The-Ave.US

I asked Davey to write this because it seems to me that some of th3e governance3 structure of his union addresses the concerns academic faculty have about academic unions.

DAVEY IS IN HAWAII … Not much to do

We arived at Honolulu at around 8PM Saturday night and we were at the dock finished with engines at 9PM, we left at 11PM Sunday night and took departure at midnight, it is now Monday night at 9PM or so. As of now it looks as though this ship will lay up at the end of this month, but that is of course subject to change depending on cargo volumes, the status of other ships or the idle whim of some person at the company office, and if it should lay up as of now I don’t know if it will lay up in Tacoma or Oakland, it was going to lay up in Seattle, but there wasn’t empty dock space cheap enough for the office. Personally, I would prefer the ship to run, for at least six more months, but I suppose the office has it’s own priorities. You asked me to write a few words about my union, so I’ll do that now. I am a member of the Marine Firemen’s Union (AKA The MFOW), one of six unions one this ship, The MFOW represents the working trades in the engine department, and so we are a craft union, our members are electricians, Firemen, Oilers, Refrigeration Engineers, Qualified Members of The Engine Department (QMEDs) and Wipers, the wiper is the entry-level job in our union. Each new member is voted on by the existing members, but these votes are public and any member voting no to a new member must explain to the membership their reasons for doing so, advancement within the union is also voted on by the membership, each new applicant and each member applying for advancement must have three full members (bookmen) vouch for them in writing, these three members are then held responsible for the performance of the person they vouched for. As this is a steamship, (and yes that means that the ship runs on a steam engine and that almost all of the auxiliaries are steam-driven) my job (QMED) includes standing watch, in my case from 4-8, and during watches, I must maintain the boilers, main engine, distilling plant, generators, and all other machinery. Off watch on overtime I along with the other two QMEDs repair machinery, build anything that needs building, and repair pretty much anything else that needs repairing. To do my job, I need to be a mechanic, welder, fitter, pipefitter, fabricator, plumber, and a machinist. All of these skills could be needed on the marine ship. These jobs are all equally as important, but there does seem to be a lot of welding involved in this role. Whilst I’m not a welder, I do understand the basics of welding. If I ever needed to know anything, I would probably just visit the site weldinginsider.com, for example, to find out anything I needed to know about welding. Hopefully, that will help me to fix any problems on the ship easily. This is on top of knowing how to operate a steam plant. On a motor ship, my job is much the same, except there are no engine room watches and instead of steam engines there are diesel engines, (even though a motor ship, just like steamship burns bunker oil and not MDO) and there is only one QMED per motor ship instead of three. I hope that the above provides the information you wanted, if anything is not clear, please ask.