William Richard Thomey

Docket Management Facility (M–30), U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12–140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20590–0001. Subject: Docket No. USCG–2010–0797 Gentlemen: This letter is to serve as comment to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled Recognition of Foreign Certificates Under the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, 1978, as Amended, Regulation I/10 I wish to file my objection to the proposed rulemaking based on these two paragraphs found within it: “Given this need, the Coast Guard is developing a policy to start establishing a process for the United States’ recognition of foreign certificates held by foreign officers who may be employed on some United States flag vessels.” and “The proposed policy could also offer guidance for mariners and/or vessel operators/employers with regard to applying for and obtaining a United States-issued endorsement of their foreign certificates.” Both paragraphs indicate that the proposed rulemaking will facilitate the employment of foreign national mariners on all types of US flagged vessels. There are no provisions in this rulemaking to protect US citizen mariners. By changing the current policy of not recognizing the STCW certificates of foreign seafarers, US flagged vessel shipowners will be given incentive to find avenues to cease employing US mariners and begin to engage foreign seafarers due to the cost differential and other issues such as US citizen seafarer civil protections. There is no language in this proposed rulemaking to not permit this from occurring. There is already significant evidence that certain shipowners are circumventing regulations in 33CFR141 by engaging foreign mariners in positions reserved for US seafarers. They are using the same provision in 46 U.S.C. 8103(b)(3) “that qualified seamen who are citizens of the United States are not available.” This is a patent falsehood which is being abused by these certain shipowners and the USCG Office of Foreign & Offshore Vessel Compliance Division is being made aware of these abuses yet the standard to prove “not available” is an easy one for these shipowners because the USCG and Department of Labor do not have statutory authority to investigate the claim of non availability of US qualified mariners. They are placed in a position where they must accept “de facto” the claims by the owners and as a result there are at least 8 vessels operating on the US Outer Continental Shelf with foreign mariners with the loss of likely more than 200 total jobs to US citizen seafarers. To open the door to further intrusions of foreign mariners onto US flagged ships will be a very significant blow to the position of the US citizen mariner who has for many decades been required to man 100% of officers and 75% of seamen on US flagged vessels. If this proposed rulemaking is placed in effect, it will seriously disenfranchise US citizen mariners, cause them significant financial harm, reduce the pool of certified citizen mariners needed to man US merchant ships in wartime and potentially create the opportunity to a person disposed against the US the ability to cause harm to our Nation. Any such rulemaking recognizing the STCW certificates of foreign seafarers must also include language which would strongly protect the US flagged mariner from being denied employment on US flagged vessels yet this rulemaking does no such thing and in fact strengthens the positions of foreign mariners and opens the door even wider to unscrupulous shipowners to engage foreign seafarers in lieu of their American counterparts. As a US citizen merchant mariner, I cannot urge more strongly that the US Coast Guard to not implement this rulemaking at this time. Respectfully submitted