News about future changes to STCW95

[dawg]

"Cadet Crisis" Background
In 1982 the measurement used for fixing ships' port duties, pilotage and canal fees etc, was changed from GRT ( Gross Register Ton ) to GT ( Gross Tonnage ). GT is an unitless index of all enclosed space on a ship. Including space occupied by cadets. In the end this led to increased operations costs for commercial ships. The unintended consequence of the change was to reduce size of accommodation while the ships grew bigger.

As old ships slowly has been replaced by new ships with smaller accommodation and no space for cadets - cadets don't bring any revenue - we have arrived at the current situation where the whole cadet training system is about to break down.

In June this year ( 2010 ) there is a "summit" with IMO and other organizations in Manila, Philippines. I have a very strong feeling the "cadet space problem" is one matter that will be strongly debated and hopefully solved. Read Cadets in danger of being left high and dry.

http://www.donpedroshipping.co.uk/ship-cadet-training.html

http://www.iadc.org/committees/offshore/Documents/STCW-CONF%202-1%20Agenda.pdf

http://www.marisec.org/icsorange/icscirculars10/MC_10_20%20-%20STW%2041%20Report.pdf

agenda items 7 & 8

The process of revising and updating the STCW Convention has been underway since 2005 and is now in the final phases with just one sub-committee meeting in London in January 2010, before the convening a diplomatic conference in Manila in June 2010 at which Governments will agree the changes and a schedule for their adoption and implementation.

(is this sort of thing of interest?!)

[alistairuk]

Re: News about future changes to STCW95

Not really of use to you as a cadet - other than having to know what the STCW convention is and some of the stuff it contains (as a deckie anyway). Most publications and conventions are updated every couple of months with amendments and stuff.

And this whole "there is a shortage of officers" should really say "there is a shortage of cheap officers" which is generally what is meant.

[dawg]

Re: News about future changes to STCW95

Yeah... that makes sense! I think the same goes for engineering in general.

They (the various industry rags and organisations) keep going on about the shortage of engineers (of every flavour), citing the number of vacancies being advertised, but fail to mention that the wage is just too low considering the actual economic value of engineering... in recent years, many engineering graduates just applied to whoever was offering the best pay and conditions, often banks or any old blue chip number; a lot just hang around to do a post grad thing.

Civil Engineering is a classic case, there are so many vacancies about, yet rather than put the wages up, the industry lobbies for immigration; whilst simultaneously talking up the future of the sector and lamenting the lack of new entrants.
Same went for plumbers... one moment there were stories of massive shortages, an ageing workforce, and shock horror, uneducated working class people earning ?60-70,000 as plumbers... so the middle class solved that by importing cheaper East Euro plumbers (you know who pretending that only 15,000 eastern europeans would come, and then over a 1,000,000 did!), to bring the wage down to "normal".

You can understand the fear of British cadets and officers getting dumped for cheaper 3rd worlders. I think the mood music has changed now... I reckon the knock-on effects of facilitating companies laying off UK workers - the resultant effects on colleges and the direct and indirect employment; plus wanting to maintain as many training programmes as possible to keep unemployment figures from rising in bruised areas, will keep the wolf from the door.

I think the next decade will see support for self-sufficiency (in every sense) continuing to grow, and that (to me) seems likely to stymie the decline of British shipping... energy security, food security, jobs & skills security, and just plain old security security (i.e. that it's surely a lot easier imposing your country's various standards if you've got ships manned by your own country's staff, and under your own flag).
I imagine cruise ships will always want some British officers, due to the significant British, European, and Anglophone customer base.
ROVs and AUVs are a growing sector too (to get at all that superdeep oil), so perhaps there's potential for Support Vessels.
Probably cargo will be stable over the long term, now the bubble's over, with a few more mergers.

I don't really know much about it, just a mix of things I've read, and things I know about outside of shippyverse that seem to have an influence on matters.


I've seen comments that the Manila conference would threaten the future of cadetships; but I guess that's just posturing. I thought at least this conference would result in an Electro OOW CoC - I hear 2012 is the due date (Armageddon, notwithstanding).