SIC loan for new trawler

[owre-weel]

I personally don't have issues with boats hiring Filipino fishermen or fishermen from anywhere else. But it does beg the question, why are they not hiring local people?

[Ghostrider]

Just to throw another spanner or so in the works.....

 

Foreign labour isn't new, many Shetland hotels depended on Filipino staff to exist in the 70's, and that was before the thick end of oil hit block booking everything to the seams. Yes, there were grumblings about it back then too, but mostly of the "....coming here, stealing our jobs." variety, the people themselves seemed, as far as I was ever aware, quite happy with the treatment and pay they got.

 

Also, what is "fair pay" anyway. These guys don't live here permanently as far as I know, they arrive for their work stint, during which the boat presumably has to feed them and at least let them live onboard, and when they're done they head home with an amount of money that is a good wage in their home country on account of the cost of living being much lower there than here. To turn the debate around, when Shetlanders work on say an oil barge off the coast of India, are they paid Indian wage rates. No, they're paid the rate they'd get were the barge working in the North Sea, that being the case why should the opposite be any different. If Shetland residents get paid UK wages when working in the South China Sea, why shouldn't Filipino residents get paid Filipino rates when they're working in the North Sea.

 

To take the argument that Filipino residents should be paid UK wage rates when they happen to be working in the North Sea to a more extreme point, you're effectively suggesting that Gita, or Sanjay or whoever answers next you have reason to call any UK company Customer Service which uses a Call Centre in Mumbai or the like, should be paid UK wages, as they're "employed" by a UK company

 

Don't get me wrong, were these overseas workers resident in the UK, I'd be agreeing with you 100% that they should have equal pay and conditions. But they don't, as far as I'm aware, which I think is the main point to be made here. These guys are hired in the Philippines or wherever, they know the deal they're signing up for when they do so, they're transported here to work a shift, fed and accomodated while here, as best as I am aware, and when their shift is over they're transported back home again.

 

Its really no different to what Petrofac are up to at Sullom, they'll hire in whatever skills and services they need worldwide, ship the workers here to do their shift, feed and accomodate them while here, and transport them back home again. And I do not believe for one minute that if they have to hire one crew of Americans and one crew of Nigerians to get a job done as that's all that's available at the time they need them, that they will be paying all of them exactly the same money.