this with the Superintendent of Kings Point and other faculty, they think that these men could come out now; they are just sort of marking time, let us say; they could sit for their licenses any time now. The license usually takes about a week and I would say that, if they start sitting now, by the middle of May or the latter part of May they could be graduated instead of waiting until around August 2. That is normally the graduation date, I believe, at Kings Point. I am sure that the industry can absorb every one of these graduates this year. Mr. DOWNING. One of the concerns of the Maritime Administration is that these men would not be absorbed on early graduation and you would have them sitting around; they would eventually drift into some shore job and you would not have them any longer; but you say that you can absorb them. Mr. FARR. Yes, sir; absolutely. The shortage this year is very great. Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Farr, this is an excellent statement and you have made some good recommendations. Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add to that that it doesn't necessarily mean that every graduate from a school like Kings Point will be ready to ship out at once. Every man has some excuse. He is either going to get married or wants a vacation or wants to go home and see his girl friend. Kings Point has about 180, I would think, but you wouldn't get the whole class hitting the industry all at once anyhow. I think that this thing could be taken care of very nicely. Mr. DOWNING. In the present graduating class at Kings Point we note that 16 come from California, 4 from Colorado, 15 from Illinois, 6 from Washington State, and 6 from Texas, and so forth. They probably would want to go home. Mr. FARR. Some of these boys have not been home for a couple of years. Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Clevenger. Mr. CLEVENGER. No questions. Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Farr, on behalf of the committee we thank you very much. Mr. FARR. Thank you, sir. Mr. DOWNING. Counsel has a question. Mr. BAKAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Farr, isn't it a fact that a number of the graduates of the academies could possibly go on active duty with the Navy? Mr. FARR. Well, I understand that they always do have a certain percentage of the graduates but I understand that the Navy is not taking any of these men this year for some reason or other. But in past years I would say that the Navy picks up about 10 percent of each school. Most of these boys who graduated are ensigns and have a commission and go right into active service. Many of them never come out of the Navy. Many stay there and make a career out of the Navy and you never see them again. Mr. DOWNING. Thank you, Mr. Farr. Mr. FARR. Thank you, sir. Mr. DOWNING. That completes the witnesses for today and the committee will adjourn until next Thursday at which time we hope to have Mr. Nicolas Johnson as the witness. (Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the committee adjourned until 10 a.m., Thursday, April 28, 1966.) MARITIME MANPOWER SHORTAGE THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1966 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON MARITIME EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF THE COMMITTEE Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 2:10 p.m., pursuant to notice, in room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Thomas N. Downing (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. DOWNING. The meeting will come to order. This afternoon we are meeting by special permission of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to resume our hearings on the maritime manpower situation. It is a pleasure to have with the committee this afternoon Mr. Jesse M. Calhoon, president, National Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association. Mr. Calhoon, you have a prepared statement? STATEMENT OF JESSE M. CALHOON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL Mr. DOWNING. All right, sir. Would you care to proceed? First I would like to apologize to the committee for not being here on time this morning. It was unavoidable because of the airline. I am sorry that I wasn't here. Mr. DOWNING. Yes, we understand. Mr. CALHOON. My name is Jesse M. Calhoon. I am president of the National Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, AFL-CIO. I am appearing in behalf of that organization, and on its behalf I want to express my appreciation to this committee for this opportunity to be heard. I should like to address my remarks today to the shortage of licensed marine engineers in the American merchant marine. This committee has already heard testimony on this problem, including a statement. by Mr. Milton G. Nottingham, the legislative representative and past president of the Alumni Association of the US. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. In my opinion, some of this testimony suggests a number of questions which this committee might want to ask in its search for a solution to the licensed personnel shortage in the U.S. merchant marine. There is no question, of course, that today there is a serious shortage of licensed marine engineers. This is underscored by the fact that every day vessels must be cleared with fewer than the required complement of licensed marine engineers. A careful distinction must be made here between the "required number" of licensed engineers as defined in contracts between the MEBA and its contracted companies-contracts which reflect a broader range of responsibilities to both the engineers and to the companies. On the one hand, the Coast Guard sets its requirement minimum at the number which is needed merely to assure the safe navigation and propulsion of a ship. It is also concerned with such facilities as firefighting and lifesaving procedures. On the other hand, the contracts between the MEBA and the companies take a broad range of responsibilities, such as assurances that licensed engineers are not placed in a position where they must work excessive amounts of overtime to a point that their health is endangered, and assurances that the downtime of a vessel in a shipyard isn't excessively costly because an adequate engineer complement was not provided to make the repairs at sea. It should be pointed out that an obligation of the National MEBA to its members is to protect the healthful working conditions of its members and to protect them from situations where they are required to work excessively long hours of overtime. A great deal of misinformation regarding overtime at sea may have confused the thinking of some seeking to find a practicable solution to the licensed engineer shortage. A fact of which many are unaware is that hours at sea are far greater than they are in shoreside industries. Watchstanding personnel have regular weekly schedules of 36 hours-not the 35 or 40 hours which are normal in shoreside jobs. The rate of pay for hours in excess of 40 hours per week is not 111⁄2 times or double time for work after 5 p.m. or on Saturday or Sunday. as in shoreside industry and as required by the Department of Labor. What few outside maritime realize is that overtime compensation is actually paid at less than straight-time wages. Because few people are aware of this or of the fact that licensed engineers are plagued by excessive demands for overtime, the misconception has arisen that union insistence on adequate manning scales is a union "featherbedding" device, MEBA's insistence on adequate scales is based on its determination not to permit marine engineers to endanger their health by being made to work excessive overtime. The manning requirements as set forth in contracts between MEBA and the companies were mutually agreed upon by both parties based upon long experience maintaining an efficient operation of the vessel. The absence of one man who could make repairs while a ship is at sea could result in thousands of dollars' expense in a shipyard 30 or 60 days later. The average, prudent ship operator figures 3 days per year in the shipyard. And 3 day's demurrage is the cost of one additional licensed engineer. Even one man less than the collective bargaining minimum means additional days in a shipyard. Most important, what the Coast Guard's so-called minimum requirements for licensed marine engineer crews fail to take into account are the many complex tasks the licensed engineer is called on to perform which have nothing to do with safe navigation or propulsion, the factors which concern the Coast Guard. On passenger vessels the licensed engineer must maintain all the so-called hotel services for passengers and crew alike-the lighting, heating, air conditioning, water supply, and sanitary facilities. On cargo vessels, he must do the same for the crew and, in addition, is responsible for the proper operation and upkeep of systems maintaining temperature control of liquid cargoes and dehumidifying cargo spaces; and to permit the transport of perishable commodities by closely controlled refrigeration systems thus enabling our industry to compete economically for high revenue cargoes. It cannot be overemphasized that the repair and upkeep of a vessel's machinery by the ship's engineers is one of the most important factors in maintaining the reliability and competitiveness of our fleet. It should be clear, therefore, that the skeleton, so-called minimum. required crew stipulated by the Coast Guard, operating under its statutory limitations, has no relevance to the minimum requirement for the competitive operation of a merchant vessel in the American merchant marine-as set forth in contracts of MEBA, whose engineers today man the overwhelming majority of vessels now in service in the Vietnam sealift. The present licensed engineer shortage is nothing new. It has been developing over the past decade. This union has seen it coming for several years at first a shortage during July and August, then during June, July, and August and later from June through September and during December. The shortage then became more acute during these months and appeared sporadically in April and October. Although the union keeps records of the number of shipping jobs unfilled, it has no record of shortsailings by vessel or by type of voyage-coastwise or foreign. National MEBA District No. 1 statistics show that during 1965 about 2,900 job calls went unfilled. Before the recent reactivation of national defense reserve fleet vessels for use in the Vietnam sealift, the shortage was already acute. Computations from a random month, October 1965, show that every other cargo vessel was going out one engineer short. In recent months, the shortage has become so severe that several ships with vital military supplies were delayed because they were unable to meet even the skeleton minimum requirements as determined by the U.S. Coast Guard. What are the reasons for this shortage? How can the shortage be resolved? Mr. Nottingham has said that the American merchant marine is "adrift on the perilous seas of indifference and indecision" and that he believes the enrollment of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point should be doubled. I wonder whether it is not the Maritime Administration and the maritime academies such as Kings Point which are "adrift on the perilous seas of indifference and indecision" and if it is not the American merchant marine which is the victim of that indifference and indecision. One of the obligations of the Maritime Administration under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 is to see that our merchant fleet is "manned with a trained and efficient citizen personnel." This is the primary obligation of Kings Point, for whose alumni association Mr. Nottingham speaks. And yet this same alumni association was permitted to place in the Kings Point publication an advertisement soliciting Kings Point graduates for shoreside employment. This same Kings Point Academy has permitted a downgrading of seagoing careers among the young men whom it is paid tax dollars to prepare for seagoing careers. It has done this by permitting a reference to students who do poorly as “seagoing material." If every licensed engineer graduated by the maritime academies had gone to sea, today's American merchant marine would be fully manned by its engineers many times over. However, only a small trickle go to sea and remain. Considering the attitude of Kings Point toward careers at sea and its encouragement of graduates to seek shoreside jobs, this is not surprising. Now with the Vietnam conflict, Kings Point and Maritime Administration are flagwavers. Now they promise to turn out great numbers of licensed engineers who will serve in our merchant marine. The question this raises is: Can an unreliable source which has in the past proved itself incapable and even indisposed to providing more than a trickle of licensed engineers to our seagoing merchant marine be entrusted with this mission in the future? It appears clear to me that one of the factors contributing to the long-growing and now generally acknowledged shortage of licensed marine engineers is Kings Point's failure to meet its obligations. It seems obvious that doubling the enrollment of this or other maritime academies-whose performance has been just as shoddy-is like pouring good money after bad, and that even the retention of Kings Point and the other schools would be a frivolous waste of taxpayers' money. It is just as clear that with every passing day it becomes more urgent that the licensed engineer shortage must be resolved. Maritime academies cannot be counted on to provide the engineers. Maritime Administration's recently publicized letter to graduates soliciting engineers to go to sea has produced two engineers in District No. 1, to the best of our knowledge. The unlicensed unions with their high number of members at advanced ages constitute at best a meager supply for additional recruits which will soon be depleted. This is a manpower pool which over the past 20 years has been tapped three times and is now virtually exhausted as a potential source. The record established by the union in maintaining the fleets sailing against improbable odds may be attributed to the members of the union who have over the past year deferred their vacations and made additional voyages. However, as summer draws near the backlog of vacations will become so great that many ships will not be able to meet the skeleton manning as required by the U.S. Coast Guard. The average ship now used in southeast Asia requires a 30-day sea passage, and many have been anchored without shore leave privileges. |