Seafarers routinely have to falsify work and rest hours

Seafarers routinely have to falsify work and rest hours
Marcus Hand November 12, 2025 https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/crewing/seafarers-routinely-have-to-fa...

Mark Dickinson Credit: Informa Markets
Speakers at Seatrade Maritime Crew Connect Global highlighted massively long work weeks for ship’s crew and falsification of records.

It’s one of the shipping’s dirty little secrets the routine “adjusting” of seafarer records for hours of work and rest.

In a keynote address on day two of Seatrade Maritime Crew Connect Global Mark Dickinson, Vice President of the ITF Seafarers section, commented on the long work hours that are the norm for those working at sea and questioned if new technologies such as AI could help bring about positive change.

“Why should we fear for our jobs when we can use new technology to address the long hours of work culture? Can we seriously convince young people to go sea today to work on average 75 hours a week for up to 11 months without a single day off when the ILO says its detrimental to one’s health to work more than 50 hours a week,” he said.

While seafarers hours of work and rest are in theory regulated under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) there is a major gulf between the written rules and practice

“The ML C must continuously improve and that means addressing issues such as hours of work and rest,” Dickinson said.

The 75-hour work week Dickinson referenced was based on a report by the ITF Seafarers Trust and the World Maritime University last year that was based on a survey of over 5,000 seafarers.

Speaking about the report the day before Katie Higginbottom, Head of the ITF Seafarers Trust told delegates: “The study revealed the brutal fact that seafarers routinely adjust their records to give the impression to give the impression of compliance with regulations. They are allowed to work much longer hours than is permitted in land-based work and yet they frequently struggle to get enough rest.”

The report showed average daily working hours of 11.5 hours and weekly working hours of 74.9 hours. “Significantly almost 80% of seafarers do not get a full day off ever,” she said.

Also speaking on the first day of the conference Chief Mark Philip Laurilla (aka Chief MAKOi on YouTube) said: “Work and rest hours is the most violated policy that we have.”

He gave a first-hand account of the kind of hours seafarers work and why an accurate record is not presented as it should per regulations.

“On paper this looks very clean, very nice, we have to implement the work and rest hours, but I guess all of you will agree this is not the actual case when you are on board because there are certain operations you will need to extend beyond your working hours and although company policy we do not go beyond and we have to record our work hours honestly most of the time this is not going to be the case,” he said.

“For example, your ship goes to Singapore schedule for bunkering, provisions, and sometimes port state control also comes, sometimes you’re going to up for a 24 hour work day. We have to compromise sometimes. But if you record honestly and submit it to your ship managers they will come back and say we don’t want to see any red here you’ll have to make adjustments, even if you give a rest day the following days.”

Any red marks can attract the attention of Port State Control and result in fines even if additional rest hours are given later.

It is a very different picture some other transport sectors where hours of work and rest are strictly adhered to. This was something which some delegates flying to the conference on Air France had first-hand experience of as the plane was delayed due to technical problems and once it was finally safe to take off the crew were no longer able to fly as it would have exceeded mandatory working hour limits.

The industry does acknowledge the problem exists and Niels-Christian Meyers, Director of Crewing at Reederei F Laeisz commented in the ship management panel on day 2, “There’s still work and rest hours that are being adjusted to some extent.”