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STCW and crewing
Three separate regimes decide who is on a ship and under what terms, and they are constantly merged into one. STCW says what each seafarer must be able to do. The flag state’s minimum safe manning document says how many are required. The Maritime Labour Convention says how they are employed, paid and repatriated. A crewing question is answerable only once you know which of the three you are in.
What STCW is
The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers was adopted on 7 July 1978 and entered into force on 28 April 1984. It was the first treaty to set international minimum qualifications for masters, officers and watch personnel, and before it the standard was whatever each flag state said it was.
The 1995 conference restructured it, moving the technical detail into the STCW Code, whose part A is mandatory and whose part B is recommended guidance. The 2010 Manila amendments, adopted in June 2010 and in force from 1 January 2012, are the version in effect: they tightened medical standards and anti-fraud measures, revised the work and rest requirements, added certification for able seafarers, and brought in training for equipment and trades the 1978 text never anticipated, including electronic chart systems, tankers and polar operations.
Certificates, and who really issues them
A seafarer holds a certificate of competency for a rank, supplemented by certificates of proficiency for specific functions such as tanker operations, survival craft or advanced firefighting. The convention sets the standard, but the certificate is issued by a flag state, not by the IMO.
That produces the arrangement that surprises people the first time they see it. A ship’s officers frequently hold certificates from their own country, and the ship’s flag state then issues an endorsement recognising each of those certificates for service on its ships. So an officer with a national certificate and no endorsement from the flag the ship is flying is not properly certificated for that ship, whatever his experience. It is a recurring port state control finding and it is a documentation failure rather than a competence one.
The flag state also has to satisfy the IMO that its training and certification system meets the convention, which is one of the things separating a serious register from a nominal one. See flag states for what else that distinction carries.
Manning is not an STCW number
STCW does not say how many people a ship must carry. That is the minimum safe manning document, issued by the flag state for the individual ship, setting out the ranks and numbers required for her to be operated safely given her size, machinery, automation and trade.
It is a minimum, and it is a floor rather than a plan. A ship at the minimum has no slack: an officer who falls ill, a repatriation that cannot wait, or a visa refused at a crew change port can take her below the document, at which point she cannot sail. This is where crewing stops being an administrative matter and becomes an operational one, and it is why a crew change is scheduled around ports where it actually works rather than around the shortest deviation.
Rest hours
The provision most likely to reach a commercial conversation is hours of rest. Under the STCW Code as amended in Manila, a seafarer with watchkeeping duties must have a minimum of 10 hours of rest in any 24 hour period and 77 hours in any 7 day period. The 10 hours may be split into no more than two periods, one of which must be at least six hours, and the interval between consecutive rest periods must not exceed 14 hours. Limited exceptions allow a third period under stated conditions, and they are exceptions rather than a schedule.
Two consequences follow that a desk should recognise. Rest hours constrain how long a ship can sustain intensive port operations with the crew she has, which is a real limit on continuous cargo work and on how many shifting or tendering operations can be absorbed in a day. And rest hour records are an inspection item: falsified records are one of the categories that reliably produce a finding, and the falsification is usually a symptom of manning set at the floor rather than of dishonesty.
MLC is the other convention
The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 entered into force on 20 August 2013 and governs the employment side: the seafarers’ employment agreement, wages, hours, leave, accommodation, food, medical care, repatriation and financial security if a shipowner abandons the crew. It is often called the fourth pillar of maritime regulation, standing beside SOLAS, MARPOL and STCW.
The division of labour between the two is clean. If the question is whether someone is qualified to stand a watch, it is STCW. If the question is whether they have been paid, whether they can go home, or whether the ship owes them anything, it is MLC. Port state control inspects both, and MLC findings, particularly unpaid wages, are detainable.
Where crewing reaches a fixture
Most of the time it does not, and that is the correct default. The owner crews the ship and the charterer buys the ship’s performance. Four things reach across.
Crew nationality clauses. Some charterers specify nationalities or require the crew to be covered by an ITF acceptable agreement, usually because a trade union or a terminal at the discharge end will otherwise cause a delay. It is a term to be checked at fixing, not discovered at the berth.
Crew changes and deviation. A crew change costs time and may cost a deviation. Under a time charter that is a question about whose time it is, answered by the charterparty rather than by the convention.
Certification and off hire. A ship that cannot sail because she is short of a certificated officer is a ship failing to perform, and the off hire clause is where that is resolved.
The record. Deficiencies under STCW and MLC land in the same inspection history as everything else. A hull with repeated crew-related findings under one manager is telling you something about the manager, which is the same signal the ISM Code makes visible from a different direction.
What none of this settles
None of these conventions makes a crew good. They set a floor for qualification, a floor for numbers and a floor for treatment, and a ship can sit on all three floors and be indifferently run. The information a commercial desk can actually use is not the certificates, which every trading ship has, but the pattern of findings against them over time and the identity of the company responsible for the people holding them.
References
- IMO, International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW). imo.org
- ILO, Maritime Labour Convention, 2006: what it is and what it does. ilo.org
- International Chamber of Shipping, ILO MLC frequently asked questions. ics-shipping.org
- Skuld, Hours of work and rest. PDF
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