Port Officials Concerned about Great Lakes Pilotage
08/31
Port officials around the Great Lakes are concerned about
pilotage issues this season, particularly delays to saltwater ships transiting
the lakes, according to a story in Monday's Duluth News Tribune.
As of July, salties transiting the Great Lakes and the
St. Lawrence Seaway already had attributed more than 580 hours of cumulative
delays to pilotage problems.
Previous delays and the prospect of future pilotage
problems could have serious implications for the Twin Ports, said Adolph Ojard,
executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. Duluth-Superior, at
the western end of the seaway system, is more vulnerable than other ports to
the detrimental effects of even minor pilotage delays, should they multiply,
he said.
If foreign ship operators turn stern on the Great Lakes,
Ojard said the damage could be widespread. Those facing injury would include
farmers, steel fabricators, special cargo handlers, wood products
manufacturers and others.
The newspaper said many in the shipping industry believe
that pilot dissatisfaction over pay lies behind the delays.
Pilots have received only a 5-percent raise in their rate
of pay since 2001. The U.S. Coast Guard sets Great Lakes pilotage rates and
had proposed a 26 percent increase in 2003, but the prospective hike caused
such an industry uproar that it was stalled. In its place, the Coast Guard
implemented a temporary 5-percent rate increase.
Don Willecke, president of the Western Great Lakes Pilots
Association, said although seaway pilots hold a captain's rank, they earned on
average about the same wages last season as would a third mate working aboard
a laker -- about $50,000. The Coast Guard had proposed a rate designed to
yield pilots annual wages of somewhere between $122,000 and $173,000.
While Willecke acknowledged that he and fellow pilots are
dissatisfied with their current pay, he rejected any suggestion that he or his
colleagues are deliberately slowing traffic to express their displeasure. He
said most of the pilotage delays so far this season are nothing out of the
ordinary, suggesting that some of the early delays had more to do with
difficult ice conditions than pilots' service.
However, he noted there are fewer pilots to go around
this season as well. The Coast Guard sets the number of pilots authorized to
work in each of the seaway's three districts -- eastern, central and western
-- when it establishes rates each year.
Ojard said delays force up operating costs for ship
owners and could drive away foreign trade. He said that a recent discussion
with a representative of Wagenborg Shipping, a Dutch company whose ships
regularly call on the Twin Ports, confirmed his fears.
"He told me that Wagenborg was questioning whether it
could continue to service the Great Lakes if it continues to see the kinds of
delays its ships have encountered lately," Ojard said.
Capt. Ivan Lantz, the Shipping Federation of Canada's
director of marine operations, said reliability is a critical concern for all
his members. "They need to be assured pilots are available in the Great Lakes,
because they need pilots to keep going," Lantz told the News Tribune. "Delays
artificially inflate costs, and they could make the Great Lakes an
unattractive place to do business.
Word of growing concern over pilotage has reached all the
way to the U.S. Capitol.
On Aug. 25, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar convened a meeting in
Washington, D.C., with pilots' representatives, Coast Guard officials, vessel
operators, fellow lawmakers and other concerned parties to discuss the thorny
issues of rates and delays.
Ultimately, Ojard believes the pilotage system and
rate-setting process need reform. He suggested Congress consider overhauling
the current three-district pilotage system. At present, each of these
districts operates as an independent business owned and operated by the pilots
who work within its boundaries. He believes pilots might be better-served by a
single organization that seamlessly coordinates vessel movements through the
entire seaway.
Willecke disagreed with the need to restructure the
system. "I think the three districts are operating very well and very
efficiently," he said.
Ojard said it comes as no surprise to him that the
leadership of the pilots associations opposes the idea of consolidation.
"Right now, each district has its own little fiefdom of control," he said.
Still, Ojard contends that streamlining the system could
put more money into pilots' pockets. Ojard noted that less than half of the
pilotage fees foreign ships now shell out winds going to pay the men and women
who help ships safely navigate the Great Lakes. Each pilots association foots
the bill for its own administrative costs, legal fees and a host of other
expenses.
Ojard also said the Coast Guard rate-setting process
deserves scrutiny and reform. On that count, Willecke is in agreement.
"The main problem right now is that too many people have
too much influence over the Coast Guard," Willecke said. "Our rate increase
has been delayed because of politics, and it's leaving money in the shipping
companies' pockets that we pilots will never be able to recover."
Ojard said that if the rate-setting process can be made
less contentious and the efficiency of the system can be improved, pilots and
ship owners both would benefit. "It appears to me that ship owners are already
paying enough for pilots to make a good wage, but the money's not getting to
them," he said.
Reported by Duluth News Tribune (Peter Passi), Al Miller
