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The swift expansion of the fleet particularly in sectors like the tanker industry caused a response which added another dimension to the seafaring labour crisis. Here, companies responded to their relative increase in demand for seafaring officers by trying to attract more potential employees. This was experienced by other employer companies as poaching:

‘ . . . .with new vessels coming into the market at a rapid pace, “companies

will start poaching seafarers from one another as there is a desperate need

to man these ships” ’ – Emmanuel Vordonis, Executive Director,

Thenamaris Ships Management Inc. – (Lloyd’s List, 1 Nov 2006).

Their past experiences of staff poaching influenced employers’ evaluations of the seriousness of the labour ‘shortage’. Descriptions of poaching in the industry seemed to suggest that this was particularly bad in the years around 2006, which coincided with a period of accelerated fleet expansion. The choice of vocabulary such as ‘a major

issue’ and ‘nightmare’ suggest the perceived existence of a severe labour ‘shortage’

situation:

‘[a]t present poaching has become a major issue in the industry, with

crewing agents managing to secure the seafarers they need by offering more

money to those employed elsewhere’ (Lloyd’s List, 1 Nov 2006);

‘[o]ne delegate described the situation as a ‘nightmare’ where crew were jumping ship because someone was offering an extra $100 a month’

(Lloyd’s List, 28 April 2006).

Opinions were conflicting as regards the gravity of poaching within the industry, these differing from company to company and giving little indication as to the actual pervasiveness of the situation. Varying opinions were evenly represented in the industry, as the following example demonstrates.

The increasingly serious shortage of qualified officers has led to claims of poaching from ship managers and crew managers. But just how serious are

these claims? Opinions canvassed vary from the ‘very serious’ to ‘its part and parcel of the industry and we have to accept it’. . . .

.. . . .Rajaish Bajpaee, president and group managing director of Eurasia

Group, is firmly in the ‘very serious’ camp, saying his company has been

losing seafarers, some of many year’s standing, at the rate of 5% per annum.

Firmly in the other camp, Kishore Rajvanshy, managing director of Fleet

Management, stated pragmatically: ‘Poaching is certainly not limited to the shipping industry.’

InterManager’s president, Ole Stene, believes the problem has always existed. He says: ‘Its seriousness is relative. Poaching is active in periods of low crew supply and high crew demand, like we have today.’

While most articles portrayed poaching as a deliberate act, one view claimed that the

intention to poach may not be a blatant one but brought on by the company’s business

need to attract potential employees, which happened to take the form of offering higher wages and better employment terms.

Interorient Navigation Co’s general manager Peter Bond commented: “I do not believe that anyone is consciously poaching seafarers, yet we are all doing it by increasing and improving salaries and terms and conditions of

employment” (Lloyd’s List, 8 March 2007).

This view suggests that although the act of offering better salaries and employment terms may be construed as poaching, companies do not consciously lure or target specific seafarers for themselves.

Poaching seemed to be particular endemic in the LNG sector. The following excerpt

indicates the sector’s impingement upon the labour supply for the oil tanker trade:

‘The industry was facing a huge influx of tanker and liquefied natural gas

new buildings over the next few years and the large number of new LNG carriers had already resulted in owners in that segment poaching senior

crew from other types of tanker shipping’ (Lloyd’s List, 3 April 2006).

Companies were re-training and employing officers from the oil tanker fleet to help meet the increased labour demand in the LNG fleet. The impression conveyed in the article on 3 April was seemingly a widespread problem of poaching in the tanker sector. However, the global LNG fleet is made up of just over 300 vessels, which was less than 3% of the total world tonnage of merchant/commercial vessels (IHS Fairplay, 2010).

It is interesting to note is that poaching was regularly juxtaposed with the issue of training. Some articles have alleged that there are companies which use poaching as the preferred alternative to training. This implies that some companies were causing annoyance to others in the industry by choosing to offer more wages to attract labour rather than spend a proportionately larger sum training their own pool of seafarers. Presumably, poaching seafarers would save them both time and money.

Allegations of poaching in the comments of participants were mostly confined to general groups in the industry (such as, over-arching references to ‘ship owners’) without identifying who or which type of owners were the blatant offenders:

‘Shopowners who refuse to spend money on training are spreading havoc by poaching qualified crew from companies that have invested wisely’ (Lloyd’s

List, 29 Sept 2006); ‘[t]here are still owners who resolutely refuse to train while poaching is possible and gravitate remorselessly towards the cheapest

possible crewing solution’ (Lloyd’s List, 2 Jan 2007).

The above excerpts give a sense of the general annoyance toward some members in the industry, but there is no confirmation as to who the specific perpetrators are. This seems to indicate that there are members of the industry who are sufficiently annoyed to complain about the behaviour of poaching but at the same time they are unwilling to identify who the guilty parties may be, suggesting that conflicting loyalties may exist in an intricately linked maritime community.