On Board Is Not the Same as Seafarer: MLC Gaps for Project Crew

You can sleep on a CSOV for four weeks, walk the gangway every morning, eat in the mess and still not be a seafarer under the Maritime Labour Convention. Wind technicians, survey hands, cable jointers, ROV techs and a lot of client-side project crew live that gap every hitch. The marine crew next to them has an MLC floor. You may have a day rate and a WhatsApp thread.

On Board Is Not the Same as “Seafarer”

The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 says a seafarer is any person employed, engaged or working in any capacity on a ship to which the Convention applies. That sounds wide. Flag administrations then narrow it.

The UK’s published line is useful because it is clear. Under MGN 471, a seafarer is someone who works on board and whose normal place of work is on a ship. Harbour pilots, inspectors, scientists, divers and specialist offshore technicians are the examples where doubt is expected. Renewables technicians carried out to turbines day by day are normally not treated as seafarers. Someone who only eats and sleeps on a flotel or SOV, while the real workplace is the turbine or the seabed kit, can be treated more like a passenger for MLC purposes. Job title is not decisive. Duration on board and where the principal workplace sits are.

Other flags make their own call. The practical result on a wind or survey campaign is the same: the AB and the Third Officer usually sit under MLC. The jointer, the WTG tech, the party chief and the client rep often do not. Same mess. Different law.

What MLC Actually Guarantees for Seafarers

If you are a seafarer on an MLC ship, the Convention is a floor, not a favour. In plain language:

• A written Seafarers’ Employment Agreement (SEA) — signed by you and the shipowner or authorised representative, with a chance to read it and take advice before you sign. You keep a copy. So does the ship. Details and what must be in it: SEA and CBA guide.
• Wages — paid at least monthly, in full, without unlawful deductions. Overtime rules sit in the SEA or the CBA it incorporates.
• Hours of work and rest — limits and records. Fatigue is a compliance item, not a personal weakness.
• Accommodation, food and drinking water — decent and fit for purpose, not whatever is left after the project crew ate.
• Medical care on board and ashore, and shipowner liability for sickness and injury while serving.
• Repatriation — a right, with financial security so you are not stranded when the company fails.
• Complaint procedure — a named shipboard channel, then company, flag and port State, with protection against retaliation for a valid complaint.
• No placement fee charged to you for getting the job (visa costs sit with the shipowner; medical certificate, CDC and passport costs are the usual exceptions).

The ship must carry an MLC Maritime Labour Certificate (and a Declaration of Maritime Labour Compliance) where required by size and type. Port State Control can detain on MLC as well as on SOLAS. That certificate is about the ship’s system for seafarers. It is not a promise that every person sleeping in a container on deck is covered.

Shipowner duties under MLC sit with the person or organisation that owns the ship or has assumed that responsibility from the owner — not always the manning agent who messaged you. On a good SEA you can read the shipowner name. On a bad offer you only see an agency letterhead. For seafarers that gap is why unpaid wages and abandonment claims get ugly. For project crew the parallel is worse: there may be no SEA at all, so the only name that matters is the one that signed your commercial contract and the one on the insurance certificate.

Crewing Agencies Under Regulation 1.4

Private seafarer recruitment and placement services in MLC countries must operate under a national licence, certificate or other regulation — Regulation 1.4 / Standard A1.4. In short, a proper manning office should:

• Hold a current national approval for seafarer recruitment and placement.
• Keep a register of people they place, open to inspection.
• Make sure you see the employment agreement before and after signing, and get a copy.
• Check you are qualified and that the SEA matches law and any CBA.
• Have insurance or an equivalent system so you can be compensated if the agency or the shipowner fails to meet money obligations under the agreement.
• Handle complaints about their own activity.

Shipowners who take crew from a country that is not an MLC party still have to make sure that service meets the Convention standard. Ask for the agency’s licence number and the authority that issued it. A PDF “certificate” with no issuer, no date and no searchable register is not approval.

None of that Regulation 1.4 machine automatically applies to a project-crew desk that only places technicians on day rate. Different product. Different paperwork. Assume zero until you see it.

Project Crew: Living on the Ship Without the Floor

On many wind, survey, cable and construction campaigns, project personnel are engaged by a contractor, a staffing company or the client — not signed on the ship’s articles. In practice that can mean:

• Cabins that are converted containers or four-berth rooms while officers have singles.
• Food after the marine crew, or a separate canteen with a shorter window.
• No shipboard MLC complaint ladder that covers you.
• No MLC repatriation or abandonment financial security in your name.
• Insurance that starts “on mobilisation” with a definition nobody sent you.

Comfort is still a safety factor — rest, food, a washing machine, internet after the shift — but for project crew it is a contract and a client standard, not an MLC right. The charter side already scores beds and galleys. Your side has to score the paper.

Door-to-door protection, when it is real, looks boring on purpose: flights paid before you leave, travel insurance for delay and lost bags, a hotel if weather holds the join, a named contact if the flight misses the ship, medical and medevac from the first travel day, and a way home that does not depend on you arguing at the gangway. Ask who holds liability if you are third-party or a subcontractor. Keep a copy of whatever they send. Screenshots of a chat are not a policy.

What to Check Before You Say Yes

Do not try to audit the whole company by email. Collect the file, then ask only what is still missing.

If the answer is “we sort it on joining,” you are funding their admin with your risk. Seafarers are told never to travel without a signed SEA. Project crew should treat a signed commercial contract the same way.

Four Questions — Not Twenty

A long questionnaire before the offer is firm can kill the seat. The person on the other side is filling ten rotations. Ask late enough that they want you, and short enough that they can answer in one reply. After you have read what they already sent, these four cover most of the damage:

1. Who is my employer on the contract, who pays me, in what currency, gross or net, and on which date? If that sentence is fuzzy, the rest of the deal is theatre.
2. From the first travel day to repatriation, who insures me for medical, accident and medevac — and can you send the certificate or summary? “We are covered” without a document is not cover.
3. Who pays flights, hotels, PPE and courses, and what is the reclaim procedure and timeline if I pay first? Unpaid expenses are a silent pay cut.
4. Will I have a signed contract before I travel, and what happens to pay and ticket home if the campaign is delayed or cancelled after I leave home? That is the project-crew version of repatriation.

Everything else — cabin type, gym, Wi-Fi, uniform brand — can wait for the joining pack. Strategy is not “be difficult.” Strategy is: large or known employers, a website that has existed longer than this vacancy, a company you can find in a registry, people on LinkedIn who match the letterhead, and a reputation you can check with someone who already sailed for them. A polished site and a named office beat a PDF logo and a Telegram handle.

Psychology matters. Once you have asked the four, stop. Thank them. Give them a deadline that is real for your visa or medical. Do not negotiate tone. Negotiate paper. If they refuse all four, you did not lose a good offer. You avoided a bad one.

Prefer desks that place many people in your trade: a known crewing or project-staffing house with a switchboard, not a one-person broker who “represents” five brands. Check the website age, the company number, and whether the same firm appears on the vessel operator’s or client’s supplier list when that is public. Ask a colleague who already did a hitch with them about pay date and expense reclaim — not about the day rate. Rate is easy to invent. Payment behaviour is not.

“What Is Your Minimum Acceptable Day Rate?”

That question is a trap when you do not yet know net pay, unpaid weather days, who pays tax, or whether travel is included. A high number with no insurance and 60-day payment terms can be worse than a lower number paid weekly with flights on the company card. See day rate vs permanent and tax before you answer with a single figure.

Better reply: you need the contract terms first — pay cycle, which days count, expenses, insurance — then you can give a rate. If they insist on a number with no paper, give a band and write that it assumes weekly pay, travel paid, and insurance from day one. Anything else is a different job.

Red Flags

• Pay far above the market for the role and region, from a company nobody in your trade has heard of.
• Embarkation in a place that keeps changing, or a join port that does not match the vessel’s AIS history.
• No signed contract until after you fly.
• Only WhatsApp or a free email address; nobody from ops or HR in copy.
• You must pay for the job, the visa “deposit,” or a training pack sold by the same desk (seafarer placement fees are restricted under MLC; project scams copy the same move).
• Insurance “sorted on board” with no policy name.
• Pay “after client pays us” with no date.
• Pressure to decide tonight or the seat goes to someone who did not ask questions.
• Vessel name withheld until the airport, or a name that does not exist on public ship databases.
• Reimbursement promised in cash on board with no receipt process.

High day rate plus unknown company plus a soft join plan is not a lucky break. It is the pattern. Reputation is slower than FOMO and usually right.

Bottom Line

MLC is a real floor for seafarers: SEA, wages, rest, food, medical care, repatriation, complaints, and regulated crewing. Project crew on the same ship often get none of that by default. Your protection is the commercial contract, the insurance certificate, the pay date and the expense rules — asked as four questions, not a cross-examination. If the paper is thin, the day rate does not thicken it.