Crew, when can you work with peace of mind and dignity?
The writer is a sailor, an ocean-going sailor. I have been a sailor for more than ten years, traveled all over the world, experienced joys and sorrows, and tasted the ups and downs. So I think I am qualified to tell the leaders and colleagues in China shipping industry what I have seen, heard and thought for many years.
What kind of occupation is a sailor?
To tell the truth, as early as ten years ago, on the eve of the college entrance examination, I was born in the rural areas of inland provinces, and I was completely unfamiliar with the Chinese character "crew" (although I studied Variations on Hamburg Harbor by the famous writer Ke Yan, I didn't connect the two). The reason why I finally chose Maritime College-like more than 90% of the students in the college-was because I filled in one more volunteer and one more admission, which was totally a toss-up. As for what career I will be engaged in after graduating from this school, how to pay, how to look forward to it, etc., it is very important to think about it now, which was never considered at that time. In today's highly developed information, the word "crew" is no longer completely unfamiliar even to people living in rural areas in the mainland. However, how people called "sailors" usually work on ships and how they live is still a mystery, even for people living in other industries in coastal cities. Indeed, the crew is an extremely special occupation (I don't know why the country doesn't list it as a special type of work), and it's hard to say that no one except the crew has never been on a ship, even writers who have strong observation and rich feelings can't fully understand it.
First of all, let's talk about work, let's take the marine engineering management that the author is engaged in. In the narrow space called "engine room", which is full of steel structure, full of various machines and cobweb-dense pipes, more than a dozen engine managers need to be busy day and night to maintain the normal operation of machines and the safe production of ships. The high temperature of forty or fifty degrees, deafening noise, pungent oil and gas, the ship wobbled and the machine shook. . . . . . In a working environment that covers almost all the harsh conditions in the world, they do mental and physical work day after day, such as monitoring parameters, judging faults, overhauling equipment, cleaning oil stains and so on. Sometimes simple, sometimes complicated, but absolutely boring. There are no sundays and holidays, but sometimes they suddenly work overtime-faults and accidents are not always foreseeable, but they need to be dealt with and solved urgently. However, these are not the whole of their work. Engineers known as "cadres" have to complete hundreds of written tasks besides their own work: making work plans, recording work contents, filling out various reports and reporting their work to shore management personnel to prove that they are not idle on board.
As the saying goes, "When the boat arrives at the dock, the car arrives at the station", most people will think that the crew is only responsible for driving the boat from A to B. Although they are very busy on the way, once they arrive at the destination, they can completely relax and enjoy themselves like an airplane driver or a car driver. Actually, it is not. Don't say that the crew must use the limited days or even hours when the ship is docked to complete the work that cannot be completed due to the operation of the machine during the voyage. They are too busy to sleep just because of the increasingly strict inspection at ports from all over the world. Once the big defects are detected by the other party, the crew not only have to pay more labor to eliminate them, but sometimes even their own wages are deducted by the shipowner. In addition, refueling, supplementary meals, supplementary materials, receiving spare parts and other work should also be completed by the crew themselves during the docking time. Imaginary relaxation and enjoyment can only be thought of after all these tasks are completed, and it is common for many crew members to stop at the dock for a day and a night or even longer without sleeping. Moreover, in a foreign country, unaccompanied, expensive and different languages, what makes the crew feel more deeply is the unspeakable bitterness. . . . . .
Secondly, the life of the crew. It doesn't matter if you work hard, because there are other people in this world, such as miners and cleaners. They work hard (we former scholars who were nominated for technical secondary schools, junior colleges and even undergraduate courses ten years later, and finally we can only compare with these workers' brothers), but after a hard day, they can take a shower and change clothes, enjoy their lives immediately, have nothing to do, and at least have wives. Their whole world is a group of more than 20 men from all over the world, and the activity space is limited to ships called "floating land" with a maximum length of 300 meters and a width of 50 meters.
Eating frozen food, fresh vegetables are lacking for a long time;
There is no opposite sex, no internet, no TV and newspapers, and sometimes even the radio can't receive any signal. All recreational activities after work are limited to playing cards (gambling is forbidden on ordinary ships), playing chess, or watching DVDs or books that are no longer fresh. However, this kind of entertainment is not guaranteed. For most crew members, there may be temporary jobs that they need to do at any time (including in their sleep). Calling family usually waits until the ship is docked (if there is no emergency, the satellite phone on the ship is not allowed to be used casually by the crew, and no one is rich enough to chat with his family by satellite phone).
Life is boring, information is blocked, psychological depression, physical torture, the attack of violent winds and waves, and the threat of increasingly rampant and cruel pirates. . . . . . In today's affluent life and highly developed information, I'm afraid any one is unacceptable. But as a sailor, you must accept and face all this, and this kind of life is not a day or two or ten days and a half, but half a year, a year or even longer, year after year!
What is the treatment and status of the crew?
Since seafarers are such a profession, why are there so many people doing it? Money? Interest? Dedicated? Or something else? As far as I know, except for a few contract crew members in their fifties, 99% of them are for one word: money. As for doing it for interest, I haven't met one yet; Do it for dedication, not to mention that even big state-owned enterprises do it now.
The salary level of the crew varies greatly due to different shipping companies, tonnage and navigation areas. Moreover, affected by factors such as rising prices and crew shortage, it has improved to varying degrees almost every year in recent years. Take the ship that the author is currently working on, such as COSCO Group, a 30,000-ton ship, and an infinite navigation area in the world. The captain with the highest salary is 3000 dollars per month, and the waiter with the lowest salary is 600 dollars per month. Everyone else is in the middle. This wage level is neither the highest nor the lowest among the crew in China, which is of universal significance. However, it should be noted that the crew is not like an airplane pilot or a train driver. The crew's salary is only calculated after you get on board and work. If you leave the ship today, you won't get paid tomorrow (contract crew members do get paid during their vacation at home, but after deducting various funds, they become negative, which means they still owe the company money every month during their vacation at home). In this way, the crew's salary will inevitably be greatly discounted, and if factors such as the gold content of wages are added, the discount will be even greater. As for the treatment beyond wages, such as free travel, paid vacation, paid study, and other state-owned enterprises issuing shopping vouchers or daily necessities on holidays, it hardly exists for crew members. In short, sailors are like migrant workers: if you want to make money, you must pack your bags and go out. Once you get home, you are a completely free person and have nothing to do with your company (of course, sailors like me still owe the company hundreds of dollars every month).
If we go back to the past 20 years or even longer, the crew may still point out the country and buy big items in the eyes of Chinese people. But today, words related to common sense and crew have become hard work, low education, sexual hunger and so on. Only people who don't know much about the crew and low-income people will say that the crew is well paid. As for the crew themselves, according to the author's long-term observation and concern, from the lowest-paid waiter to the highest-paid captain, there is a very strong sense of inferiority. On any occasion, as long as no one knows their identity, they would rather say that they are unemployed than strut and say that they are sailors. In fact, this can also be reflected from another aspect: many industries in China have their own uniforms, such as the army, public security, industry and commerce, taxation, railways and highways. However, people from other industries, even the newly enlisted soldiers with a monthly allowance of only 180 yuan, will wear their own uniforms in and out of various occasions, but the crew members don't have the courage. Their uniforms, like the wedding dresses of ancient brides, are mostly pressed at the bottom of the box (but for the opposite reason: the wedding dress is precious, and the sailor dress is annoying, so I didn't throw it away, because it is a dress after all, and it is brand-new). Occasionally, but the owner must be an old man, and the epaulettes and armbands on the uniform must be taken off in advance.
Third, the current situation of China crew.
It is precisely because of the fatal defects in seafarers' work and life that they can only be remedied and cannot be fundamentally changed, and the income growth is slow, far behind the land workers and other industries. In addition, the current regulations and policies on crew management in China are not perfect, which leads to the low status and embarrassing situation of crew. Now the advantages of being a sailor have disappeared, and even the most basic "decent work" is difficult to achieve. The large-scale loss of crew has become a major threat to China's maritime industry. From ordinary sailors to senior captains, from people with only junior high school education to undergraduates, anyone who can find a job on land, even if only 1/3 or even 1/5 of the ship's salary, will resolutely leave the crew without hesitation. Take my college classmates as an example. When I graduated, 26 of the 29 people in my class were sailors, and now only 4 of them are still "holding their posts". The other 22 people are engaged in crew intermediary, ship spare parts, logistics, medicinal materials and porcelain business respectively. . . . . . There are many ways to go. In this way, the lack of money for the management personnel in charge of crew deployment in the shipping company is a trivial matter, and the victims are the crew working on the ship: either they can't take a vacation for a long time, or they have taken a vacation but didn't come to take over, so they have to have an unprecedented phenomenon of "lack of staff". In this way, it was originally a crew member on a boat with a radish pit, and it was even harder because no one sent it to the company.
Originally, today is an era when the sky is high and the sea is wide and the fish are eager to try. Like other industries, it is common for people to jump ship. After working in an industry for several years, I have accumulated some economy and experience, and it is normal to find a broader development space. However, the current situation is that more people go, less people come, and the green and yellow are not connected, resulting in a "hungry" situation. According to the author's incomplete statistics, more than a decade ago, 80% of the graduates of the Institute of Navigation became sailors, but now it is just the opposite: only 20%, and none of these 20% are ready for "long-term combat."
If a profession is regarded as a scourge, it is not only the sorrow of the people who choose this profession, but also the failure of the decision makers and managers of this profession!
The author's four suggestions
China is an ancient maritime country and a big maritime country, and it can't be separated from the profession of seafarers (at least not yet, in fact, China is becoming one of the major seafarers' exporting countries in the world because of its rich human resources). So how to change the current phenomenon of a large number of seafarers' loss as soon as possible, make seafarers an enviable profession as soon as possible, and attract more young people to join the seafarers' industry in China, is a very meaningful topic at present.
China has probably the largest number of formal seamen's training institutions and the largest number of seamen's resources in the world. What the decision-makers in the maritime industry need to do is to improve the current situation in legislation and law enforcement (I'm afraid there is no seaman's law in China at present). Based on my personal experience as a sailor for many years, the author boldly puts forward some suggestions and ideas, hoping not to be too outrageous:
1. Further increase the crew's salary.
Captain and chief engineer: 40,000 yuan (monthly salary after tax, RMB, the same below); Third officer and third tube wheel (the official with the lowest position): 20,000 yuan; Attendant (lowest-ranking crew member): 1 1,000 yuan; The salaries of other crew members fluctuate between the two. At the current price level in China, such a wage standard is attractive, and shipowners can totally afford it.
In all fairness, it is no exaggeration for an ocean-going captain/chief engineer to get an annual salary of/kloc-0.00 million RMB according to the contribution made by the crew and their families and the benefits created for the shipowner.
I remember that some people in the shipping industry once raised the concern that "if they are allowed to get too high a salary, they will not board the ship after one or two contract periods". The author thinks that this is not only unnecessary, but also unfair. If the crew can really have enough money to stop boarding after one or two contract periods, how many people will compete to work on board? There are many people in China, and there will never be a situation where the green and yellow are not connected. Besides, if the crew's contribution to society is really worth so much money, why can't they get so much money? Because of that alarmist worry?
Corporatization of senior crew and marketization of ordinary crew.
Because the most serious loss at present is the senior crew (because they are more educated and easier to find jobs on land or in the crew market), the general crew is not very short, so we must give priority to the senior crew in the system reform. Nowadays, many senior crew members jump from the company to the market simply because the shipping companies lag behind the market in terms of wages and management methods. Therefore, if the shipping company wants to retain people, it must improve from these two aspects.
At present, the vast majority of senior crew members in China are intellectuals with technical secondary school education or above. They should enjoy all kinds of due treatment stipulated by the state like managers and national cadres in other industries, and should not live the same lifestyle as migrant workers (in fact, to some extent, they are not even as good as migrant workers, who have at least a few acres of cultivated land and can maintain food and clothing at home even if they don't go out to make money). And we, the senior crew members who are students, have no land to farm at home. If they can't work on the ship for two or three years for some reason, whether they are individuals or companies, they can't even eat! This is not an exaggeration, nor is it sensational. The author and most of my peers have personally encountered such a situation, especially in the downturn of the shipping market in the late 1990 s. Therefore, the meaning of "corporatization" proposed by the author is different from that of most companies: the former is from the perspective of protecting the crew, while the latter is from the perspective of facilitating the management and control of the company.
The ideal result of seamen's corporatization is that the company provides seamen with the most basic living security, welfare treatment, work and study opportunities, as well as the salary standard not lower than the market, and the seamen pay the company no less than several months of maritime services every year (which can be stipulated by experts after inspection), thus truly forming a situation of "I depend on the company for survival and the company depends on me for development".
Change the calculation method of crew salary
If the crew members have completed the required working hours within one year, they should enjoy the same salary as the employees in other industries during their vacation. Of course, if they don't do this, there is nothing to say about treating them differently or even firing them, which also eliminates the concern of all companies. "If you get such a high salary on vacation, who will want to work on a boat?"
In addition, on the way of getting on and off the ship, the crew often delay the ship schedule for several days or even ten days because the residence and the port where the ship docked are not in the same place, the bad weather or the mistakes of the company's dispatchers, which is not short for them and unreasonable without wages. Because the crew paid not only their mental and physical labor for the company, but also the psychological and physiological costs brought by their long-term separation from their families. From the day they leave home to the day they return to China, all the time between them is the time when they are separated from their families and should be the time when they enjoy the treatment on board.
Shorten the crew's working hours on board every time.
The particularity of seafarers' profession lies in its 24-hour working system, and a job lasts for several months or even longer. During this period, there are not only opportunities for family reunion on Sundays and holidays, but also opportunities for contact with the outside world (it is very normal for a ship not to return home for one year, and for many seafarers, the contact within this year is limited to the crew of the same ship). Obviously, this is extremely cruel and unimaginable to the growth of a person, especially the growth of young people, and the adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the crew are incalculable and irreparable by money. This is also the main reason why many people, including the crew managers who rely on the crew to support themselves, think that the crew is "stupid" and of low quality. Therefore, as a national policy, decision makers should take this into account when making decisions, that is, to shorten the working hours of crew members on board as much as possible, so that they can have more time and opportunities to contact with the rapidly developing modern society, and not to become ignorant and famous Taoyuan people, looked down upon and eliminated by the times.
At present, most companies have to work on the ship for about nine months at a time, which is completely to save the shipowner's travel expenses and save the crew trouble, without considering the crew's feelings at all, which obviously does not belong to humanized management. At present, the longest working hours of seafarers in developed countries are 4-6 months, even 2 months or single voyage. If one day our country allows working on a ship for two months or taking a vacation after a voyage, then sailing is not only forced by life, but also a chic way of life and work to make money, and more people will join it.
(5) cancel the academic qualifications of officers.
At present, the state requires senior crew members to have technical secondary school education or above. Even in 2008, management-level crew members have college education or above, and captains and chief engineers have bachelor's degrees. The starting point of this requirement is good, in order to improve the overall quality of senior crew, but it deviates from the actual situation.
First, there are fewer and fewer crew members with college degrees working on ships; Second, it is rare for them to have such lofty ideals and retire on the ship forever; Third, at present, most graduates from maritime colleges no longer choose to work on ships. It is conceivable that only these three points will make this country's regulations invalid in a short time: then no one will take the captain/chief engineer exam (those who are qualified will not take the exam, and those who want to take the exam will not be qualified).
According to the author's experience and the actual situation in the past, although seafarers are a professional and highly technical profession, they mainly rely on the professional quality and work experience of practitioners, which is not closely related to academic qualifications. Therefore, in my humble opinion, it would be wise to temporarily cancel the academic requirements for officers.
No matter what education, as long as you have qualified maritime qualifications and can pass the examination of the Maritime Safety Administration, you can be promoted to senior crew until you are the captain/chief engineer. This can not only alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of senior seafarers at present, but also encourage young ordinary seafarers with no education but potential to work harder and make positive progress, so that they can have a great future. Perhaps one day, when the national crew policy changes and the status and treatment of crew members are improved to the point where not only undergraduates but also graduate students take the initiative to be crew members, it is not too late to restrict academic qualifications.
In addition to the above points, the state should also consider including seafarers in special jobs and giving them special care in the marriage system and family planning system, such as allowing them to retire at the age of 50, treating their marriage as a military marriage and allowing them to have a second child. This will greatly improve their social status and the attractiveness of this profession.
Compared with other industries, the crew is an unpopular industry; Compared with the number of employees in other industries, the crew is a vulnerable group. But for the maritime industry, the crew should be highly valued and should not become a forgotten corner. If you want to turn an unpopular industry into a hot industry, it will certainly be difficult. However, as long as the decision-makers truly adhere to the principle of "all for the crew" (the slogan of many shipping companies), it is not impossible or out of reach for the crew to become a hot industry.
If one day, many young people in other industries, even managers of shipping companies, quit their jobs and become sailors, and the career flow is no longer just from the sea to the shore, but two-way, then seafarers will also become a normal profession, and they can work with peace of mind and dignity.