Directory UMM :Data Elmu:jurnal:T:Transportation Research_Logistics & Transportation Review:Vol35.Issue3.Sept1999:

A method for estimating world maritime employment

K.X. Li

*

_{, J. Wonham}

University of Wales Cardi€, Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, Cardi€ CF1 3YP, UK

Received 6 March 1998; received in revised form 22 December 1998; accepted 20 January 1999

Abstract

Compared with technical research on ships, there is lack of systematic data and research on maritime labour, their number, education and manning eciency. Due to the high mobility of the profession and complication of jurisdictions, there is no exact ®gure of the number of seamen worldwide. This paper

es-tablishes a method to estimate maritime labour worldwide as well as on open-registry ¯eets. Ó ₁₉₉₉

Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Worldwide data on merchant vessels, e.g., numbers of ships, sizes, types, numbers of new

building and accidental total loss, have been available for many years. 1 Complete data on the

employment of seamen is still not available on a worldwide scale, and not even at national levels

in some maritime nations. 2 Calculations of maritime labour demand and supply are based on

questionnaires (BIMCO/ISF, 1990, 1995). The fatalities and injuries to seamen worldwide have to be approximated based on data of individual ¯eets (Goss et al., 1991; Li, 1998). Without ``safer, healthier and happier seamen'', the aim of ``safer ships and cleaner oceans'' can only be achieved to a limited extent. There is justi®cation in stating that ``of all sections of the community,

sea-faring men . . . have been the most ignored and therefore the worst treated''(Kitchen, 1980).

Furthermore, it can be argued that the most ignored group of seamen is those working on open-registry ships. The fact that ``The open-open-registry ¯eets were operating without e€ective government

www.elsevier.com/locate/tre

*_{Corresponding author. Fax: 0171-772-8200; e-mail: kevin.li@a-bilbrough.co.uk}

1_{Which may date back to 1934, the establishment of the Society of Lloyd's Register, which now has more than 3800}

sta€ based at over 255 oces worldwide. Its statistics on worldwide ¯eets is considered as both authentic and comprehensive. See Farthing (1993).

2

In 1997, the number of seamen in UK, a traditional maritime nation, was based on estimation. See McConville et al. (1998).

control or regulation'' UNCTAD (1979) results in not only the poor safety records of open-registry ¯eets (Doganis and Metaxa, 1976), but also non-availability of necessary data, especially data on seamen, for loss prevention and further research. Chapman commented that ``This lack of academic attention is a shame in that the growth of international economic interdependence has increased the importance of the maritime industry worldwide'' (Chapman, 1992).

Basic information about seamen is also vital for maritime policy-making and legislation at both national and international levels, national maritime policy-making, and academic research. For example, the calculation of demand and supply of maritime labour, and the planning of maritime education and training requires estimation of current and prospective maritime employment. This study tries to establish a model to estimate the number of seamen worldwide and on open-registry ¯eets. The method, if supplemented by data from additional countries, could be tested and de-veloped into a useful tool for estimation of maritime employment, trends in labour eciency, and to help estimate future supply and demand.

2. Scope of open registers

Open-registry ¯eets in the study include 17 ¯eets, i.e., Bahamas, Bermuda, Cyprus, Liberia, Malta, Panama, Vanuatu, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Gibraltar, Honduras, Mar-shall Islands, Mauritius, Saint Vincent, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu, which are covered by UNCTAD

and ITF. 3 ITF considers any ``countries which o€er their maritime ¯ag registration to owners

from another country'' as open registers, and accordingly a list of all open-registers is given (ITF, 1998). The list covers the seven major open-registry countries given by UNCTAD, and also in-cludes other small registers or second registers. Among those, some are being considered as open registers only on a ship by ship basis, e.g., Philippines, Singapore, Luxembourg, and Isle of Man. Some secondary registers are mainly for their own shipowners, e.g., in 1996, 96.5% of the total tonnage in Danish International Register (DIS), and 88.6% in Norwegian International Register (NIS) belonged to their own nationals (UNCTAD, 1997). For the purposes of this study they are not considered as open registers.

Concerning the type and size of ship, the study includes all types of propelled sea-going mer-chant ships, including cargo and passenger ships that are no less than 100 gross tonnage (gt), in order to be compatible with Lloyd's data.

3. Data

The UK is a traditional maritime nation. Its ¯eet, notwithstanding its decline over several decades, is still a principal ¯eet consisting of di€erent types and sizes of ships. From the viewpoint

3_{The ®rst seven countries, i.e., Bahamas, Bermuda, Cyprus, Liberia, Malta, Panama, and Vanuatu are listed as major}

of the size of ¯eet, diversity of ship types, and structure of seamen, the UK ¯eet is believed ad-equate for the modelling study, i.e., UK data are used to establish a link between ship size and manning requirements, and how this is changing over time. Data on seamen are collected from

di€erent sources, which, however, all are considered as ocial sources.4Data on the UK seamen

are not available after 1990.5We suspect there was a marginal decline in its average manning level due to multipurpose crewing, however, nothing signi®cant. Thus, it is supposed that after 1990 the manning ``level'' remains the same as in 1990. From the data collected, it is clear that the average manning level in the UK ¯eet has been constantly falling from 20.27/ship in 1975 to 10.25/ship in 1990. It is also observed that there is no tendency of falling in employment ``ratio'' (employed/ posts), which kept stable at around 1:1.21. Thus, for the purpose of calculation, the average ratio of 1.21 is used as the employed ratio after 1990. Before 1990, UK employment ratio each year is used respectively for the calculation in the cases of world and open registry ¯eets. Data on ships in Tables 1 and 2 relating to the world, UK and open registry ¯eets are combined from the Statistical Tables, published by Lloyd's Register of Shipping.

4. Number of seamen

The ``number of seamen'' is not as simple of a concept as it might appear. In di€erent publi-cations, it may have a quite di€erent meaning. Sometimes it means the number of seamen at risk (or the number of seamen's posts), which is the number of seamen who are actually at work on board ships at any given time. It sometimes means the number of seamen employed by shipping companies, i.e., the number of seamen who actually maintain an employment contract with shipping companies, which includes seamen on shore because of holiday or illness. It sometimes may refer to the number of registered seamen, or the number of licensed seamen within a country. In this study ``Seamen's posts'' refers to the number of seamen at risk, i.e., on ships, and ``number of seamen'' is the number under contract to a shipping company if not otherwise indicated. Hence these are the de®nitions for the extrapolation to the world and FOC ¯eets. As mentioned pre-viously, the size of ¯eet, diversity of ship types, and structure of seamen in the UK ¯eet are be-lieved adequate for the model study, applying to the world and open registry ¯eets.

Because of the competition on cost saving and the availability of new technology, it is observed in UK ¯eet in Table 1, that manning levels have been falling steadily over the years. Each year old ships requiring high manning levels are replaced with new ships with high technology, and re-quires fewer crew. Theoretically, each year has a di€erent average manning level, which can be expected to decline over time due to the development of technology. Time can be considered as an parameter of average manning level of a ¯eet.

Another factor a€ecting the manning level of a ¯eet is the average size of ship in the ¯eet. In the UK ¯eet, the average size has fallen from 9154 gt in 1977 to 2713 gt in 1996. The ships that ¯agged

4_{See notes (b) and (c) under Table 1.}

5_{Data on seamen registered with the Merchant Navy Establishment (MNE) was available till 31 July 1990 when the}

out from UK ¯eet tended to be larger ships, such as tankers and bulkers. This may also explain that the general average size of ship (12,990 gt) in open registry ¯eets is much larger than in the UK (5912 gt) and the world ¯eet (5615 gt). It is clear that the size of ship in a ¯eet will a€ect its manning level, i.e., the larger the size of ships the higher manning level. To test these hypotheses, manning levels are positively and almost perfectly correlated with the variable of the size of the

¯eet (Rˆ0.98), and manning levels are negatively and almost perfectly correlated with the

variable for year (Rˆ ÿ0.97).

Combining the above reasoning and test, a formula can be developed to describe the average manning level of a ¯eet with variables of ``year'' and the average ``size'' of the ¯eet:

LevelˆC_‡B_1Year‡B_{2Size; …1†}

whereCis the constant,B1 the regression coecient for independent variable of year, andB2 is

the regression coecient for independent variable of the average size of ships in the ¯eet. A linear

Regression produces a constant Cˆ675.81, and coecient B_{1 ˆ ÿ0:336;} B_{2 ˆ0:00095 (see the}

regression results in Table 3). The Rsquareˆ0.96756 means that 98% of the variance in UK's

data is explained by these variables. The signi®cance level is <0.001, which implies that a max-imum of one in a thousand samples might constitute a deviant sample or that the null hypothesis

Table 1

Data of UK's ships and seamen (1975±92)

Year Ships Seamen

Numbera _{gt (000)}a _{Average size (gt) Posts}b _Employedc _Ratiod _Leveld

1975 3622 33,157 9154 73,400 90,531 1.23 20.27

1976 3549 32,923 9277 70,900 90,406 1.28 19.98

1977 3432 31,646 9221 69,600 88,335 1.27 20.28

1978 3359 30,897 9198 66,000 82,626 1.25 19.65

1979 3211 27,951 8705 60,400 74,183 1.23 18.81

1980 3181 27,135 8530 57,900 71,343 1.23 18.20

1981 2975 25,419 8544 53,700 64,229 1.20 18.05

1982 2826 22,505 7964 47,500 54,955 1.16 16.81

1983 2570 19,122 7440 40,000 45,826 1.15 15.56

1984 2468 15,874 6432 34,500 39,776 1.15 13.98

1985 2378 14,344 6032 34,500 37,534 1.09 14.51

1986 2256 11,561 5125 24,800 30,019 1.21 10.99

1987 1925 8505 4418 24,703 28,772 1.16 12.83

1988 1909 8260 4327 22,629 28,601 1.26 11.85

1989 1850 7646 4133 20,958 26,383 1.26 11.33

1990 1784 6716 3765 18,289 24,100 1.32 10.25

Average 1.21 15.83

a_{1975±90: Statistical Tables, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, London.}

b_{1975±86: Transport Committee of House of Commons (1988): Decline in the UK registered merchant ¯eet, vol. I,}

Table 8, p. pxv, London: HMSO; 1987±90: Transport statistics report ± merchant ¯eet statistics (1994, 1996), London: The Stationery Oce.

c_{1976±92: General Council of British Shipping, quoted in The Department of Transport (1990): British shipping ±}

challenges and opportunities, London: HMSO, Table 2.9, p. 33. 1975 is 1974's ®gure, Board of Trade, quoted in Kitchen (1980): The Employment of Merchant Seamen. Croom Helm London.

will be erroneously rejected. In brief, the test of formula with the collected date is quite acceptable from a statistical viewpoint. Accordingly, it is expected the manning level can be calculated re-liably with given ``time'' and size by formula (2):

Levelˆ675:81ÿ0:336Year‡0:00095Size

…2:253†…ÿ2:24†…2:789†

…stands for significant level<0:0001†

: …2†

To test the reliability of the method, an estimate of world seamen can be produced with the world ship data in Table 2. For example in 1990, the world had 78,913 ships, average size is 5441 gt, the world manning level should be

Levelˆ675:81ÿ0:3361990‡0:000955441ˆ11:81

…2:253†…ÿ2:24†…2:789†

…stands for significant level<0:0001†;

…3†

thus the world seamen's posts can be calculated as

PostsˆNo:of Ships Mainning levelˆ78;913 11:81ˆ932;255: …4†

Table 2

Seamen's number on foc ¯eets (1977±96)

World shipsa _{World seamen}b _{foc ships}a _{foc seamen}b

Year Number Size Level Posts Number Number Size Level Posts Number

1977 69,020 5794 16.52 1,140,292 1,448,171 7584 14,392 24.70 187,318 237,893 1978 71,129 5882 16.27 1,157,191 1,446,489 7730 13,990 23.98 185,368 231,709 1979 73,832 5807 15.86 1,171,021 1,440,355 7912 14,089 23.74 187818 231,016 1980 73,865 5687 15.41 1,138,326 1,400,141 8118 13,796 23.12 187,713 230,887 1981 75,151 5697 15.08 1,133,586 1,360,304 8614 13,064 22.09 190,288 228,345 1982 76,106 5652 14.70 1,119,105 1,298,162 9350 12,497 21.22 198,364 230,102 1983 76,068 5553 14.27 1,085,791 1,248,660 9371 11,742 20.16 188,924 217,262 1984 76,395 5504 13.89 1,061,238 1,220,424 9543 12,096 20.16 192,395 221,255 1985 75,266 5449 13.50 1,016,296 1,107,763 9558 12,191 19.92 190,352 207,484 1986 75,281 5380 13.10 986,231 1,193,340 10,513 12,334 19.72 207,268 250,794 1987 75,799 5278 12.67 960,187 1,113,817 10,932 12,447 19.49 213,029 247,114 1988 75,025 5270 12.32 924,592 1,164,986 11,012 12,449 19.15 210,905 265,740 1989 78,301 5397 12.11 948,079 1,194,580 11,563 12,647 19.00 219,748 276,882 1990 78,913 5441 11.81 932,255 1,230,576 12,608 12,672 18.69 235,665 311,078 1991 79,726 5402 11.44 912,114 1,203,990 13,644 12,972 18.64 254,331 335,716 1992 80,655 5584 11.28 909,554 1,200,612 14,486 12,979 18.31 265,250 350,130 1993 80,676 5677 11.03 889,854 1,174,607 15,217 12,045 17.09 260,004 343,205 1994 82,890 5898 10.90 903,820 1,193,043 15,694 13,229 17.88 280,551 370,327 1995 84,264 5919 10.59 892,153 1,177,642 16,516 13,878 18.16 299,884 395,847 1996 76,315 6027 10.35 790,150 1,042,998 10,862 14,297 18.22 197,901 261,229

Average 76,734 5615 13 1,003,592 1,243,033 11,041 12,990 20 217,654 272,201

The number of seamen employed worldwide in 1990 should be the posts multiplying the average of employment ratio in 1990, i.e., 1.32, thus

No:of seamenˆPosts Ratioˆ932;255 1:32ˆ1;230;576: …5†

Similarly, the number of open-registry seamen can be determined. For example, in 1990, foc had 12,608 ships, the average size was 12,672 gt, the average manning level should be as

Levelˆ675:81ÿ0:336 1990‡0:00095 12;672ˆ18:69

…2:253†…ÿ2:24†…2:789†

…stands for significant level<0:0001†:

…6†

Thus, we can have foc posts of 235,665, and the number of employed foc seamen of 311,078 in 1990. Similarly in 1996, there were 197,901 on board open-registry ships at any given time, and 261,229 employed by open-registry ¯eets. Consequently, we can produce the number of seaman in each year (Table 2).

According to BIMCO/ISF (1990) the number of worldwide seamen in 1990 was 1.24 million, which is very close to 1.23 million in this study. This may con®rm the reliability of the method used in this study. At the very least, the model can be used as a test method to contrast with the questionnaire method adopted in the BIMCO/ISF manpower study.

5. Conclusion

As observed from UK data, the Maritime Employment Ration (Employed/Posts) has not changed much during the last 20 years, average at 1.21:1, whilst the Manning Level (Posts/Ship)

Table 3

Output of multiple regression test on UK ¯eet

Dependent variable: Average manning level in the ¯eet Variable(s) entered on step number

1. Time ± year

2. Average size of ships MultipleR, 0.98365 Rsquare, 0.96756

AdjustedRsquare, 0.96257 Standard error, 0.70042

Analysis of variance

DF Sum of squares Mean square

Regression 2 190.22930 95.11465

Residual 13 6.37769 0.49059

Fˆ193.87746, SignifFˆ0.0000

Variables in the equation

Variable B SEB Beta T SigT

Size 9.51977´₁₀ÿ4 _3.4134´10ÿ4 _{0.549939 2.789 0.0154}

Year ÿ0.335906 0.149948 ÿ0.441731 ÿ2.240 0.0432

has been declining from 20.27/ship to 10.25/ship. According to the study, there were a total of 790,150 seamen's posts and 1,042,998 seamen in service worldwide in 1996. During the period of 1977±1996, the average annual posts were 1,003,592, annual average seamen in service were 1,243,033 worldwide. In 1996, there were 197,901 posts and 261,229 seamen employed on open-registry ¯eets. In the period of 1977±1996, the annual average posts on open-open-registry ships were 217,654, and the annual average seamen employed on open-registry ¯eets were 272,201. There is one out of four of total world seamen working on board of open-registry ships. There is a great need for the co-ordination and uni®cation in seamen's data collection worldwide.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to the Editor, Prof. W.G. Waters II and three reviewers for their suggestions that led to substantial improvements of the paper. The views expressed herein however are solely those of the authors, who are responsible for any errors and omissions.

References

BIMCO/ISF, 1990, 1995. The worldwide demand for and supply of seafarers, prepared by the Institute for Employment Research at University of Warwick. A detailed examination on the survey, please see; Li, K.X., Wonham, J., 1999. Who mans the world ¯eet ± a follow-up to the BIMCO/ISF manpower survey. Maritime Policy and Management, 1999, forth coming.

Chapman, P.K., 1992. Trouble on board: the plight of international seafarers, p. xix.

Doganis, R.S., Metaxa, B.N., 1976. The impact of ¯ags of convenience. Polytechnic of Central London, September 1976, 79, 103; Metaxa, B.N., 1985. Flags of convenience ± a study of internationalisation. Gower, England, Hants, pp. 92, 99.

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