Babin, B.V. International legal standards for collective negotiations with the foreign shipowners

Abstract: It is proven that in the sphere of labor relations in the modern global maritime transportation the choice of legislation regulating labor relations between the shipowner and the crew is almost unlimited. It makes the issues of bringing these legal processes into compliance with the international labor law especially topical. The goal of the article is to establish the forms of involvement of international legal standards into the national practice of collective negotiations between the maritime trade unions and shipowners and conclusion of collective agreements with foreign shipowners. The article achieves the following goals: the analysis of international legal requirements to collective negotiation and collective agreements in the maritime sphere, its correspondence with the current practice and possible means to improve the practical situation. The object of studies includes the norms of international law, regulating the processes of collective negotiations with the foreign shipowners and practice of their national application in the post-Soviet states. The article applies formal legal and comparative methods, the author uses statistical, political scientific and forecast-based methods with the use of normative and doctrinal information, as well as the personal experience of the author in the sphere of trade union work. It is established that these issues become especially topical when the shipowners and trade unions fail to act in accordance with the legislation, or when the legislation of the post-Soviet states is partially incompliant with the requirements of international labor and maritime law, and when the governments fail to pay necessary attention to these issues. The author offers the following measures in order to facilitate the application of international norms in the sphere of protection of labor and social rights of mariners when the collective agreements are made with the foreign shipowners. It is necessary to bring national legislations and by-laws in the sphere of labor and employment in accordance with the requirements of the Ukrainian Independent Maritime Trade Union (KPMS), including development of the new license conditions and new forms of control over the obligatory presence of collective agreements, covering all of the concluded labor contracts of foreign employment of mariners. It also includes the obligation of filing public registers of such agreements with due mention of its parties for the bodies registering such collective agreements, establishing responsibility for the employers, trade unions and associations for the failure to register collective treaties, which were concluded by them. It also includes control over the competent state bodies, when citizens of these states are employed in the foreign ships, over the actions of the ITF and the ITF trade unions within the context of protection of the rights of mariners to be protected against discrimination in their employment.

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