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SolvingtheMaritimeTalentShortageIntroducesNewChallenges.pdf
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Solving the Maritime
Talent Shortage
Introduces New
Challenges
By Sara Mosqueda | 1 May 2022 |
Print Issue: May/June 2022
n estimated 33 million
Americans quit their jobs
between April 2021 and
January 2022. This movement has
been dubbed the “Great Resignation,”
and the transportation sector was just
as affected as the rest of the United
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States. Analysis from the U.S. Bureau
of Transportation Statistics (BTS) found
that unemployment rates for the
transportation sector peaked during
the COVID-19 pandemic—speci�cally
May and June 2020—at 15.7 percent.
“Throughout the pandemic, the
unemployment rate for the U.S.
transportation sector has been higher
than the general U.S. unemployment
rate with a difference ranging from 0.2
percentage points in June 2021 to 5.2
percentage points in July 2020,” the
BTS reported.
Since the spike in 2020, unemployment
has decreased, but the workforce
shakeup has not been limited to U.S.
workers or businesses. International
shipping companies and ports also
encountered a need for more workers
as consumers increasingly turned to e-
commerce. Manufacturers tried to keep
up with the demand, but some are still
trying to meet backlogged orders as
issues held up global supply chains. All
this translated into continued
congestion, with ships waiting—
sometimes for weeks—to unload their
cargo and keep business moving.
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Mike Edgerton, CPP, CISM, CSyP, who
manages port security for the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey,
says that ports also encounter
congestion on land, as well as at sea.
“Getting the goods of�oaded into the
port environment isn’t necessarily the
biggest challenge,” Edgerton says.
“The biggest challenge is then moving
it through the system—and that’s
where trucking and warehousing
comes in.”
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Prior to 2020, the trend at ports was to
focus on a rapid transition from the
ship to storage to a delivery vehicle
and out of the port, minimizing storage
times with an effective and agile
internal supply chain for the sites. But
this typical �ow of cargo was
hampered at the height of the
pandemic by an increasing rate of
incoming goods, a decrease in workers,
and shortages in vehicles and truck
parts.
The shortages of workers and ground
transportation “pushed warehousing…
to limits that it may not have
anticipated,” which today continues to
exacerbate supply chain impacts felt
far beyond ports, Edgerton says.
When cargo is unloaded at ports in the
United States, the U.S. Customs and
Border Patrol (CBP) inspects and clears
items once they reach port storage
sites and warehouses—seizing any
contraband discovered in the cargo. But
this additional step that cargo must go
through before being transported out
of the port also means that cargo takes
up storage space for a longer amount
of time, potentially contributing to the
backlog of ships needing to of�oad
containers.
While CBP works to balance
responsible clearance with timeliness,
of�cers’ jobs are not made easier as the
agency deals with obstacles in
recruiting and retaining staff, which at
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harbors—like other air and land ports
—are responsible for screening
imported cargo.
“In recent years, CBP has not attained
target staf�ng levels for its law
enforcement positions, citing high
attrition rates in some locations, a
protracted hiring process, and
competition from other law
enforcement agencies,” the U.S.
Government Accountability Of�ce
reported in a March 2019 study.
Jobs on freight ships and around ports
might also seem less attractive lately.
“While carriers generally managed to
mitigate the shock and disruption
[caused by the pandemic], port and
landside operations found it more
dif�cult to adjust, and seafarers were in
a precarious situation as the pandemic
triggered an unprecedented global
crew-change crisis,” according to a
2021 United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTD)
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report, Review of Maritime Transport
2021.
“For some reason, people are not
interested in working on large vessels
anymore,” says Björn Hartong, CPP, a
senior risk engineer focusing on marine
and security for Zurich Insurance.
Hartong theorizes that this decreased
interest may be linked to interruptions
and backlogs triggered by pandemic
impacts on ocean travel that prolongs
crew members’ time at sea.
That lack of stability for ship crews,
speci�cally around scheduling issues
and backlogs in trying to enter ports,
has translated into attrition among
staff. “The health risks and related
travel restrictions meant that hundreds
of thousands of seafarers could not
return home, while an equivalent
number were unable to join their ships
and to provide for their families,” the
UN report said.
In response to the pandemic, shippers
were faced with balancing international
maritime regulations that mandated
changing over a large number of crew
—intended to prevent fatigue and
ensure their safety, health, and
wellness—with government responses
that attempted to curb the spread of
COVID-19. “Due to these restrictions,
and the shortage of international
�ights, even one year into the
pandemic, hundreds of thousands of
seafarers remain stranded at sea, far
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beyond the expiration of their
contracts,” the UNCTD reported.
Skilled laborers have instead begun to
look elsewhere for jobs that guarantee
them dates when they can be home,
Hartong says.
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“Normally, you have a schedule where
you sail for six weeks and then you will
be home,” Hartong notes. But lately,
crews have been stuck with unreliable
situations, he says, such as vessels
stuck anchored just outside of ports for
two weeks, waiting to of�cially enter
and be processed—prolonging crew
members’ time away from home,
families, and a chance to rest.
While maritime trade was not hit as
hard as other travel-related industries
during the pandemic, its “nascent”
recovery in late 2020 has since been
“hindered by supply-chain
bottlenecks,” according to the UNCTD’s
report. Although increased freight
rates, surcharges, and fees resulted in a
boom for shippers, congestion
remained around some ports
throughout 2021, causing a ripple
effect that continues to result in delays.
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So when skilled laborers leave, ports
and shipping companies must quickly
look for employees to �ll those gaps to
keep even greater logjams from
forming around ports and to keep ships
sailing. In that rush, organized crime
sees an avenue for in�ltration.
Prime Positions
The call for more skilled labor at ports
offers organized crime groups a chance
to plant their members directly into
the supply chain, bypassing the need
to motivate outsiders or cultivate allies,
Hartong says.
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While much of the maritime industry
centers on the seas, it’s not unusual for
organized crime syndicates to focus on
land operations. Based on qualitative
research on organized crime groups’
activities in Italy, a study published in
November 2020 in Trends in Organized
Crime found that these groups are
permanently and pervasively active in
main harbors throughout the country.
“Organized crime groups operate
mostly in illegal business and in
particular in illicit traf�cking of drugs,
cigarettes, and counterfeit goods; the
Italian ma�a ‘Ndrangheta seems to be
able to persist in space and time within
several seaports,” according to the
study.
Based on court documents, press
articles, and public law enforcement
reports, the study, An exploration of
organized crime in Italian ports from
an institutional perspective, found
that out of Italy’s more than 350 ports,
50 are impacted by the presence of
organized crime groups (roughly 14
percent). “Among them, there are
seven ports identi�ed for their ‘national
importance’ (i.e., for their administrative
importance) and others for their
‘national relevance’ (i.e., for their
economy relevance),” the study noted.
These ports are signi�cant in that they
welcome, load, and unload vessels
with a gross tonnage of more than 300,
indicating a preference for larger ports
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that deal with considerable volumes of
cargo.
And with maritime businesses looking
to quickly �ll skilled labor positions,
organized crime groups will likely seek
to in�ltrate legitimate workforces with
sympathizers or inside actors who will
help them access transit and storage
facilities.
While some organized crime
organizations steal goods from
legitimate businesses once they arrive
at ports and then resell the
merchandise to local consumers, they
are not the only ones watching
incoming ships.
In February 2022, a joint law
enforcement operation across eight
countries arrested 45 people in Europe
on charges of �ooding the continent
with drugs from Latin America. The
arrests included Europe’s “most active
Albanian-speaking cocaine traf�cking
networks…[including] a number of
high-value targets, investigated in
multiple high-pro�le cases in different
jurisdictions,” Europol said in a press
release.
The crackdown targeted a network—
found in Belgium, Croatia, Germany,
Italy, The Netherlands, and Spain—that
allegedly received cocaine at several
European ports.
Drug cartels and human traf�ckers are
looking for and �nding opportunities to
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take advantage of freight ships. They
can either pose as legitimate shippers
or try to enter a legitimate shipping
channel created by another business.
“These criminals �nd the loophole in
your supply chain” by adding
contraband to containers with legal
goods or swapping the containers
altogether, Hartong says.
Not Watching Their Weight
To attract businesses and overcome
supply chain issues, freighters today
are regularly loading the maximum
number of containers, which in theory
would increase vessels’ ef�ciency. But
as with fewer knowledgeable
employees already trained or
acquainted with proper loading
procedures, this ends up translating
into losses once these ships encounter
anything less than a sunny sky and
calm seas.
“What we do see has nothing to do
with criminal elements,” Hartong says.
“It’s just that there are a lot of
containers falling overboard because
the vessels in the past were never fully
loaded.”
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As quick shipping is more critical than
ever to global commerce, shipping
companies are trying to use every inch
of space on their vessels. But these
optimization efforts mean that the
people loading up vessels are ordered
to stack containers to the maximum
allowed height.
Stacking blocks on top of one another
sounds relatively straightforward, but
when mass is taken into account, this
can drastically change the outcome.
Simply: if heavier containers are placed
on top instead of at the bottom, and if
they are not properly lashed down, it’s
far easier for the stacks to topple
overboard into the sea.
“Because of the fact that they’re fully
loaded and they have to load relatively
fast, if we have a little bit of rough
weather, we see a lot of containers
currently falling overboard,” Hartong
says.
Based off of data from the World
Shipping Council, Bloomberg
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estimated that more than 3,000
containers fell into the sea in 2020, and
by April 2021 the rate of lost
containers for the year had already
exceeded 1,000. For a sense of scale,
the largest cargo vessels can transport
a maximum of more than 21,000 20-
foot cargo containers, and an estimated
total capacity of 29.1 million cubic feet
for cargo.
Improper stacking is not just a result of
the rush to move the ship along and
attempt to avoid or lessen a backlog of
other waiting vessels—sometimes, it’s
also because a container’s contents are
not accurately declared. Whether an
error in paperwork is just a mistake or
related to criminals trying to hide their
goods, inaccurate weights listed on
loading documents can still result in
dozens of containers falling into the
ocean. Other times, it might be because
the people loading a vessel are
relatively new to the job and lack
experience in loading cargo properly.
Sometimes everything is done
correctly, and containers still fall
overboard.
“Proper packing, stowage, and securing
of containers and reporting of correct
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weight are very important to the safety
of a container ship, its crew, and its
cargo, to shore-based workers and
equipment, and to the environment,”
the World Shipping Council wrote in its
March 2021 report, Containers Lost at
Sea–Liability and Insurance.
“However, even with proper packing of
the cargo into the container, correct
container weight declaration, and
proper stowage and securing aboard
ship, a number of factors ranging from
severe weather and rough seas to more
catastrophic and rare events like ship
groundings and collisions can result in
containers being lost at sea.”
A Pirate’s Life for Me
One upside to the COVID-19 pandemic
was a decrease in incidents of piracy.
Lockdowns and stricter controls on
port facilities and ships translated to a
decrease in violent incidents occurring
while at sea, according to Samuele
Caruso, CPP, a senior security manager
for Italian shipbuilding company
Fincantieri.
The ICC International Maritime Bureau
(IMB) reported that the number of
incidents where vessels encountered
pirates decreased from 2020 to 2021,
with kidnappings at sea dropping 55
percent in 2021. The organization
credited the overall decrease to an
increased presence of international
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naval vessels and international
cooperation.
“Maritime piracy and armed robber
attacks reached the lowest recorded
level since 1994,” the IMB said, based
on its Piracy Reporting Centre receiving
only 132 reports of such incidents in
2021, including 115 instances where
vessels were boarded, 11 attempted
attacks, �ve where ships were �red
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upon, and one incident where the
vessel was hijacked.
However, as the world returns to a
sense of normalcy—or at least pre-
COVID behavior—piracy is expected to
return as well. “I’m terribly con�dent
that the number of [piracy incidents]
will rise again,” Caruso says.
It’s not just because of fewer
lockdowns, he explains. It will likely be
an effect from broad, international
pressures, including economic stresses
hitting poorer countries, in�ation, and a
growing number of people joining the
ranks of the unemployed.
Regardless of the extent to which
piracy may return, Hartong estimates
that shipping companies will be ready
for it, given previous experience with
this aspect of the maritime industry.
Previously, companies implemented
measures, such as on-site security that
traveled with vessels, to discourage
piracy. “So, it’s not that we are as
unprepared as we were maybe 10
years ago,” Hartong says.
Sara Mosqueda is assistant editor for
Security Management. Connect with
her at [email protected]
or on LinkedIn. Follow her on Twitter:
@ximenawrites.
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