Crew and labour

Minimum age for seafarers and the night work ban under 18 (MLC Regulation 1.1)

MLC, 2006 Regulation 1.1 and Standard A1.1 set a minimum age of 16 and restrict night work and hazardous work for seafarers under 18. The age and assigned working hours of cadets must be checked separately.

Under 16 there is no exception clause to fall back on

The employment, engagement or work on board a ship of any person under the age of 16 shall be prohibited.

Employment, engagement and work are all prohibited. The three words sit side by side to close off any escape through the form of the contract. An unpaid cadetship, a family member taken along: if the person works on the ship, it is work on board a ship.

No exception is attached to this bracket. The night work exception that follows attaches only to the 18 bracket.

For anyone under 18, night runs at least nine hours

Night work of seafarers under the age of 18 shall be prohibited. For the purposes of this Standard, “night” shall be defined in accordance with national law and practice. It shall cover a period of at least nine hours starting no later than midnight and ending no earlier than 5 a.m.

National law and practice define night. The provision then puts a floor under that definition. It has to run nine hours or more, it cannot start later than midnight, and it cannot end earlier than 5 a.m.

Overlay the three conditions and a window falls inside night under any national definition: midnight to 5 a.m. The start cannot slide past midnight and the end cannot be pulled in before 5 a.m., so those five hours survive every definition. Filling out the nine hours adds four more hours on either side, and where those four hours go is what the flag State actually decides.

The midnight to 4 a.m. watch sits in the middle of those five hours. Putting a cadet under 18 on it runs into the provision unless an exception has been granted.

The exception is opened by the competent authority, not by the company

An exception to strict compliance with the night work restriction may be made by the competent authority when:

The body that makes the exception is the competent authority. Not the company, not the master. And the grounds are limited to two.

Ground	What the provision requires
(a) effective training in accordance with established programmes and schedules would be impaired	The programme and schedule have to exist first
(b) the specific nature of the duty or a recognized training programme requires night duty	Consultation with the shipowners’ and seafarers’ organizations, then a determination by the authority that the work will not be detrimental to health or well-being

Consultation and a determination are conditions on (b) and not on (a). In exchange, (a) presumes that training is in fact being impaired, so it cannot be relied on where no cadet programme was drawn up before the person joined. Either way this is not something that can be settled on board on the day.

The list of work barred to under 18s is written by the flag State

The employment, engagement or work of seafarers under the age of 18 shall be prohibited where the work is likely to jeopardize their health or safety.

The provision sets the test and hands off the list. Which work falls inside it is determined by national laws or regulations or by the competent authority, after consultation with the shipowners’ and seafarers’ organizations concerned, in accordance with relevant international standards.

An unavailable prohibited-work list does not remove the restriction or authorize the company to permit hazardous work on its own judgment. Do not assign work likely to endanger health or safety; clarify its classification with the competent authority.

Clearing the age brackets is not enough without safety training

Age is only one threshold. Regulation 1.3 sets a second one.

Seafarers shall not be permitted to work on a ship unless they have successfully completed training for personal safety on board ship.

Without having successfully completed training for personal safety on board ship, a seafarer may not work on the ship. Regulation 1.3 paragraph 3 then treats training and certification under the mandatory instruments adopted by IMO as meeting that requirement. In practice the STCW basic safety training certificate fills the slot.

A cadet meets the whole combination at once. Whether the person is over 16, whether the watch falls in night hours if the person is under 18, and whether the basic safety training certificate was issued before joining. The three come from different provisions, so checking one leaves the other two open.

Worth confirming

The passages above come from printed pages 17 and 19 of the consolidated MLC, 2006 (including the 2022 amendments). Standard A1.1 is mandatory, but the exact clock hours of night, the list of work barred to under 18s, and the procedure for granting a night work exception are all filled in by flag State law. What the flag State calls night, whether the list of prohibited work has been published, and where an exception is applied for are where the actual judgement starts.

You can consult the cited source documents

These links lead to the official publishers of the documents discussed here. Match the edition and provisions cited in the article, and check subsequent amendments and flag-state implementation before applying them.

ILO · MLC, 2006 (2022)

Bellbook keeps the date of birth on the personnel record and rest hours down to the hour of day

Age limits only resolve when the date of birth on the crew list is read against the hours actually worked. Bellbook keeps the date of birth on the personnel record card, and rest hour entries keep the from and to times exactly as recorded.

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