From NUMAST to Nautilus: becoming international

Our year-long serialisation of Andrew Linington's history of Nautilus International concludes as the Union finally becomes international and begins to achieve ambitions going back to the early days of seafarer unions

There was a long-running relationship between Dutch seafarers' unions and their UK counterparts. For example, in 1932 the Officers’ Federation had sent a letter expressing its fullest sympathy to Dutch officers of the Centrale van Koopvaardij-Officers (CKO: Union of Merchant NavyOfficers), who had declared a strike when the country's owners had proposed to cut their salaries to British levels or to a mean between British, Scandinavian and German rates. A federation representative met Dutch union leaders in Rotterdam and agreed to advise his members against joining Dutch ships that had been switched to the British flag, for strikebreaking purposes. Cooperation developed further after the Second World War, when proposals were developed for an Anglo-Dutch agreement covering the conditions of officers serving in the West Indies.

In 1961 the MNAOA appointed a fulltime official – based in the Dutch union's headquarters – to visit British-registered ships visiting Rotterdam. Relations were cemented further by the need for transboundary talks on conditions for officers serving with international companies such as Shell and Atlantic Container Line. In 1971 in a prescient comment about the future, outgoing general secretary Douglas Tennant noted how the development of such multinational shipping operations 'must inevitably lead to an important extension of industrial relations', necessitating negotiations and agreements with unions in other countries.

International cooperation

Over the decades, UK unions maintained close relationships with their counterparts.After the UK became a member state of the European Communities (EC) in 1973, the MNAOA worked increasingly closely with other European unions to develop a more coherent approach to maritime policy. In 1977 this came to a head with an agreement of all EC seafarer unions to hold a pay and conditions strike together, as well as an agreement to stop flag of convenience (FoC) ships entering Common Market ports.

With an increasing proportion of members working under foreign flags following the decline of the British national fleet, NUMAST [the successor to the MNAOA intensified its international activities, taking leading roles in the development of European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) and ITF policies. NUMAST led the seafarers' side in discussions which in 2000 resulted in the conclusion of the shipping industry's first international collective bargaining agreement, which covered 60,000 seafarers from 43 countries serving on some 18,000 ships. The development of a globalised framework for negotiating seafarers' pay and conditions took a further step forward in November 2003 when NUMAST general secretary Brian Orrell, in his role as chairman of the ITF seafarers' section, signed an agreement with global shipowners to create the International Bargaining Forum (IBF) as a cross-boundary mechanism covering more than 2,300 ships in the world fleet.

NUMAST also spearheaded the employees' side in difficult discussions over international guidelines on the provision of financial security for seafarers. Most important of all, the Union was extensively involved in discussions that, in 2002, led to a blueprint for a Bill of Rights for seafarers, which was to become the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC). The significance of the MLC is immense, and it can be seen as the ultimate product of almost a century of work by unions to combat the unfair competition and exploitation arising from a globalised labour market.

The new union, Nautilus International, was launched at the 2009 Biennial General Meeting – 152 years after the creation of the MMSA