ILO: Compendium of Maritime Labour Instruments

The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, an important international labour Convention, was adopted by the International Labour Conference at its 94th (Maritime) Session. Sometimes called a “bill of rights” for seafarers, it sets out seafarers’ rights to decent conditions of work and helps to establish conditions for fair competition for shipowners. The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 was designed as a global legal instrument that has become the “fourth pillar” of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, complementing the key Conventions of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The 2014 amendments to the Convention are also included in this edition.

The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 contains a comprehensive set of global standards, consolidating almost all the existing maritime labour Conventions and Recommendations that have been adopted since 1920, in a single new Convention with a new format and requirements that reflect modern conditions in the industry. The Convention establishes international requirements for decent work for all seafarers, including minimum terms in seafarers’ employment agreements, minimum age, medical fitness requirements, training, wages, leave, repatriation, on-board accommodation and catering, medical care, occupational safety and health, welfare and social security. An important new part of the Convention, Title 5, is devoted to compliance and enforcement requirements. These requirements were designed to achieve continuous “compliance awareness” at every stage from the national systems of protection up to the international system, including inspection of conditions on all ships as well as flag State certification, and port State inspection, of labour conditions on ships that go on international voyages.

This essential new reference source also includes the Seafarers’ Identity Documents (Revised) Convention, 2003 (No. 185), the Work in Fishing Convention, 2007 (No. 188) and Recommendation, 2007 (No. 199), the ILO’s fundamental Conventions and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up.