With the large volume of recent news about North Korea, you may not have noticed a particular New York Times piece which briefly examines that nation’s involvement with so-called flag-of-convenience ships, also known as runaway-flag vessels.On October 20, the Times pointed to revealing incidents from a few years ago—one in which a Tuvalu-registered ship was caught offloading 110 pounds of heroin, the other in which a Cambodian-flag ship was stopped while carrying 15 Scud missiles.
Both ships were owned by North Korea, the newspaper reported.
The article goes on to point out more potential problems with North Korea and FOCs. Among the possibilities cited by the Times:
- Smuggling out weapons or their components via land to China or Russia, eventually leading to a port for loading onto another secretly owned ship.
- Loading forbidden cargo (according to a United Nations Security Council resolution) onto a North Korean-flagged ship but then changing the vessel’s registration after it has left port—not an uncommon practice in the world of runaway-flag shipping.
- Transferring cargo from a North Korean-flagged ship to a vessel flying a different flag but also owned by North Korea, either in port or possibly at sea.
For those of us in the maritime industry, those possibilities hardly qualify as revelations. Nor are we surprised at this assertion from the article: “No one outside North Korea really knows for sure how many cargo vessels the country has registered under other flags.”
Both as an individual organization and as a member of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the SIU for decades has fought against the FOC scam. We’ve lobbied for strong flag-state shipping along with transparency in the registration process. We have stood up to protect the abused crews found on many runaway-flag ships.
Quite honestly, the results have been mixed. The ITF’s FOC campaign has brought thousands of vessels under federation contract, which is a significant and undeniable indication of success. Those agreements help protect mariners and their families, not to mention helping ensure safer, more reliable shipboard operations. On the other hand, about 60 percent of vessels in the international trades fly runaway flags—way too high of a number.
Most runaway-flag vessels have multinational crews, many of whom simply aren’t qualified for shipboard work. Many of them are unsafe to the extreme, as reflected in regular ship detention reports from the U.S. Coast Guard. A quick glance at one such report from September shows FOC ships detained at various U.S. ports for violations including fire hazards, leaks, lack of mariner documentation, and inoperable lifeboat davits.
It boils down to some operators simply wanting a flag to hang from the mast so that they can sail their ships without “interference” from the proper standards of legitimate maritime nations. That way, they can cut costs by avoiding responsibilities and exploiting desperate workers who may or may not actually know what it takes to sail.
We will continue the fight for as long as necessary. Meanwhile, the publicity generated by articles like the recent one in the New York Times can only help in exposing the fraud associated with runaway-flag shipping.
Red Campbell
For many SIU officials from Red Campbell’s generation, our union was much more than just a place of employment. It was a way of life and an institution that deserved nothing less than total dedication from its representatives and from its rank-and-file members.
Red passed away in September, at age 84. He served the SIU with integrity, respect and unfailing loyalty, both as a mariner and an official, including many years as a vice president. He helped set the foundation for our success—Red took part in most of the SIU’s toughest beefs, and he always, without exception, put the union first.
He will be missed, and yet I can’t help smiling at the memory of someone who loved the SIU so much. Like others from the Greatest Generation, Red led by example—as a Seafarer delivering the goods at Normandy, as a port agent serving the members at the union halls, as a headquarters official leaving no stone unturned while looking for ways to make SIU contracts the best in the industry.
We are fortunate to have known him and to have called him friend and brother.
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