The crew of m/v Sapsan hopes for an ITF collective agreement

According to Nikolay Sukhanov, chairman of the Far Eastern territorial organization of the Seafarers Union of Russia (FETO SUR), the m/v Sapsan (IMO 9311713, flag of the Marshall Islands, built in 2005), was covered by the collective agreement earlier. However, its effect ended last year. A new agreement has not been concluded, however, the seafarers ' contracts still contain an indication of its existence. At the same time, there are Russian union’s members on board who perfectly understand all the advantages of such an agreement and would like it to be concluded. In this regard, representatives of the FETO SUR, who visited the ship while she was moored at the sea port of Nakhodka, sent a notice to the shipowner demanding the signing of a collective agreement according to the ITF standard.
In total, there are 22 seafarers on the ship: 17 of them are citizens of Russia and 5 are citizens of Ukraine. The captain is from Vladivostok, he got a job with the help of the crewing agency Fescocontract cruise, and some of the seafarers are from Sevastopol. The owner of the tanker is the Greek company Roswell Tankers Corp. It should be noted that earlier this year, due to the pandemic, there was a problem with the timely change of the crew on board. So, the ship sailed between Alaska and South Korea, where it was not easy to organize repatriation. 12 seafarers have run out of the maximum contract terms of seven months, and they turned to the ITF inspector in Novorossiysk for help. By that time, however, the company had already made a lot of efforts to solve the difficulties and reached agreements on repatriation. In March, the crew left the ship in Vladivostok. «There are no particularly serious problems on board today, and the level of wage is quite good- the AB rate is 1,720 US dollars. However, this is largely due to the fact that earlier the ship was covered by SUR collective agreement. In the future, working conditions may worsen, since there is no ITF agreement on board and the rights of seafarers in case of problems are not fully protected. Currently, the crewmembers also do not know how much they are insured for in the event of death as this is not specified in their contracts, although there are insurance certificates in accordance with the MLC on board. For these reasons, the seafarers asked to send a notice of warning with the requirements for concluding an agreement to the company»,- said Nikolay Sukhanov. We should add that this was the first visit of vessel to Russia for a long time. Therefore, the seafarers were glad to see the latest SUR Maritime Union Herald in Russian and English and the books «Do seafarers have rights under convenient flags» written by Nikolay Sukhanov. In addition, the crewmembers were invited to the International Seafarers Club, which they can visit while the vessel is in the port. Today, despite the pandemic, it is open, all security measures are observed and crewmembers can get to it by a free bus.