Equity, diversity, inclusion come to tell the world of international shipping to hire from its official pity list
 In arguing for diversity in shipping, as US Coast Guard-licensed master mariner David S Lewis certainly does in his essay in California's maritime portal gCaptain, one must concede from outset that nepotism has ruled the industry roost since the days of Noah's Ark.
Shipmanagers say a ship's crew should panic in the same language, which is why different nationalities crew together on different rather than in a manner that would more greatly please equity, diversity and inclusion officials.
Afloat or ashore, it is much the same. No greater indication of nepotism could be found than the US east coast docker's union, the International Longshoremen's Association, after it managed to secure March 17 - St Patrick's Day - as a paid holiday to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland. This not only honours whites, but Irish Catholics.
The New York Waterfront Commission, the bi-state agency that has taken over employment in New York Harbour, works to dilute the masculine Irish content by adding women, blacks and Hispanics to the mix.
Of course, Mr Lewis, who is black, is speaking of the United States, which doesn't have much of a US-flagged merchant fleet because of the Jones Act makes American ships crews expensive. What's more, ships' crews are getting smaller as automation plays and ever larger role. Ditto for jobs ashore as technology threatens to make dockers as rare as dairymaids.
There are probably greater employment prospects in the thriving diversity industry than in shipping itself. And it is in this field where Mr Lewis shows his talents. "It must be understood," he said, "that recruiting from a pool that for decades, has cultivated misogynist and racist hiring and distorted the available pool of human resources and created a tense work environment by surface-level attempts to diversify.”
Then his article quotes Ally Cedeno, founder of Women Offshore, who says: “While it is important for the industry to expand recruitment beyond their current pipelines, they need to seriously address why numbers of women and marginalized groups are low. Companies cannot expect to be diverse unless their culture is also inclusive. They need to evaluate biases for not hiring women and see how they have systematically perpetuated the retention of a homogenous workforce."
But shortly thereafter Ms Cedeno recalls her lonely life at sea as a woman until she was able to connect with other female seafarers, building camaraderie and mentoring each other. So she is not so much against homogeneity per se, only that women do not make up a significant part of it.
While language differences are not the same as sex differences, it is clear that men in women do not often form serious teams - and running a ship is a serious team effort. And whenever we see men and women thrown together in an emergency in film or fiction, women feel free to question the man in charge rather than doing what they're told when they are told to do it - as men do.
Perhaps it is thinking the unthinkable by suggesting the crewing of all-female ships. As soldiers frequently have to go on patrols to show the flag and expect to be ambushed for their trouble, is it not feasible and useful that all female crew small warships, from PT boats to frigates, that might engage in constant freedom of navigation cruises around the Spratly and Paracel Islands, the ones the Chinese seized and militarized despite a Hague Courts ruling. All they would have to do was to show the flag and be ambushed and radio for help and perhaps fight a sea battle - nothing more than what men have had to do since the dawn of time.
The shipping industry's personnel growth prospects ashore and afloat are not good. When containerships first crossed the Atlantic in 1968 to the Port of Montreal, they carried 500 TEU and had a crew of 40 men. There were 3,000 dockers, working in gangs of 20 shifting 20 tons of general cargo an hour. Today, Montreal has 1,000 dockers who work in teams of a half dozen or less shifting 20 tons every three minutes. And the ship that was crewed by 40 men is now crewed by 20, and in a pinch can be run by 13.
Of course, Montreal where the first containerships when it was the biggest port in the Americas outside New York. Today, it ranks in 10th place because its 11-metre navigation channel depth is nowhere near the 16-metre draft now required to dock the 20,000-TEU ships in service today, much less the 24,000-TEUers that are being built for service tomorrow.
Blacks and women not on one industry ladder or another are not likely to catch jobs in significant numbers except at the very bottom. There are fewer and fewer jobs in the legacy companies, which through mergers and acquisitions, are reducing headcount.
What Mr Lewis and Ms Cedeno see as "pool that for decades has cultivated misogynist and racist hiring and distorted both the available pool of human resources" is not so much a vast group from which one can draw anyone available but those clamouring for jobs. And those who don't clamour don't get. What these diversity advocates seek is that bosses overlook the clamourers and seek out members of marginalized groups from the official pity list based on their availability and desires.
Even if this were done, and one suspects that in the present climate it will be done, these jobs will be rare in a period of downsizing in the face of mergers and automation. And those with jobs, and influence to provide what few jobs available, will give them to the ones who are most useful. All hands can be relied upon to bank on their seniority and hang on as long as they can.
There are opportunities in new areas, but this involves more get up and go than those given to demanding diversity and inclusion. These will be in areas where major ocean carriers are entering the area of integrator and express door-to-door delivery. This an unknown world of instability and risk. Job holders will have to show agility if they are to be among the quick and not the dead. Hardly the environment in which equity, diversity and inclusion wallahs are likely to survive, much less thrive. |
