Desplazamientos máximos o puntos de desempeño para diferentes demandas

arranged work place on ships in which seafarers and especially the engineers are required to climb several hundred steps per day and are required regularly lift weights in confined spaces, which may involve kneeling or twisting in a crouched position were some of the main reasons why seafarers suffered heavily from knee related problems.

Similarly, another UK based study on seafarers’ OHS and socioeconomic conditions highlighted that a noticeable proportion of seafarers was compelled to take early retirement due to health conditions. The study showed that in 2005, for example, out of the approximately 29,050 UK registered seafarers below the age of sixty-two, 175 failed to pass the compulsory annual medical test conducted by Maritime Coastguard Agency approved doctors. While the main cause (24%) from all the cases in that particular year was due to ailments related to the cardio-vascular system, the second most prevalent cause was musculoskeletal disorders which prevented 23% of the seafarers to return to work.

1.1.3 Occupational diseases due to lifestyle and work-life balance

Finally, a group of recent studies point out how seafarers suffer from health-related concerns as a consequence of their lifestyle and work-life balance. Researchers, such as Parker et al. (1997) and Thomas (2003) showed that long working hours, isolated and monotonous lifestyle on ships, and long-term separation from home and family are the greatest source of stress in the lives of seafarers.

Also, related to this topic, Hemmingsson et al. (1997) pointed out that the working conditions in the seafaring profession contribute to seafarers’ drinking habits and significantly increase their chances of psychiatric disorders. With regard to mental health problems, a number of researchers have also identified seafarers with a high rate of suicides.

Jaremin et al. (1996), for example, revealed that Polish seafarers were three times more likely to commit suicide than the shore-based working population in Poland and in general were more likely to suffer from mental and emotional disorders.

Also, Roberts and Marlow (2005) in their study of fatalities in British merchant ships argued that about half of the ‘open-verdicts’ on missing seafarers, i.e. unsolved cases, were likely to be cases of suicides, which, if true, amounted to 14% of all seafaring work-related

fatalities. This, the authors highlighted, was much higher than various other working groups, such as the general US workforce where studies show (see Conroy, 1989) that only 3% die from work-related suicides.

One of the large scale studies on occupational health of seafarers was conducted by Parker

et al. (1997). The authors took part in a project named: FASTOH (fatigue stress and

occupational health o f seafarers), which was a large scale Australian study with responses from nearly 1800 seafarers sailing on Australian coasts. In this study the authors focussed on seafarers’ health and lifestyle concerns and their work-related stress factors. The study pointed out that seafarers experience a higher level of stress than normative groups on all measures of sources o f work pressure. In particular, the researchers indicated that environmental hardship, such as heat, high humidity and noise levels played negative impacts on the seafarers’ health. Similarly, poor quality of sleep was identified as another major source of health concern, as, in the study, approximately half the seafarers reported sleeping for six hours or less a day. Long working hours and short duration of sleep which was further disturbed by noise and vibration from various engines and machinery as well as excessive rolling of the ship during bad weather were yet other major reasons for seafarers’ sleep deprivation. The researchers also identified that fast port turnaround of ships made the seafarers tasks even more demanding, leading to a condition of progressive chronic fatigue.

Pointing to the importance of medical facilities, authors, such as Scott et al. (1997), Hansen and Pedersen (2001) and Jaremin et al. (1996) have highlighted how the lack of medical attention at hand makes seafarers extremely vulnerable. These researchers point out how seafarers do not have easy access to qualified medical assistance or medical facilities to recover from injury or ill health at sea which becomes a particularly challenging problem when seafarers fall ill while remote from land. In such cases, the injured or the sick could receive diagnosis from qualified doctors using only long-distance radio-medical advice or rely exclusively on the limited medicine stock on board and the basic medical skills of their seafaring colleagues (Lateef and Anantharaman, 2002; and Rizzo et al., 1997).

While the review of the literature showed that the standards of shipboard occupational safety as well as health are both major concerns it is important to mention here that in the maritime industry issues related to occupational health are scarcely addressed. As pointed

out in the discussion in section 1.1 the industry pays considerable attention to issues in connection with maritime disasters, such as ship collision and grounding, while giving relatively low importance to work-related incidents on ships. Furthermore the issues on seafarers’ work-related illnesses get even more cursory attention and are considered peripheral compared to issues affecting maritime safety. As a result the industry practitioners and key stakeholders pay a significant focus discussing and debating how to make ships safer while largely ignoring issues affecting seafarer’ work-rated illnesses (Lloyds List, 2003a). Thus there is a dearth of material on seafarers’ occupation health and as a consequence the focus of this empirical study as presented in the subsequent chapters is also skewed towards issues related to occupational safety, its regulation and management8.

1.2 Impact of economic globalisation on OHS in the maritime

industry

Having identified a range of concerns with OHS of seafarers this section presents findings on how economic globalisation over the last 30 years further exacerbated the already precarious OHS conditions in the maritime profession. Authors, such as Lillie (2006) and DeSombers (2006) are among those who discussed how the influence of economic globalisation on OHS was particularly severe in the maritime industry. Due to the high mobility of the capital asset, i.e. the ships and the labour, ship-owners have managed to achieve significant benefits by relocating their assets to and sourcing labour from different parts of the world to attain economic advantage. These issues in terms of how they potentially affect seafarers’ OHS are discussed below.

1.2.1 Increase of FOC resulting in decreased OHS surveillance

As pointed out in the introduction, a large section of the ownership of the shipping capital has mainly been from the OECD countries, such as the UK, Japan and Germany. As of the beginning of 2009, 64% (measured in terms of Dead Weight (DWT))9 of the global cargo carrying capacity was owned by ship-owners in the OECD nations (see diagram below).

8 For the purpose o f this study, however, the term occupational health and safety (OHS) is used in the rest o f the thesis.

9 Dead Weight Tonnage: The measurement used for determining the cargo carrying capacity o f a ship.

Global Distribution of Country of Ship-owner Domicile

O E C D N ations

64%

Figure 1: Global ship-ownership distribution of the maritime industry Source: ISL (2009).

However, the global ship-registration map paints a very different picture. It shows that a vast majority of these ships are registered in foreign countries, typically in FOC, such as Panama, Liberia, Marshal Islands and Bahamas. At the beginning of 2009, the percentage of ships registered under foreign flags stood at 71% measured in terms of DWT (see diagram below).

Global Ship Registry Distribution

O EC D N ations O th ers 36% re g iste rs 42%

Figure 2: Global distribution of the registry o f ship in the maritime industry Source: ISL (2009).

The extent of the shift in the registry can also be seen in the table below. It shows the trend in the relationship between the country of domicile of the ship-owner and the extent of

O th e r s 29% , O p e n re g istry n a tio n s 1% 19

foreign registration of the ships of some selected nations. Recent data (UNCTAD, 2006) indicates that in the case of ship-owners domiciled in Germany, for example, who own nearly 8% (which is a sizeable percentage) of world deadweight tonnage (DWT) over 80% of them chose to register their ships in foreign countries.

Country o f ship­ owner’s domicile

Percentage share o f total world ship tonnage (DWT)

Percentage o f ships under foreign Flag

Greece 18.02 70.95 Japan 14.52 91.07 Germany 7.89 81.66 USA 5.18 78.32 Norway 5.01 69.91 United Kingdom 2.35 57.92

Table 3: Registration under foreign flags by ship-owners from selected countries, 2006 Source: UNCTAD (2006).

In the literature on maritime regulation and economics it is widely acknowledged that the transfer of assets to a FOC provides a twofold benefit for ship-owners. Firstly, it offers a competitive cost advantage (registration fees, tonnage tax10 etc) to register ships with these countries. Secondly, the regulatory framework of the FOC allows ship-owners to adhere to a set of relaxed regulatory requirements. Transferring of ships to FOC thus offers considerable cost saving (DeSombre, 2006).

The extent to which ship-owners have taken advantage of these benefits can be seen in the chart below. Ships registered in Panama, for example, have risen exponentially from approximately 58.3 million DWT (i.e. 9.1% of world tonnage share) in 1984 to approximately 270.9 million DWT (i.e. 23.5% of world tonnage share) in 2009. On the other hand, the ships registered in Japan, which is an example of TMN, shows a significant fall in the registered fleet. It dropped from 59.4 million DWT (i.e. 9.3% of world tonnage share) in 1984 - which was nearly the same tonnage held by Panama at that time - to approximately 14.5 million DWT (i.e. 1.3% of world tonnage share) in 2009 (ISL, 1985; 1995; 2000; 2005a and 2009).

10 Registration Fees and Tonnage Tax are the main expenses for ship-owners towards registering their ships