A summary of the AMO-ASC meeting

American Maritime Officers and American Steamship Co. met July 20 at AMO headquarters at ASC's request and agreed verbally to negotiate a successor to the current collective bargaining agreement covering the engineers and mates on six ASC thousand-foot Great Lakes bulk carriers ahead of this contract's February 2022 expiration.

In this meeting, AMO officials and representatives outlined AMO's practical, responsible approach to honest negotiation - addressing legitimate matters of interest and concern to both our union and its employers. We cited the number of mutually productive labor accords secured by AMO in recent negotiations with major fleet operators in the deep-sea and Great Lakes sectors.

The proposal to negotiate a new contract was floated directly by ASC, and it was overshadowed by a far more urgent matter - this year's 10-year bareboat charter agreement under which five smaller ASC bulk carriers were transferred to Grand River Navigation Co., which has a collective bargaining agreement with the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots. American Steamship Co. and Grand River Navigation are sister fleets owned by Rand Logistics.

This bareboat charter agreement was signed in March 2021, but AMO has sufficient reason to believe it was actually ordered much earlier by Rand Logistics, which acquired American Steamship Co. in May 2020 for $260 million.

ASC has thus far denied AMO the opportunity to review this bareboat charter pact because AMO has not consented to a lengthy confidentiality agreement that would restrict this administration's relevant communications with AMO members fleet-wide in ASC.

Forty AMO engineers and mates who had been covered under the current ASC contract lost their jobs on the five vessels. ASC directed these displaced AMO members to apply directly to Grand River Navigation for continued employment - at substantially reduced wage rates, and with unspecified benefits described vaguely by Grand River as "excellent." Only five AMO members complied, thereby forfeiting their AMO membership.

What ASC once referred to as "effects bargaining" over compensation to the 35 AMO members harmed by the ASC-Grand River arrangement will have to precede talks leading to a new contract covering the 1000-foot vessels. Our preference would be for ASC to return the five vessels to the ASC fleet and AMO contract, but ASC holds fast to its insistence that ASC and Grand River Navigation function independently as separate companies with no direction from Rand Logistics - ASC has not said so specifically, but the company clearly wants AMO to believe that ASC is unable to scrap the bareboat charter agreement.

American Steamship Co. also appears ready to live with the operational difficulties plaguing the five vessels from the season's start, including technical malfunctions, widespread inability to recruit and retain qualified officers and crews, and multiple dangerous deficiencies confirmed in documents provided to AMO by the U.S. Coast Guard. In one case, a Grand River Chief Engineer told the USCG he was not at all familiar with the vessel's engine room because his career had to that point been aboard articulated tug-barges.

AMO also cited the evident intent of ASC and Grand River to diminish the quality of life and labor aboard these vessels - the belief that human need is immaterial to the bottom line, that the engineers and mates who live where they work for much of the year are not due the dignity and self-respect befitting their training, their experience, their dedication and their lasting status as seagoing professionals.

In this context, AMO focused on such grievous conditions as chronic fatigue resulting from overwork and deteriorating accommodations, including toilet bowls secured to the floor by duct tape, sinks with no faucets and rust rampant in the showers.

One issue throughout the remaining ASC fleet is the minimal daily food budget - unhealthy meals no ASC or Rand Logistics executive or staffer would ever eat.

The general response from ASC and Rand Logistics to each of these issues was the impact of supply and demand, but market expansion and contraction are common to the shipping industry in all sectors, and the companies and their unions address such conditions as they develop.

But ASC did note separately that AMO members dismissed from the five smaller vessels still owned by ASC have thus far refused to accept employment on the company's "thousand footers," and several engineers and mates already aboard these larger boats have told AMO they would leave immediately if they were able to. But ASC knows what stirs - and what would ease - such strong resentment and resistance before AMO and ASC meet at the bargaining table.

This meeting did not include discussion of American Steamship Co.'s having put at least nine of its vessels up as collateral to secure $370 million in new loans to Rand Logistics under a May 14, 2020 credit arrangement with Ally Bank of Utah. We in AMO could conceivably see this fleet's "thousand footers" sold at auction before we sign a new collective bargaining agreement covering these vessels.

President Paul Doell, Executive Vice President Willie Barrere, Gov't Relations Vice President Chris Spain, Deep-Sea Vice President Jeff Richards - whose AMO career includes 17 years of Great Lakes service - Great Lakes Representative Joe Brown and Jim Beland, a Chief Engineer in the ASC fleet, comprised the AMO team in this meeting.

Rand Logistics President Dave Foster - who as President of American Steamship Co. at the time signed off on the nine vessels as credit collateral - led the Rand Logistics-ASC delegation to this meeting at AMO headquarters.

Current ASC President Kevin McMonagle and Rand-ASC Human Resources Director Craig Samuda joined Foster for the talks.

Additional information will follow as developments require.