COVID-19, shared information and membership meetings in AMO
Now in its sixth exhausting month, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unforeseen, unimaginable difficulty to all U.S. merchant mariners and to their families. AMO and all other maritime unions are focused on limiting contagion and on protecting the professional interests of the men and women within our respective ranks, a common mission complicated by uncertainty, frustration and aggravation.
This crisis took an especially tragic recent turn when a civil service mariner employed on a Military Sealift Command ship apparently took his own life under circumstances that may have been influenced by the emotional hardship resulting from restrictions imposed on the U.S. seagoing labor force under federal, state and local restrictions on movement and direct personal contact.
These limits forced many AMO members to remain in their seagoing jobs much longer than agreed to or anticipated and thwarted or delayed efforts to get relief officers to their assigned vessels.
Add controversial "gangway up" orders, restriction to ships while contractors and vendors board and depart these vessels freely, ever-changing health security protocols, time in quarantine before taking shipboard jobs and after potentially infectious social contact, and limited or diverted port access in some places, and the stress and strain grow even more tenacious.
Tempers are tested as well by pandemic politics - deep division nationwide over what to believe and why.
Here at AMO headquarters, and at the AMO Safety & Education Plan's STAR Center, administrative operations have been modified significantly to safeguard the health of all AMO members and visitors and to comply with federal, state and local preventive measures and requirements. Florida is now a pandemic epicenter, with the highest spikes in case counts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties - which leaves Dania Beach in the middle of the worst of it statewide.
One of the most unpleasant restraints imposed on our union was the forced cancellation of AMO membership meetings in April, May, June, July and August. We are anxious to resume these meetings as quickly as possible because they are informative and important, despite their limited number and location, and because they provide AMO members with the opportunity to speak up and speak out directly on any matter - honest conversation I have encouraged routinely.
While I understand the disappointment AMO members may harbor over canceled meetings, my greater personal thoughts since mid-March are with AMO members who could not be home to help families through medical emergencies, or who do not know when they will be able to visit grandchildren again, or who had to miss births, birthday celebrations, christenings, mitzvahs, high school and college commencements, engagements, weddings or funerals through no fault of their own.
But this administration wants very much to restore monthly membership meetings safely and legally - the AMO Executive Board is considering its practical and technical possibilities and options.
Some have suggested "Zoom" meetings as an alternative, but I trust what officials of other unions have told me about these remote, virtual meetings - unknown individuals moving in and out with disruptive intent, unknown persons listening in off camera and technical difficulties that include lost video and audio. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel on August 6 reported that hackers had interrupted a virtual court hearing on a criminal case in Tampa with porn videos.
If you Google Zoom vulnerabilities, you will have a better sense of the risks and futilities, especially in cases of many participants Zooming in and out from many locations.
Meanwhile, AMO boarding reps are alternating between work in the office and at home, taking and placing phone calls and replying to email, and they are beginning to resume routine visits to AMO vessels on the East, West and Gulf Coasts and on the Great Lakes, with the appropriate health precautions in place.
My additional intents are to revive the traditional East, West and Gulf Coast calls on AMO vessels by AMO officials later this year or early in 2021, depending upon when the COVID-19 "all clear" is announced, and to expand the number and locations of area meetings for AMO members working the Great Lakes.
We will also pump out as much important relevant information as we can through AMO Currents and membership email.
AMO members in every sector have been extremely patient throughout the course of this pandemic, and the professionalism that distinguishes these deep-sea, Great Lakes and inland waters vessel officers has not been compromised by a crisis as unpredictable as it is unprecedented.
I am grateful to all of you, and I will keep you advised of each important development as it occurs.
Thank you for listening ...
Paul Doell
August 7, 2020