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Issue 69 |
April 4, 2008 |
Monthly news and views on shipping, energy and international trade recruitment -
commercial, technical, legal, finance, insurance
Distributed free to over 14,300 maritime professionals worldwide
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IN THIS ISSUE
Welcome
Isn't shipping great?
Shipping people get sweaty on Canvey Island
8 out of 10 graduates only search for jobs online
How to use apostrophes - Article Two
Professional Services Recruitment
Posidonia 2008
Singapore 2008 tax discount
Candidate bulletins
Dear Spinnaker: Is rolled up holiday pay legal?
Dealing with recruiters - employers' rights
Earn £400
Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007
BIMCO 39 Annual Conference Day
New Vacancies
A STRANGE one this March – snow, high winds, Elliot Spitzer caught with his trousers down and the unexpected and unusual departure of BIMCO Secretary General, Carsten Melchiors.
SIX months into the business year, turnover and profits are up here at Spinnaker. We continue to experience very high demand for staff, which itself continues to define the market as “jobseeker-driven” and means that it is only employers who are serious about hiring that are moving swiftly and decisively enough to beat the competition to the best people.
OF COURSE, the banking market has displayed some jitters of late, but the underlying fundamentals remain and ship finance does not look like a sector that has too many people. Indeed, Talia St Clayre, finance recruitment specialist at Spinnaker says, “there is a shortage of associate level people in the Far East in shipping banks, especially from the local market. People who are that junior, say a year or two out of university, are in high demand but are expensive to relocate, which further breeds the problem.”
READ on for the second in each of our series of articles on apostrophe misuse and employers’ rights when dealing with recruiters. In this issue discover how to get sweaty with your friends in shipping, find out what 8 out of 10 graduates like to do and please give a round of applause to our own Nicola Wood on her promotion to Manager of our Professional Services team.
ISN’T shipping great?
Forgive us for sounding like a ‘train spotter’ but there can’t be many other industries that are so inextricably and directly linked to global trade and without which global trade would just grind to a halt. There are those who are concerned about the arrival of hedge funds and banks on the freight trading market and, with them, million dollar bonuses, but by crikey it’s made shipping sexy again. Who would ever have thought we’d see traders moving from banking and commodities into shipping?
To take part in our annual freight trader salary and bonus research contact Phil Parry or Lyndsey Gill on + 44 (0)1702 480142.
In a similar vein, for information on joining the Tanker HR Forum, a global association of tanker owners and trading organisations please email pparry@shippingjobs.com.
SHIPPING PEOPLE GET SWEATY ON CANVEY ISLAND
THE date? 14th June 2008. The time? 1pm. The event? The Making Waves Triathlon Challenge 2008. The cause? The Mission to Seafarers. The place? Canvey Island in Essex.
Yes, the glamour of Canvey will once again draw crowds of shipping folk together to sweat their way around what would be considered a gentle triathlon challenge in any other industry. But for us folk in shipping, The Making Waves Triathlon Challenge 2008 is a Sunday afternoon of Everest proportions.
Making Waves is an off-road sprint triathlon consisting of a 300m swim, 15K bike ride and a 5K run. You can enter as an individual or in a team of three. At Spinnaker we have scoured the corridors and entered the only three people we could find who don’t rely on a pacemaker and 20 Benson & Hedges to get them through the day.
The event will conclude with an awards ceremony, an open BBQ and children's attractions, making this a fun day out for all the family. Which is nice really, because we don’t do shipping fun days out very much in UK shipping. (Yours truly has always admired how well the Connecticut Maritime Association brings the shipping community together outside of the office.)
For more information http://www.missiontoseafarers.org/triathlon
8 OUT OF 10 GRADUATES ONLY SEARCH FOR JOBS ONLINE
DO you remember those cat food adverts: “8 out of 10 owners said their cats preferred it”? 8 out of 10 cats is also a TV comedy show. A quick search on Google reveals that more than eight out of ten toy factories in China's manufacturing heartland are substandard. It’s also the number of teenagers in Vermont who don’t smoke. Yeah, right!
According to Reed, 8 out of 10 is the number of graduates who only use the internet to search for jobs. Reed say that just 3% scour newspaper advertisements for jobs, 57% spend less than an hour researching companies before interview and 9% of graduates don’t do any research prior to interviews. Welcome to the information age!
80% of respondents to Reed’s poll also claim to be avid users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Hey, guess what? That’s 8 out of 10!
Whilst the lack of research time put in by the Facebook generation suggests laziness, Reed say that it does appear that graduate jobseekers need more information provided in job descriptions and from recruitment consultants. Training and development information scores highest on the wish list.
These demands seem fair enough. Competition for the best graduates is tough. With vacancies greatly outnumbering experienced jobseekers, fast-track graduates are needed to refill the talent pool. In shipping, especially the shipbroking and chartering market, employers are competing with other industries for top talent. The end result of all this is that graduate salaries have risen. £25-30,000 is now the norm for commercial graduate vacancies in shipping. This is considerably higher than a few years ago, but still below the banking market, which routinely pays £35,000 and above for new starters.
At Spinnaker we conducted our own survey and found that 8 out of 10 people only use shippingjobs.com to search for jobs. We would like to thank our mums for taking part in the survey. Your complimentary shippingjobs post-it notes are on the way.
HOW TO USE APOSTROPHES – ARTICLE TWO
WE are still slightly embarrassed to be running articles on this subject, but daily examples of apostrophe violence in CVs, emails, job descriptions and so on, give us the courage to press ahead against the snow storm of having better things to do.
Last month’s rule? Apostrophes are NEVER ever used to denote plurals.
This month’s? Apostrophes are used to denote possession.
For example:
the dog’s bone
the company’s logo
John’s bakery
If there are two or more dogs, companies or Johns, the apostrophe comes after the ‘s’.
the dogs’ bones
the companies’ logos
Johns’ bakery (An unlikely example, this bakery is owned by two friends called John!)
But, there is no apostrophe in ours, yours or hers.
Neither is there an apostrophe in ‘its’ when it is (it’s) showing possession.
The bone is in its mouth.
Hopefully, this month we’ve managed to avoid our own ‘deliberate’ mistakes.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES RECRUITMENT
CONGRATULATIONS to Spinnaker’s Nicola Wood, who has been promoted to Manager of our Professional Services recruitment team. Nic has worked in recruitment for “too many” years and previously had the pleasure of working for Amy Travell in our Commercial and Trading recruitment team where she looked after our client base in the in Far East.
That torch has been handed over to Rhiannon Roberts (rroberts@shippingjobs.com) who has been working alongside Nic for several months.
Spinnaker’s Professional Services team enables us to offer our clients specialist recruiters in areas where they otherwise have to deal with generalist recruiters. Those who know us for other things may be surprised to learn that in fact our business was built from strong foundations in shipping law, P&I and marine & energy insurance recruitment.
The Professional Services team employs consultants who are experts in each of these areas as well as Banking & Finance specialists, ITC specialists and Sales & Marketing specialists. Nicola is also planning to add an HR specialist to the team.
Asked how she feels about herding cats, Nicola gritted her teeth and said, with a grimace, “I’m looking forward to getting to grips with my new role. The main challenge is making sure our existing clients know what we do.”
“Spinnaker has a remarkable amount of repeat business compared to other recruiters I have worked for, but we’ve not been brilliant at making sure our shipowning and trading clients know our strengths in professional services recruitment. We have filled many many jobs for leading maritime law firms, shipping banks, marine insurers, communications companies and so on. I aim to let our shipowning and trading clients know we can find them the best professionals for their in-house roles as well.”
If you’re looking for a lawyer, insurance broker, relationship manager, accountant, sales director or Oracle specialist, contact Nicola on nwood@shippingjobs.com and one of her team will be delighted to help.
As the winds die down, the snow melts and the sun starts to show its cheeky face again, thoughts turn to this year’s Posidonia.
Don’t forget to invite us to all the best parties!!!
All Singapore resident taxpayers will get a tax rebate of 20% for the 2008 Year of Assessment. This appears to mean that after you file your taxes this April, the tax due on chargeable income will be discounted by 20%. The catch? Well there isn’t one really, but there is a cap – of SGD2000.
CANDIDATE BULLETINS
If you would like to receive copies of Spinnaker's regular candidate bulletins containing brief details of active jobseekers from our commercial, technical, finance, ports, legal, insurance, ITC and sales & marketing teams please email your name, company name and email address to narmstrong@shippingjobs.com.
DEAR SPINNAKER: IS ROLLED UP HOLIDAY PAY LEGAL?
To coin a phrase: “Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah...” And that just about sums up the legal position, which is why so many employers are confused.
By virtue of the European Working Time Directive, all workers (including temporary and those with irregular hours) are entitled to 4.8 weeks (24 days) of paid leave every year including bank holidays. This will increase to 5.6 weeks or 28 days (from 1st April 2009 in the UK).
Temporary workers and workers with irregular hours accrue holiday on a pro rata basis. The Working Time Regulations state that entitlement to leave may not be replaced by payment in lieu. It is therefore unlawful to pay workers instead of allowing them to take holiday.
Under a rolled up holiday pay scheme, workers are paid an enhanced hourly rate which incorporates their entitlement to holiday pay, but they do not lose their right to take leave. They accrue holiday in the normal way and are entitled to take it. However, since their normal hourly rate has already compensated them for their entitlement to holiday pay, they are not paid for the leave at the time the leave is taken.
In 2004 the European Court of Justice ruled that such schemes are unlawful and said that EU countries should take steps to ensure that they are discontinued. However it also said that employers could set off against holiday pay any rolled up amounts paid, provided that the scheme was sufficiently transparent.
What does “transparent” mean? A recent tribunal decision suggests this may include express agreement to rolled up holiday pay in the employment contract, clearly stating the holiday pay in the payslip, keeping holiday records and making genuine efforts to ensure holiday is taken.
Yeah but no but… So what’s the problem? Well, it’s twofold. First, if the scheme isn’t sufficiently transparent an employer does risk being forced to pay holiday pay twice. Secondly, the EU decision was clear that schemes should be discontinued. Legislation to this effect is widely expected in due course.
DEALING WITH RECRUITERS – EMPLOYERS’ RIGHTS
“I have received a CV from a recruitment consultant but I already have the CV on my database or someone in my company already knows the person. What are my rights?”
There are two relevant issues here – fairness and the legal position.
You have a vacancy and have instructed a recruitment agency. They send a jobseeker’s CV. You already know that jobseeker or he/she has applied to you in the past. Do you (a) reject the CV and tell the agency that you intend to deal with the jobseeker directly, or (b) accept that without the agency’s introduction you would not have pursued this particular jobseeker? After all, why hadn’t you already done so?
In these circumstances, fairness and the legal position are not all that dissimilar. You will be deemed to have accepted typically-worded employment agency terms and conditions if as a result of receiving the CV from the agency you then took action to pursue that particular jobseeker, whether directly or via the agency. Bear in mind that if the agency has done its job properly it will only have sent the CV to you with the jobseeker’s express permission (in accordance with data protection and employment agency legislation) and will therefore (a) have confirmed that there is no ongoing recruitment dialogue with you and (b) be authorised to represent that person in respect of their application to your company.
The moral of the story is that you should consider your database and contacts before appointing recruitment consultancies or should provide a hands-off list or agree a hands-off policy in advance.
EARN £400
EARN £400 by passing on the details of one of our vacancies to someone who might be suitable.
Just go to www.shippingjobs.com/ jobseekers/referral_scheme.asp and complete the simple form. Subject to the terms of the scheme, if the person you refer gets the job, you get £400. Simple! (Jobs advertised on shippingjobs.com directly by named employers are not eligible for this scheme.)
CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER ACT 2007
On April 6 2008 the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 will come into effect in the UK. This will affect British registered ships and offshore structures and ships within UK territorial waters.
Companies or organisations whose gross negligence causes the death of an individual, whether he or she is an employee, contractor or customer, will face prosecution for manslaughter.
It is not possible under the present law to add up the negligence of several individuals to show the company as grossly negligent. A specific individual has to be identified as a “controlling mind” for corporate manslaughter to be proven.
Under the new Act, an organisation is guilty of the offence of corporate manslaughter if the way in which any of the organisation's activities are managed or organised by the “senior managers”: a) causes a person's death; and b) amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased. The offence will be clearly linked to existing health and safety requirements.
As a result of the new law, all companies, organisations and Government bodies will be affected. Companies will incur unlimited fines if they are found to have caused death due to their gross corporate health and safety failures.
BIMCO 39 ANNUAL CONFERENCE DAY
Mark the date in your diary! The BIMCO 39 Annual Conference Day will take place in Hamburg on 29th May. The theme is “Shipping - linking Europe and Asia” and will include:
Changes and Trends in the Maritime Industry
The European Shipping Industry: Changes and Trends
Newbuildings, Market Trends and Development
Shipping Trends from Asia-Pacific’s Viewpoint
Education and Professional Development - Preparing Students for a Global
Cluster Recruitment Campaign and Branding Our Industry – From Strategy to Execution!
Our Security
Role of the USCG in Port State Controls and Security and Anti-Terrorism
Management of Major Emergencies/Crisis Management
Window to the World – Communicate Openly, clearly and On Time!
Our Environment – Greener Shipping
Air Emission, Not Just Hot Air
Ballast Water Management
For these and more vacancies visit www.shippingjobs.com. Ctrl and Click to see more details on the vacancies below.
Chartering Manager, London
Operations Assistant, London
Ship Operator, Antwerp
Claims Manager, Greece
Planning Manager - Dubai
Dynamic Positioning Instructor - London
Technical Superintendent, Hamburg/Scotland
Assistant Technical Superintendent, Scotland
Africa Projects Accountant - Africa
Accounts Assistant - London
VB.Net/ VB Developer
Technical Superintendent, Poland
Crewing Manager, Athens/UK
Operations Assistant, Methanol
Dry Cargo Broker - Beijing
Technical Superintendent
Graduate
Technical Superintendent, Costa Rica
Marine Controller- Grimsby
Quantity Surveyor, Qatar
Technical Superintendent, Qatar
Purchaser, Grimsby (UK)
Senior Marine Superintendent, Grimsby (UK)
Technical Superintendent - Scotland
Senior Purchaser, Grimsby (UK)
Chief Operating Officer, Malaysia
Senior Marine/Quality Manager, Grimsby (UK)
Tester - QA Analyst
In-house Maritime Lawyer - Trading Group
Dry Cargo Ship Operator - Singapore
Shipping Lawyer
Technical Manager, Singapore