Working conditions on maritime transportComparative survey between Galician professionals and Spanish shipping companies

Resumo

The last report on the evolution of maritime workforce published by BIMCO in 2010 places the officers’ current deficit in almost 14000. This data shows a trustworthy and growing problem of shortage of qualified personnel to work on board. Nowadays the Spanish shipping companies are reporting an increasing difficulty to recruit Spanish experienced seafarers in the last years. There exists a series of determinant factors in the reduction of the number of persons who follow the maritime career: the slightly attractive image of the merchant marine, the complexity of the seafarer professional career, and the increasing hardness of life on board. The main objective of the present paper is to compare the professionals’ opinions about working and living conditions on board and those offered by shipping companies, and desired seafarers’ qualifications. The aim is to know the degree of satisfaction of professionals and shipping companies with several aspects of maritime profession. With such a purpose a questionnaire on working and living conditions on board was designed and distributed among graduates from the Higher Technical College of Nautical Science and Marine Engineering from University of A Coruña and Spanish shipping companies. The results were compared and shown that there are important differences between the professionals’ expectations and the real employment conditions. This could be the main reason why many professionals decide to abandon their jobs at sea Job instability, working hours distribution, workload, and work-life balance conditions are problematic areas for professionals. The important difficulties to hire qualified personnel to work on board are the shipping companies’ main concern.