Title: Job Search Challenges Experience by selected Filipino Seafarers

1.The Experience of Being a Filipino Seafarer on a Multinationally Crewed Ship

Abstract

The globalised labour market for seafarers has led to multinationally crewed vessels. According to a
study conducted by Seafarers International Research Centre in 2003, about 60% of ships have
multinational crews (Ellis and Sampson 2003). A more recent study showed that 85% of vessels that call
in ports in Finland have multinational crew mix and that two and three nationalities are the most
prevalent crewing pattern (Storgård et al. 2013). The Philippines, is one of the world’s biggest source of
seafarers, as such it is worth considering the lived experiences of Filipino seafarers on multinationally
crewed vessels.

It Is common for Filipino seafarers to work on board under temporary contractual arrangements
between 6 and 12 months, with 8 to 12 hour work days. Watchkeeping deck officers work 7 days a
week, on a ‘week in and week out’ basis. Seafarers in other positions may have an occasional Sunday off
when their vessel is not in port. Reduced opportunities for shore leave make the ship ever more
confining in what is already a risky and uncomfortable environment. Accounts of how Filipino seafarers
grapple with these contemporary realities can provide an insight into their day-to-day lives. This chapter
explores the nature of Filipino seafarers’ relationships within a multi-ethnic crew under temporary,
fixed-wage employment and the strategies they adopt on board to survive in such working conditions.
The results presented here consider the ways in which Filipino seafarers engage with, and assert
themselves in, restrictive social spaces given the inter-workings of routines, hierarchies and nationalities
on board. The way in which Filipino seafarers interact within a closely controlled environment reflects
how the present structure of the shipping industry has evolved. The challenges impinging on meaningful
shipboard experiences for Filipino seafarers are discussed.

Filipino seafarers currently estimated at around 215,500 comprise the second largest share in the global
maritime industry (BIMCO 2015). Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (2016) estimates that 21% of the annual
total cash remittances received from abroad, comprising US$ 5.572 billion, is contributed to the nation
by seafarers. As international seaborne shipments remain an important force for most economies
worldwide, the significance of Filipino seafarers, both globally and locally, grows. Filipino seafarers’
representation in the seafaring workforce is roughly divided into officers (34%) and ratings (66%)
(BIMCO 2015). In today’s merchant fleet, multinational crewing has become the norm and English is
recognised as the language of the sea. In the Philippines where the system of education utilizes English
as a medium of instruction, Filipino seafarers are better positioned to capture opportunities in the
seafaring profession than their counterparts in China and Russia, for example. The active participation of
the Philippine government in terms of promoting seafaring as a career likewise helps bolster Filipino
seafarers’ dominance in the sea-going labour market.

Trends in Seafaring in the Philippines

In the 1960s the number of Filipino seafarers working on board international vessels was estimated to
be around 2000 and by 1975 this had jumped to 23,534 and continued to show a steady increase
(McKay 2007) with an upsurge in the number of seafarers occurring in the late 1980s indicating a sixfold
increase (see Table 9.1). Since 1987, the Philippines has consistently been the leading supplier of
seafarers worldwide.Footnote1 In the 2003 Global Labour Market Survey by the Seafarers International
Research Centre, about 28.1% of seafarers are Filipinos, comprising the highest proportion, according to
nationality. In the survey, 72% worked as ratings and the rest were senior (9%) and junior officers (19%).

The global presence of Filipino seafarers has to be understood in an historical context and this includes
the migration processes that have characterized Filipino society and helped constitute migration and
working abroad as an accepted part of life. The development of international labour migration in the
Philippines started during the Spanish era, was ingrained during US rule, and was institutionalised from
the 1970s onwards. Crucial contributory factors were the American legacy such as the opportunity for
seafaring work in the US fleet, the emergence of English as a widely-spoken language following the
American occupation together with the development of a relatively advanced educational system; the
role of the government; the economic downturn due to the world oil crisis in the 1970s, and the
subsequent deregulation of the shipping industry.

The emergence of a global demand for labour encouraged the development of temporary and contract-
based migration flows. The initially opportunistic response of the Philippine government in the 1970s to
ease local economic pressures and adapt to the global changes became a long-term strategy for
development and growth. Structural changes in the shipping industry also made it suitable as an
alternative source of overseas employment for Filipino workers. Developments in sea trade, such as the
growth of open registers from around the 1950s (Alderton and Winchester 2002) emphasised
seafaring’s potential as an income source. Under the open register system, nationally registered ships
could be registered or re-flagged in another country. Such registers are commonly known as Flags of
Convenience (FOC) (Lillie 2004; Stopford 2008). The global oil crisis of the 1970s led to more FOC-
registered ships, which allowed for the development of multinational crewing (Sampson 2013).
Consequently a global labour market for seafarers emerged (Winchester et al. 2006) and the shipping
industry has emerged as the most globalised of all economic activities. (Couper et al. 1999, p. 9).

In such a deregulated, globalised environment, it became more cost-effective for ships to recruit
seafarers from different parts of the world. The Filipinos, whose primary exposure to this trade had been
through the US Navy, were now able to work beyond military-related operations and in the merchant
fleet. As Filipino seafarers continue to face complex issues concerning their position, participation and
prospects, understanding their shipboard lives will illuminate the many ways they grapple with changes
occurring not only at the global scale but also at the level of day to day operations on board.

The seafarers in this study were interviewed in two primary sites: in a town in the province of Iloilo and
on board a container ship. In the community of Sta. Ana, Iloilo, a total of 49 seafarers’ wives were
interviewed of whom ten were with their partners as couples. The community in Iloilo was chosen
because of its high number of seafaring households. The shipboard fieldwork aboard a container ship,
Manuelita, lasted for 41 days (i.e. 30 March to 10 May 2009). All 25 seafarers on the ship participated in
the study. There were three nationalities on board: Filipino, Indian and Sri Lankan. Out of 25 seafarers,
there were 14 Filipinos, ten Indians and one Sri Lankan. In terms of rank, among the 12 officers, there
was one Filipino second mate, a Sri Lankan third mate and a Filipino electro cadet while the rest were
Indians. Of the 13 ratings, one was Indian while the rest were Filipinos.

References:

Alderton, T., and N. Winchester. 2002. Globalisaton and De-Regulation in the Maritime Industry. Marine
Policy 26: 35–43.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. 2016. Overseas Filipinos’ Remittances [online] URL: Accessed February 18,
2018, Bhattacharya, S. 200, BIMCO. 2015. Butler, S. 1999. A View on Standards in South-East Asia. World
Englishes 18 (2): 187–198. Collinson, D. 2002. Managing Humour. Journal of Management Studies 39 (3).

Link:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-49825-2_9

EXPLANATION:

The Philippines has consistently been the leading supplier of seafarers worldwide. The development of
international labour migration in the Philippines started during the Spanish era and was ingrained during
US rule. Structural changes in the shipping industry made it suitable as an alternative source of overseas
employment for Filipino workers.
2. We move the world’: the mobile labor of Filipino seafarers

ABSTRACT

The mobilities literature often draws on a maritime vocabulary, but has more seldom engaged with the
everyday lives of maritime workers. With ninety percent of all goods transported by sea, seafarers
literally move the world. Since the 1970s, Filipino sailors in particular have emerged as the most
important nationality within this global mobile labor force. Often facing discrimination, racialized
representations and obstacles to social mobility onboard their moving worksites, these workers draw on
certain vernacular narratives to claim historical authenticity and a natural propensity to seafaring,
thereby justify their right to belong in contemporary shipping. This article uses ethnography from
onboard cargo ships and ashore in the Philippines to show how such narratives themselves become
forces of production for the mobile labor of Filipino seafarers. Drawing on Cresswell’s concept of
‘constellations of mobility,’ the article explores how the mobile labor of Filipino seafarers is narrated as
geographically and historically formed and how this shapes Filipino seafarers’ everyday experiences
onboard ships today. By critically examining the historical production of maritime labor, as well as its
contemporary social reproduction through such narratives, this ethnography of Filipino seafarers’
‘mobile labor’ shows the coproduction of labor, racialization and mobility in the shipping industry.

References:

Adey, P. 2017. Mobility. 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]

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Link:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/17450101.2021.1880129?scroll=top

EXPLANATION:

Filipino sailors have emerged as the most important nationality within this global mobile labor force.
This article uses ethnography from onboard cargo ships and ashore in the Philippines to show how such
narratives become forces of production for the mobile labor of Filipino seafarers.

3. CiteSeafarers’ well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative study

Since maritime transport carries around 90% of the world trade, seafarers are providers of essential
services that are key for the maintaining the flow of vital goods, such as food, fuels, and medical
supplies. However, the public health strategies for prevention COVID-19, primarily restrictions such as
closing national borders and cancelling international flights, have severely affected free crew changes,
i.e. sign-on and -off from ships. In view of this, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), in
cooperation with a broad section of relevant maritime-transport associations, has made multiple calls
for establishing seafarers as ‘key workers’, which would exempt them from travel restrictions and allow
crew changes [1]. In spite of this, many seafarers all around the world are still faced with uncertainty
about their future, i.e. further contract extensions or impossibility of signing on. This situation has
imposed itself as an additional threat to seafarers and the maritime sector. The seafaring profession is
already recognised in the literature as highly demanding, hazardous and stressful [2], with a range of
possible negative effects on safety [3-5], physical health [6-10] and mental health [11-13]. According to a
review of occupational sources of stress in seafaring [2], seafarers face many stressors, among which the
most often cited include long-term separation from home and family, and fatigue which occurs as a
consequence of high work demands, i.e. high workload and long working hours. Work and life in an
isolated work environment brings additional stressors, such as environmental stressors on board (e.g.
poor weather, noise, vibration), deprivation of physical and psycho-social needs (e.g. limited influence
on quantity and quality of food, limited opportunities for physical recreation and social life, lack of or
limitations on internet access), and interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relations represent a challenge
in all work environments; however, considering the multicultural and hierarchical structure of the
seafaring sector, and the confined work environment, unfavourable relations may pose themselves as a
specific stressor on board [2]. The links between stressors in seafaring and negative long-term effects of
stress on health and well-being in seafarers (e.g. higher morbidity and mortality due to cardiovascular
diseases [7], higher number of suicides in comparison to the general population [12]), may be explained
partly by individual characteristics, such as personality traits, strategies of coping with stress, and
(un)healthy lifestyle factors [2, 10].

However, previous studies have indicated unfav-ourable working conditions in the seafaring sector as
significant antecedents of occupational stress and negative effects on well-being, health, safety and
performance. Overall well being of seafarers is influenced largely by changes in organisational structures
in the maritime industry, such as globalisation, technological improvements which increase job
complexity, reduction in crew numbers, and short-term contracting, which increase job insecurity,
multicultural crewing, and ships operating under flags of convenience [14]. Previous studies have shown
that various characteristics of work contracts (duration of on-board stay, (un)favourability of ratio
between on-board and off-board periods, and (non-)respect for contracted periods) contribute to the
explanation of seafarers’ well-being [15, 16]. Therefore, the continuance of work after the end of the
work contract, and uncertainty about the leave date, contribute to fatigue and stress and may affect
ability to perform safe ship operations. On the other hand, since precarious employment is very
common in the maritime industry [17], job insecurity represents a serious source of stress among
seafarers [2]. Therefore, prolonged stay at home may be a serious threat to seafarers who do not have
permanent contracts, and those who get income only during working periods.

In view of the organisational structures in the maritime industry and previous knowledge in this area,
the well-being of seafarers during COVID-19 restrictions to free crew changes imposes itself as an
important research topic. This study aims to describe how the COVID-19 pandemic reflects on the well-
being of seafarers on board and at home, using their personal experiences as the basic source of data.
Although the study as performed has a noted broad, strong theoretical background, due to the novelty
of the research topic, the methodological approach of this study was qualitative, i.e. exploratory and
inductive [18-20], without setting explicit prior hypotheses, and without addressing a quantified
generalisation of the results obtained. The research process was guided by the post-positivist paradigm,
which assumes objective reality, but at the same time is concerned with the subjectivity of reality. In
other words, this qualitative study used a general inductive approach to provide a detailed and in-depth
description of seafarers’ well-being in the context of COVID-19. The study was conducted online, as the
online setting was evaluated as appropriate for responding to moments of global crisis, i.e. to reach a
heterogeneous sample of seafarers willing to share their personal experiences.

References:

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic [homepage on the Internet]. IMO; 2020 [updated 2020 May
21; cited 2020 May 27]. Available from:
http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Coronavirus.aspx.

[2]

Slišković A . Occupational stress in seafaring. In: MacLachlan M, editor. Maritime psychology: Research
in organizational and health behavior at sea. Cham: Springer; 2017. Pp. 99–126.

[3]

Jepsen JR , Zhao Z , van Leeuwen WMA . Seafarer fatigue: a review of risk factors, consequences for
seafarers’ health and safety and options for mitigation. Int Marit Health. 2015;66(2):106–17.

[4]

Roberts SE . Fatal work-related accidents in UK merchant shipping from 1919 to 2005. Occup Med.
2008;58(2):129–37.

[5]

Roberts SE , Marlow PB . Traumatic work related mortality among seafarers employed in British
merchant shipping, 1976-2002. Occupat Environ Med. 2005;62(3):172–80.
[6]

Oldenburg M , Baur X , Schlaich C . Cardiovascular diseases in the modern maritime industry. Int Marit
Health. 2010;62(3):101–6.

[7]

Oldenburg M . Risk of cardiovascular diseases in seafarers. Int Marit Health. 2014;65(2):53–7.

[8]

Kaerlev L , Hansen J , Hansen HL , Nielsen PS . Cancer incidence among Danish seafarers: A population
based cohort study. Occup Environ Med. 2005;62(11):761–65.

[9]

Roberts SE . Work related mortality from gastrointestinal diseases and alcohol among seafarers
employed in British merchant shipping from 1939 to 2002. Int Marit Health. 2005;56(1-4):29–47.

[10]

Slišković A , Penezić Z . Lifestyle factors in Croatian seafarers as relating to health and stress on board.
WORK. 2017;56(3):371–80.

[11]

Chung Y , Lee PT , Lee J . Burnout in seafarers: its antecedents and effects on incidents at sea. Marit
Policy Manag. 2017;44(7):916–31.

[12]
Iversen RTB . The mental health of seafarers. Int Marit Health. 2012;63(2):78–89.

[13]

McVeigh J , MacLachlan M , Vallières F , Hyland P , Stilz R , Cox H , Fraser A . Identifying predictors of

stress and job satisfaction in a sample of merchant seafarers using structural equation modeling. Front
Psychol. 2019;10:70.

[14]

MacLachlan M , Kavanagh B , Kay A . Maritime health: A review with suggestions for research. Int Marit
Health. 2012;63(1):1–6.

[15]

Slišković A , Penezić Z . Descriptive study of job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction in a sample of
Croatian seafarers. Int Marit Health. 2015;66(2):97–105.

[16]

Slišković A , Penezić Z . Testing the effects of different aspects of contract and on-board internet access
on seafarers’ satisfaction and health. Arh Hig Rada Toksikol. 2016;67(4):351–61.

[17]

Dacanay J , Walters D . Protecting precarious workers in the global maritime industry: a case of
regulatory failure? Policy Pract Health Saf. 2011;9(2):47–68.

Link:

https://content.iospress.com/articles/work/wor203333
EXPLANATION:

The IMO has called for seafarers to be classified as ‘key workers’, which would exempt them from travel
restrictions such as closing national borders and cancelling international flights. The links between
stressors in seafaring and negative long-term effects on health and well-being in seafarers are complex.

4. THE CHALLENGES OF FILIPINO SEAFARERS ONBOARD: BASIS FOR WORK LIFE BALANCE

References:

Manalo, Aden Raphael G.; Mercado, Noriel R.;

Paragas, Donmer F.; Tenorio, Justin Chris C.; and Jonna C. Dotimas

Abstract

Maritime industry seen as one of the fastest growing jobs now a days and it provides enormous
numbers of employee comprising of individuals from several countries. Maritime industry creates good
impact on Philippines economy thru the help of Filipino modern heroes also known as Overseas Filipino
Workers (OFW). Filipino seafarers are competitive among others due on reliable and hardworking
personality. Despite of that, maritime industry provides a lot of challenges on each individual which is
part of the industry and it is entitled as one of the most critical jobs around the world. This study
focusses on the challenges may encountered of Filipino seafarers on board in order to propose work-life
balance. With intent to help Filipino seafarers to improve their way on how they handle daily life on and
off the vessel. The researchers used descriptive study to provide naturally occurring health status,
behavior, attitude, or other characteristic of particular group. Utilizing the data gathered obtained from
80 seafarers from Magsaysay Training Center with the used of primary data gathering tool which is a
researcher- made instrument. Findings reveal that majority of Filipino seafarers are preferred male and
married with the age between 21 years old to 40 years old. Mostly of the seafarer have 0 to 10 years of
service in industry experience challenges onboard. The result describe that the common challenge
onboard is homesickness followed by fatigue, family issues, discrimination, bad communication onboard
and poor relationship in work place. Moreover Filipino seafarers said that problems and challenges are
existed defend on companies. Difficulties and problems are normal in life. Those challenges served as
milestone to improve individual ability on how you survive and learn to handle the way of life.

Keywords: maritime industry, seafarer, challenges onboard, Filipino, work- life balance

Link:

https://lpulaguna.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/6.THE-CHALLENGES-OF-FILIPINO-SEAFARERS-
ONBOARD.pdf
EXPLANATION:

Maritime industry seen as one of the fastest growing jobs now a days. It provides enormous numbers of
employee comprising of individuals from several countries. Maritime industry creates good impact on
Philippines economy thru the help of Filipino modern heroes also known as Overseas Filipino Workers
(OFW).

5. The conceptualization of depression among Filipino seafarers.

The Center for Epidemiological Studies—Depression (CES-D) scale is a well-validated and frequently used
measure for assessing symptoms associated with depression. This scale was developed primarily on the
basis of American populations, however, and previous research has suggested that the original factor
structure may not be appropriate for all populations. One such population is the Filipino population. This
study represents the first study we are aware of to examine the factor structure of the CES-D scale in a
sample of Filipino seafarers. Seafaring is considered a high stress and high risk occupation. Based on
data collected from 135 Filipino seafarers, we conducted factor analyses to identify the appropriate
factor structure for the CES-D in this population. We found that a three-factor structure better described
the responses of Filipinos in our sample than the standard four-factor structure. The Filipino factor
structure appears to collapse depressive affect and somatic factors found in previous research, while
including a specific factor of social-focused symptoms of depression. This structure maintains the
positive affect factor found in previous work. Implications of this for clinical psychology assessment and
practice in the Philippines are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record © 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

References:

Fernandez, K. T. G., Seyle, D. C., & Simon, E. K. D. (2018). The conceptualization of depression among
Filipino seafarers. Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, 12, Article e23.

Link:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-58217-001

EXPLANATION:

The CES-D scale was developed primarily on the basis of American populations. Previous research has
suggested that the original factor structure may not be appropriate for all populations. The Filipino
factor structure appears to collapse depressive affect and somatic factors while including a specific
factor of social-focused symptoms of depression.