is called the Seafarers Happiness Index, done by the Mission to Seafarers, supported by Northern Standard a great insurer. The most recent one for Q4 has some kind of depressing news … The seafarers answer questions in 10 different categories about their life on board and work conditions, and so forth. So, on every single category in Q4, it went down.”

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