I found the mechanics of this seafarer strike interesting. But for logistics students with little knowledge of the maritime environment, all of this will be new.
Many don’t realize that sailrs on many lines have been trapped at see by Covid. Their home countries won;’t allow them in without quarantines longer than their breaks, or perhaps not at all in some Asian countries. so they are trapped on thieir vessels with no breaks.
It’s a hard life; but maritimers are paid well– look at the wages, and these are for Korean-flagged ships. US flag ships would pay more.
This article shows the extreme confusion generated by the extra charges and rapidly fluctuating shipping rates with ocean carriers. Everyone is annoyed to say the least. The essence of contracting is being disrupted by these surcharges. Brokers are caught in the middle.
As many ofthecharges are not realized till after the shipment, it is hard to know how they could possibly bill for them in advance or even give notice to shippers. The result is they always look bad to their customers, even if they have given a good effort to get a successful shipment for the cargo owner.
The FMC should not create more confusion and unintended consequences. I’m not a fan of brokers particularly– they are just one player in supply chains– but they have a useful role by securing capacity in advance and making it available to shippers. In fact, they secure a large portion of ocean carrier capacity themselves and resell it., they also play a role by making sure extra services, such as end point delivery, are also made available, when shippers would have more trouble handling the details working directly with carriers. We should not write rules that make it hard to keep the market functioning.
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John Gallagher, Washington Correspondent Follow on TwitterThursday, June 17, 2021
Today’s news brings more info on unintended consequences of Brexit. I submit this could be fairly serious in thelong run, and make customs essentially unenforceable from EU to the UK.
Apparently it takes customs a long time to process the forms required to import from the EU. MNow EU shippers could use a broker to file the forms. The charge for that is small. But if the broker in the UK files the forms, they are also making themselves liable for nonpayment of the customs duty. Often this duty is quite large. And the UK customs (HMRC) cannot go after the EU cargo owner– the law isn’t in effect there. So who do they go after? The local UK brokerage.
Brokers in the UK simply cannot afford this risk, so they will quit brokering cargo from the UK. And the HMRC will have nowhere to go to collect duties.
I’m not sure what can be done to unwind this, either. Brexit will untimately break the agreements on duties that were in place, in favor of self-determination. So the UK will have to ‘self-determine’ how to collect duties. Do we go back to customs patrols and ship searches? You can bet there will be plenty of cheating by failure to file forms, on the part of EU cargo owners, perhaps even smuggling. The nightmares of the 19th century are before us.
Supply Chain and Logistics 