Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 265
NEW FLAGS,
NEW APPROACHES
To reduce labour costs, Oldendorff began
“flagging out”, whilst also maintaining
high training standards for staff.
The two ‘Trave’ Schiffahrtsgesellschaft tankers were not given family names.
The three new SD14 freighters registered for Liberia-based Oldendorff subsidiary
Westfalia Shipping Corporation were named the GOOD FAITH, FUTURE HOPE
and GLOBE TRADER and were the first newbuildings not to be registered at
Lübeck and not to fly the German flag. Other Oldendorff ships already had
foreign flags, such as the CATHARINA OLDENDORFF (8,841 GRT/1956), flagged
out to Liberia on 15 June 1971 as the first German ship after the second world
war. To a limited extent flagging out took place during the world economic
crisis, mainly to countries such as Panama, Honduras, Liberia and Finland.
When flagging out still was a new phenomenon shipowners would be unfairly
criticised by the media, with comments occasionally bordering on slander and at
times they saw themselves attacked as traitors. Only specialist publications
presented an objective picture. The general public remained largely unaware
of the real reasons. Those were twofold: rigid statutory manning scales and
the level of seafarers’ wages, meanwhile among the highest in the world. As
from the late Sixties, vintage German-flag ships found it increasingly difficult
to compete with ships under flags of convenience. The age of a vessel had no
bearing on the wage level, but perhaps this was not the salient point since no
employer would get away with an ‘age discount’ applied to wages. What
really counted was the manning scale. Ships built in the Fifties when costs
played a less important role and when seafarers queued for jobs would be
comparatively generously manned. As wages and employee benefit costs
increased from about 1965 onwards, for a 5,000 tdw freighter to have a crew
of 32, or 25 or even less did make all the difference. Even when manning scales
were marginally relaxed permitting a reduction by, say, one messboy or
unskilled engine room worker the annual savings did not amount to very
much. As the H
amburger Abendblatt daily wrote on 23 April 1971: “A German
shipping company has demonstrated the relative importance of wages in
profitability calculations against the background of foreign competition,
based on the actuals of a German 11,000 tdw freighter. That German flag
ship with a crew of 40 has a daily wage bill of DM 3,300, compared with daily
wages of DM 1,850 for the same ship registered in Greece or in Liberia.”
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