WARLIKE OPERATIONS
AREA COMMITTEE
T here’s a very long history of merchant
seafarers being thrust into the front line
of conflict at sea, and maritime unions
have sought for many decades to ensure
that members are not exposed to excessive risks.
With merchant vessels once again facing
threats in the Arabian Gulf, the Warlike Opera-tions
Area Committee (WOAC) has agreed to
temporarily designate the Strait of Hormuz as a
‘warlike zone’ from 2 August, following govern-ment
advice to avoid the area unless accompa-nied
by UK naval support. That designation gives
seafarers the right to leave ships bound for the
area, as well as additional ‘war risk’ payments
and special insurance protection.
The roots of WOAC can be traced back more
than a century – and its existence serves to
underline the scale of the dangers that seafarers
have been exposed to over this time.
More than 12,600 British merchant seafarers
lost their lives during the First Word War, with
the introduction of U-boats adding a new
dimension of danger to maritime warfare. Yet
during the early stages of the war, seafarers
serving on ships which had not been chartered
by the government went off pay as soon as their
vessel was sunk, and they received no compensa-tion
for lost possessions.
Although the Admiralty had agreed to pay a £1
a month bonus to seafarers on ships ‘taken up
from trade’, along with compensation for those
killed or injured because of ‘warlike operations’,
it took two years for an industry-wide war risk
scheme to be introduced giving torpedoed
seafarers a minimum payment of one month’s
wages.
Worried about the country’s ability to continue
crewing its ships, the government established a
special Board of Arbitration – which was to
become the National Maritime Board (NMB) in
1917 – with representatives of owners, officers
and ratings to regulate the supply of seafarers
and fix their terms and conditions.
War risk payments and compensation were
high on its agenda right from the outset, and in
60 SUOMEN MERENKULKU J FINLANDS SJÖFART
what turned out to be the last month of the war
the Board agreed to pay a £3 per month bonus for
seafarers.
A total of 26 British merchant ships were lost
during the Spanish civil war between 1936 and
1939, and seafarer unions had to fight to get
owners to agree to pay a 50% bonus – later
increased to 100% – for the crews of ships trying
to beat the blockades.
When the Second World War broke out,
merchant seafarers were given a special ‘war
risk’ payment amounting to almost one-third of
basic salary. By 1943, with profound concerns
about seafarer shortages, the bonus was more
than trebled, and agreement was reached that
every shipwrecked seafarer would be guaranteed
full pay – including the war risk bonus – until
they returned to the UK or found a job on another
vessel.
The NMB was abolished by shipowners in
1990 as part of a wider move away from central-ised
industrial negotiations, but they agreed to
continue with the operation of several joint
bodies – including WOAC – to bring both sides
together to discuss important issues.
The committee is now comprised of the trade
unions Nautilus International and RMT, and the
UK Chamber of Shipping. It still provides a forum
for shipping companies and seafarer unions to
consider threat levels and monitor ‘warlike
activities’ to determine whether war risk service
clauses in collective agreements should be
invoked.
The interpretation of ‘warlike operations’ has
been a consistent source of debate – not least
during the 1980s ‘tanker war’ in the Gulf and in
relation to other security threats, such as piracy
and terrorism. But in a politically unstable world,
the need for WOAC has been repeatedly demon-strated
and its value has been underlined by the
fact that it has served for a model for similar
schemes in other countries, as well as at a global
level for the International Bargaining Forum and
the Maritime Labour Convention provisions for
‘war zone’ service by merchant seafarers. •
A guide to the
UK body with
the power
to declare
international
waterways a
“warlike zone”.