The headcount that makes a safety committee mandatory and the boundary between safety representatives and the master's designee (MLC Standard A4.3)

Say there is a tug with six seafarers and a bulk carrier with twenty. Both ships do risk assessments and run safety drills. But one of them has to have something the other does not. A safety committee on board.

MLC, 2006 Regulation 4.3 and Standard A4.3 deal with occupational safety and health and accident prevention on ships. The provision does not order the company directly. It lists the subjects each Member has to put into its own laws. Inside that list there is one threshold set by headcount, and several lines dividing who does what.

A ship with five or more seafarers has a safety committee

(d) specify the authority of the ship’s seafarers appointed or elected as safety representatives to participate in meetings of the ship’s safety committee. Such a committee shall be established on board a ship on which there are five or more seafarers.

Two things sit in one subparagraph. The authority of seafarers appointed or elected as safety representatives to take part in committee meetings, and the condition on which a ship has to have that committee.

The condition is five or more seafarers. Not gross tonnage, not trading area, not ship type. The number of seafarers on that ship. Below five the Convention does not require the committee. The rest of paragraph 1 stays in place. Having no committee does not exempt the ship from the safety and health policy and programme, from risk evaluation, or from training.

What that authority consists of is not written into the provision either. What the provision asks of the Member is to specify it in law. What a safety representative may do in a meeting is read out of flag State law.

Specific responsibility for carrying the policy out lands on the master or the master’s designee

(c) specify the duties of the master or a person designated by the master, or both, to take specific responsibility for the implementation of and compliance with the ship’s occupational safety and health policy and programme; and

The provision names the post that carries the responsibility. The master, a person designated by the master, or both. Specific responsibility for implementing and complying with the ship’s safety and health policy and programme attaches there.

The subparagraph before it, (b), does a different job. It puts on shipowners, seafarers and others concerned the obligation to comply with the applicable standards and with the ship’s policy and programme, and it says special attention is to be paid to the safety and health of seafarers under the age of 18. The obligation is on everyone. The specific responsibility is on the post (c) points to.

Who the provision names	What the provision puts there
The master or a person designated by the master	Specific responsibility for implementing and complying with the policy
Seafarers appointed or elected as representatives	Authority to take part in meetings of the safety committee
Shipowners	Referring to their own ships’ statistics and general statistics
The competent authority	Measures to bring particular hazards to seafarers (posting official notices)

The four posts come from four different subparagraphs.

Risk evaluation sits inside the safety and health policy and programme

(a) the adoption and effective implementation and promotion of occupational safety and health policies and programmes on ships that fly the Member’s flag, including risk evaluation as well as training and instruction of seafarers;

Risk evaluation is not a separate item. It sits inside (including) the requirement to adopt and effectively implement a safety and health policy and programme, next to training and instruction. A policy with no risk evaluation does not fill this subparagraph.

Who does it, and on what basis, is set by paragraph 8.

8. The competent authority shall require that shipowners conducting risk evaluation in relation to management of occupational safety and health refer to appropriate statistical information from their ships and from general statistics provided by the competent authority.

The party the provision names as conducting risk evaluation is the shipowner. Two things have to be referred to. Statistical information from the shipowner’s own ships, and the general statistics the competent authority provides. Statistics from your own ships only exist if accidents and injuries were recorded on board.

Inspecting, reporting and correcting sit in the same subparagraph as accident investigation

(d) requirements for inspecting, reporting and correcting unsafe conditions and for investigating and reporting on-board occupational accidents.

One subparagraph carries two bundles. Inspecting, reporting and correcting unsafe conditions, and investigating and reporting on-board occupational accidents. The first is before an accident and the second is after one.

Who inspects on board, who they report to, and where the investigation goes are filled in by flag State law. Paragraph 6 attaches one condition. Reporting and investigation have to be designed to ensure the protection of seafarers’ personal data.

Deaths are investigated and recorded and also reported to the ILO every year

(a) all deaths of seafarers employed, engaged or working on board ships that fly its flag are adequately investigated and recorded, and reported on an annual basis to the Director-General of the International Labour Office to be published in a global register;

Deaths carry one more route. Investigating and recording is not the end of it. They are reported every year to the Director-General of the International Labour Office and published in a global register. It covers not only seafarers employed but everyone engaged or working on board that ship.

The other three subparagraphs of paragraph 5 take everything short of death. Occupational accidents, injuries and diseases are reported, comprehensive statistics are kept, analysed and published, and occupational accidents are investigated. The reporting duty is on the Member, but the material comes up from what was written down on board.

Worth confirming

The passages above come from printed pages 66 and 67 of the consolidated MLC, 2006 (including the 2022 amendments). Standard A4.3 is mandatory and Guideline B4.3 is recommendatory. Subjects such as noise, vibration, work in enclosed spaces, fatigue, and harassment sit on the Guideline side.

A large part is handed to the flag State. How far the safety representative’s authority reaches, how the committee is made up and how often it meets, and the form and destination of an accident report are all filled in by flag State law. Regulation 4.3, paragraph 2 requires each Member to develop and promulgate national guidelines after consultation with shipowners’ and seafarers’ organizations. Judgement for a given ship starts from those national guidelines.