ODESSA – While their fellow citizen coal miners and steel factory workers strike, march, and generally register dissatisfaction with their lot as Ukrainian industrial workers, Black Sea-based Ukrainian sailors are eking out a niche in the international crewing market.
It helps when you’re both cheap and technically competent.
In the old days, of course, their services weren’t even for sale. Ukraine was home to the Soviet Union’s merchant fleet and its sailors sailed under the flag and name of the mighty Black Sea Steamship Company, Blasco.
That was then. Today more than half of that fleet has been sold off, and a significant portion of the remainder is rusting under arrest in foreign ports against old Blasco debts. Designated a strategic Ukrainian asset not to be privatized, Blasco ships make millions overseas, although its government-employed directors have proved strikingly unable over the last half-decade to bring those overseas earnings back home to company coffers.
In contrast, Ukrainian machinists, ship’s welders and simple seamen have been much more effective at repatriating their share of the international shipping market.
In its heyday, Blasco employed some 30,000, of who nearly half shipped out overseas on Odessa-based vessels.
Now employing some 12,000, of whom perhaps a quarter ship out even irregularly, Blasco is no longer the biggest source of paychecks for Ukrainian sailors.
‘We set up connections with ship owners in Greece, Britain, the Netherlands, and Israel,’ recalled Captain Vladimir Lang, one of Ukrainian crewing’s pioneers. ‘After a while other marine agencies appeared: Diamint, Tirs and Intermarine to name a few.’
Today some 5,000 Ukrainians employed through some 20 Odessa crewing companies make their living sailing under foreign flags, Lang estimates.
It all started with a single seaman, whom Lang’s former company found a job for on a Greek freighter in 1992.
This was no simple seaman, but a ship’s welder with over 20 years of experience.
The job title was no accident. The down side of developed countries’ shift to information and service driven economies, in terms of the shipping industry, has been a draw down of skilled technicians capable of working with the metallic guts of modern ships.
The Ukrainian educational system remains geared otherwise. Schools like the Odessa Maritime Institute, where merchant mariners have learned their trade for over a century, continue traditionally Soviet training heavy on technical knowledge and theory.
Not that competition doesn’t exist. Paul Newton, a welder based in Poole, England, was pulling in a cool $5,000 a month once expenses were included to act as chief welder on a Maritime stores project in Odessa back in 1997.
‘Excellent money working overseas in the shipping industry,’ he said. ‘Tough conditions, but much better income than you can make at home. Also you can usually find work, which you can’t always back in Blighty.’
Fellow electrode-wielder Igor Nosov agrees that, in general, what goes for British welders counts for their Ukrainian counterparts.
‘Yes, there’s big demand for welders,’ he said. ‘You have to work hard to get the documents to be allowed overseas, but once you’re legal to go abroad the agencies will find you.’
In terms of who welds a straighter seam with less metal loss, there is little to choose between Nosov and Newton.
But, in keeping with their national origins, Newton prefers ale, Nosov vodka. And there is a big difference in how much their services cost.
‘You give me $3,000 a month, and I’m satisfied like an elephant,’ Nosov said. ‘Sure we earn less than the foreigners, but in Ukraine a person who has $1,000 a month is rich.’
The limitation to Ukrainian sailors on the international crewing market lies largely in English, or the lack of it.
‘But if you work in your profession for six months, you come up to the international level pretty fast’ said ship radio operator Sergei Telegin.
Not all is smooth sailing for Ukrainian sailors. In Ukraine’s hurly-burly crewing market, against a background of general Ukrainian economic stagnation, men are willing to take any job, any time, under almost any conditions.
Nosov spent nearly two months aboard a baking freighter some 60 kilometers off the port of Bombay two summers ago while the ship and freight owners bickered over port fees and old debts. Other sailors interviewed told of salaries paid late, not fully, and at times dangerous work without compensation.
‘You want the job, you don’t complain,’ he said. ‘The conditions were terrible, but if you make noise you know there are many of us khokhly (slang word for Ukrainians) who would love to have your job.’
Parliamentary Deputy Vasily Zubkov is working on that. Elected on a workers’ rights ticket, he heads an umbrella organization, the Ukrainian Maritime Transport Workers’ Union, which has authored legislation now being considered that would stipulate penalties if Ukrainian crew companies or ship owners violated Ukrainian sailors’ rights.
This month the UMTWU signed an agreement with the International Federation of Transportation Workers that, once implemented, would bring Ukrainian sailors under the umbrella of IFTW protection. One of the implementation conditions is acceptance of minimum wages by Ukrainian sailors, meaning that some will soon find themselves no longer cheaper than the Malaysian competition.
‘My profession is one of those negatively affected,’ Telegin said. ‘It’s going to be harder for me to find work.’
But for those armed with the strong suits of Ukrainian labor – the ability to work with metal or heavy machinery and the willingness to employ that ability for virtually any price – the future looks better.
‘Me, I’ve been on the dry [land] for the last six months drinking my salary from the last voyage,’ said Nosov, who was interviewed at a seaside pub. ‘I’m almost out of money, and then it’s back to sea.’
