Originally Posted by Molon Labe

Instead of reinventing the wheel, look at The International Organization of Masters Mates and Pilots. A maritime union with a national seniority list for the large unlimited tonnages ...Lesser tonnages do not as I understand it have a master list. And yes there are very specific criteria for membership, permanent hiring and job call. And quite frankly they do a lot of things very well, and put us to shame. Permanent employees of a shipping line by the way cannot jump over to other lines willy nilly, a master list is a shield not a sword. If your line goes out of business, then you do percolate into the lines that picked up the traffic, and at your seniority...But you can't do that just for the fun of it. It does keep management from being able to threaten "If you don't take this pay and work rule cut you will have to go to the bottom somewhere else." which then re facilitates the race to the bottom that we have just had 38 years of.