No hands on deck? Washington state maritime labor is headed for a retirement cliff

No hands on deck? Washington state maritime labor is headed for a retirement cliff
Scott Greenstone June 23, 2018 https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6329375-151/no-hands-on-deck

When Capt. Ken Penwell’s son was looking for a job, Penwell offered to get him work as a deckhand. Penwell captains hopper dredges for Seattle’s Manson Construction, sucking up dirt and clay from river beds.

But Kyle Penwell didn’t want to go into his father’s career.

“Dad, I don’t want to be gone that long from friends and family like you were,” the father recalled his son saying.

Ken Penwell has been in the maritime industry 37 years, and in his first job, he was gone for five months at a time. He texts and calls his family as often as possible, but the job has taken a toll. Penwell has been separated from his wife for 10 years.

Penwell is 60 and hoping to retire soon. He’s not the only one: The marine workforce in Washington — which includes sailors, engineers, captains and other workers on everything from tugboats to shipping vessels — is headed for a mass retirement. Close to a third of the state’s almost 6,000 water-transportation workers are older than 55, according to 2016 data from the Census Bureau.

“We’re just about at a cliff,” said Joshua Berger, director of economic development for the maritime sector of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He says this issue is the maritime sector’s biggest concern.

For years, young people haven’t been entering the maritime trades in numbers sufficient to fill holes left by old workers, Berger and other experts say. Seamen, captains, pilots, engineers, shipbuilders, dock workers, and even galley cooks, among others, are getting older with few qualified people to take their place.

Some sectors are in crisis mode: This problem could keep Washington State Ferries from sailing, according to ferries spokesman Ian Sterling. About 40 percent of the ferry system’s vessel employees are eligible for retirement in the next 5 to 10 years, and around 88 percent of the ferries’ captains.

“Frankly, we are already too late to address our problem,” Sterling said.

Maritime workers help support a $17 billion industry in Washington. The average maritime laborer in Washington made almost $67,000 a year in May 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; a captain, mate or pilot made almost $84,000.

So why aren’t young people going down to the docks to get jobs like their parents did? In answers to this newspaper’s callout to readers, mariners gave a range of reasons: schools steering students toward college and away from blue-collar labor, the training and tests hopeful mariners have to complete, the tough nature of the work, and notions that the industry is “old and dirty.”

‘Like being in jail’

Maritime labor isn’t easy. Robert Robison followed his father into tug boating, but he understands why many of today’s young people don’t want to do it. He’s 57 and has worked on tugboats for 29 years, and he’s retiring as soon as possible.

“I’d retire today if I could,” Robison said.

Robison’s work in the ocean division of tug boating takes him across the Pacific. He recently returned from a 90-day trip from Seattle to Hawaii to Korea to Japan to Russia and back.

This work isolates him from life on the mainland: In the past, he’s been called to sea for months and months with little notice.

“Someone says, ‘I’m having a party — a wedding in September, can you come?’ “ Robison said. “I don’t know if I can make it.”

When Robison started in tug boating, the only way he could call his wife was at pay phones wherever the ship stopped. He’d wait in line with change, call home, and sometimes his wife would be at the store.

“It’s brutal if you have small kids,” Robison said. “It’s extremely hard on marriages.”

But Robison has been married 28 years. Today, ships have internet, but on his tugs, it’s as slow as dial-up used to be, he says.

When Robison is at sea, he works four hours and then rests for eight. The work is often physical. A few weeks ago, he tore the rotator cuff in his left shoulder while lifting a 100-pound tow shackle.

During rest shift, he’s often so bored, he’ll sleep to make the time pass faster. There’s not much to do on a small tug like the Michele Foss, which is the size of “a big double-trailer with two locomotive engines down bottom.”

“It’s like being in jail on that boat,” Robison said.

Not every maritime job is as hard as Robison’s. Many tug boaters deploy for two weeks at a time. Shipwrights and longshoremen don’t have to go to sea, and ferry workers can come home after every shift.

But for some, the sea is a welcome change from life on land. Geoff Dickgieser is a student at Seattle Maritime Academy who is interning on a steam ship in the Bering Sea.

“All the problems and complications of life at home are far away,” Dickgieser wrote via email, his only steady connection with the outside world when he’s at sea.

Intern Sebastian Jewell takes the quartermaster’s place at the wheel of the ferry Cathlamet on his last run of the day. Jewell will start his senior year at California State University Maritime Academy in the fall, but this summer, he’s been at work starting at 5 a.m. daily on the Washington State Ferries. The pay is $50 a day.

Jewell is part of a team of 21 interns from Seattle Maritime Academy and California Maritime who’ve worked in the engine rooms, decks and wheelhouses of Washington’s ferries all summer.

Jewell says the old deck crew have passed on a lot of wisdom to him, from how to navigate between sail boats to advice about deferred compensation.

“They’re the wealth of knowledge,” Jewell said.