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At the ILO in Geneva a tripartite meeting of employers, trade unions and governments agreed a common approach to improving ILO Convention 185 on seafarers’ identity documents, in order to improve the welfare of seafarers, while at the same time assisting nations maintain their security.

The MLC requires member states to ensure that seafarers have access to shore-based facilities and services to secure their health and well-being, and recommends that they set up welfare boards to ensure that such facilities and services are appropriate.

These attacks come at a time when employers and governments implement austerity measures, the growth of precarious jobs is rampant and social protests are criminalized, with the intent to silence workers and their demands for decent jobs and social protection.

Under the slogan ‘Sometimes you have to say NO!: hands off our right to strike’ the campaign kicked off with an international action day on 18 February and will continue up to the key meeting of the ILO governing body which begins on 12 M

The recommendations, which now go through the ILO for discussion before implementation, would bring seafarers’ identity documents in line with e-passports.

Negotiations had been underway since June last year in what had become an increasingly bitter dispute.

The PMA earlier this week ratcheted up their side of the bargaining by banning loading and unloading on nights, weekends and holidays. 

ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) general secretary Steve Cotton explained: “Unions and employers meeting at the ILO have upheld the general right to strike.

Union resistance to a plan by employers to remove the right reached a peak during an international action day  on Feb 18th

Submissions have been made from across the industry, including from the AMO, MM&P, MEBA and SIU trade unions, the Chamber of Shipping of America and the seafarers’ welfare organisations.