Shipping needs its own whistleblowing system

Captain Kuba Szymanski, secretary-general of InterManager, writes for Splash today.

I think we have all seen the nature of news these days has changed a great deal in the past 20 years, with the dawn of the internet and the information revolution.

Instead of the daily newspaper and news programming on a small number of channels three times a day, the news media has unlimited online space to fill – and it must fill that space 24 hours a day.

The appetite for supplying news stories means we have an endless supply of bad news with clickbait headlines, designed to catch your attention.

And maritime news is no different. Anyone who knows me well enough will be aware that I deal with actual facts – and as we have Day of the Seafarer coming around, it’s time to present the world with those facts.

Rightly so, people are keen to stamp out sexual harassment onboard vessels. But the data that we are seeing reported is wildly inaccurate from sources that cannot be verified.

The fact is sexual harassment in our industry is not worse than many sectors on land. Of course that does not mean we ever want to be complacent, far from it.

There is a lot of good to say about a career in the maritime industry, and very few people are saying it.

For instance; while women fight to gain pay equality in other industries even today, in the maritime industry we have had equal pay for male and female seafarers for many decades.

While many nationalities have faced racial discrimination for many decades in entering certain industries, the maritime industry is one of the most diverse sectors in the world. 

According to the International Labour Organization many Southeast Asian countries are among the world’s top maritime countries, as the sector employs more than 2m workers in both Indonesia and Vietnam, more than 1.8m in the Philippines, more than 1m in Thailand, and hundreds of thousands in Myanmar and Cambodia. That includes people working in our industry, especially the cruise industry. 

So what can be done to make our industry better?

What we don’t have is a whistleblowing system, which allows a full and proper reporting of wrongdoing. It is a requirement under EU law, but we still don’t have one. It is also a fact that many other industries also do not have a system of this nature in place – so why cannot the maritime industry be better than others, and put one in place?

It’s time to build up our industry instead of tearing it down. We are here and ready to promote ourselves in the world as modern and forward-thinking; ready to welcome a new generation to our crews.