THE dangerous consequences of fatigue among crew has been documented by casualty investigators globally for decades, and yet tackling systemic non-compliance with working hours regulations has remained a stubbornly routine problem for the shipping industry.

The combination of a new study and fresh attempts to align regulation, however, promise to push the issue back up the industry’s agenda.

While both the International Labour Organisation and the International Maritime Organization have well established work-rest hours standards to regulate working time in shipping, multiple studies over the past few years have indicated that records maintained to demonstrate compliance with these standards are habitually falsified.

In 2020, the International Transport Workers’ Federation Seafarers’ Trust commissioned a pilot study on seafarers’ hours of work/rest records that pointed to systemic failures to comply with existing regulations intended to ensure safety of life at sea and minimise the risks of fatigue.

The headline conclusions caused a stir, reinforcing widespread anecdotal evidence of malpractice, but the small sample size of the study left the conclusions open to criticism.

Four years on, the World Maritime University has produced the follow up report, again commissioned by the ITF, this time with a statistically significant sample size of over 6,000 valid responses. And the conclusions remain the same.

The authors found a culture throughout the industry of adjusting records to give an impression of compliance with regulation and maintain smooth operation of the vessel.

Over 88% of seafarers admit to exceeding work/rest hours limits at least once a month. Alarmingly, 16.5% exceed the limits more than 10 times a month.

All parties collude to maintain a paper trail that hides this, including the seafarers themselves. In addition there are multiple, sometimes unintended, incentives to maintain the status quo.

The report provides compelling evidence of a ‘normalisation of deviance’, an acceptance that the balance of power and the complex layers of stakeholders make it too difficult for each of the responsible parties to address the core of the problem.

The main reasons for adjustment are: first, to avoid non-conformities during inspection (80.2%); second, to avoid problems with the company (75%); and third, to gain financial benefits (31.1%).

Only 50.3% of seafarers report non-compliance to their company. According to the survey, companies reportedly question or neglect non-compliance reports in most cases.

In just 22.4% of cases do companies respond by providing additional crewing.

While the conclusions of the report will not come as a surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity to casualty reports or the extensive academic reviews of literature that has been pointing to this systemic failure for several years, the new report has forced the issue back up the industry’s agenda.

Next month at the IMO, a proposal will be considered to address one of the major hurdles in addressing compliance.

Work and rest hour standards for seafarers are governed by two different regulatory regimes. One is the IMO’s International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, and the other is the ILO’s Maritime Labour Convention. Unfortunately, the two regimes do not align, creating inconsistencies when it comes to flag state’s setting and implementing standards.

A review of STCW is already well underway and the findings of the WMU report have already been flagged to both the IMO and ILO with proposals due to be considered on each side for alignment starting next month.

While that hurdle is likely to be relatively easily overcome inside the IMO and ILO, the underlying conclusion to the reports findings that seeks to make a connection between fatigue on board and crewing levels on board ships, is likely to prove a much thornier issue.

The question of safe crewing levels is ultimately determined and enforced at an individual flag state level.

The WMU report Quantifying an Inconvenient Truth — Revisiting a Culture of Adjustment an Work/Rest Hours is available to read here.

On September 17 at 11am BST, Lloyd’s List editor Richard Meade will moderate a live webinar discussion featuring the report authors: Raphael Baumler and Bikram Bhatia and a panel including Beatriz Vacotto, ILO and Michelle Grech, AMSA. To register click here.