Bethel calls for expanded cooperation among U.S. seagoing officers' unions

Bethel calls for expanded cooperation among U.S. seagoing officers' unions

Licensed seagoing unions should find additional ways to cooperate for their common benefit, American Maritime Officers National President Tom Bethel said June 23.

In remarks before the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots' convention in Linthicum Heights, Md., Bethel noted that the MM&P and the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association had agreed earlier to cooperate on legislative issues before Congress and in the Executive Branch.

"I applaud both unions for making joint lobbying and political strategy a priority," Bethel said. "If there is one place in which the MM&P, MEBA and American Maritime Officers are bound by compelling mutual interest, it's Washington D.C."

AMO, the MM&P and MEBA "have done well together in the capital," Bethel noted. "This cooperative approach will become even more important as a new president and a new Congress take office next January.

"Working together, and with our friends in the Seafarers International Union and the AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Department, American Maritime Officers, the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots and the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association have secured full funding of the Maritime Security Program in each annual budget cycle since the program was authorized in 1996," Bethel continued. "We have helped preserve the cargo preference laws, most recently in last week's five-year farm omnibus farm bill that preserved the PL-480 food-aid export program and the 75 percent U.S.-flag share that goes with it. And we shielded the Jones Act from several attempts at harmful amendment or outright repeal."

Bethel said the unions' "collective success" in the capital "suggests strongly that cooperation can serve us well as licensed seagoing unions on other fronts."

He pointed out that AMO, the MM&P and MEBA had already "demonstrated a willingness to work as one for the benefit of our respective memberships" through the tripartite agreement under which the unions provide "verifiable uniform wage and benefit cost proposals for competitive bidding by our employers for government shipping charters."

Bethel said the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command had "made this more difficult than it has to be." He traced emerging bureaucratic complications to an increasingly tight MSC budget.

"The real problem is that MSC has no money, and this truth brings us full circle to lobbying and political strategy," Bethel explained. "We as unions will have to work together in the next Congress not only to preserve and protect the Maritime Security Program, the cargo preference laws and the Jones Act, but also to secure adequate funding of the strategic sealift programs that provide jobs for the men and women we are honored to represent."

Bethel said AMO, the MM&P and MEBA together "have to make the obvious case that the U.S. can fight no wars overseas without the civilian men and women of the U.S. merchant marine."

Bethel concluded: "American Maritime Officers stands squarely with the Masters, Mates and Pilots and the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association on the legislative front line in the capital.

"We are also willing to pursue practical partnerships in other areas. I, for one, am always willing to talk."

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