Maritime Community and its Human Resource Mobility

Abstract

In the maritime community, a runner-up will undertake this typical process to catch up with the front runner; first, as a nation's economy grows its domestic crew costs rise, creating a gap with those abroad, which in turn depresses the international competitiveness of shipping companies. Then, to maintain their economic strength, shipping companies have their ships fly a “flag of convenience” relying on increasing amounts of cheap foreign labour. As a result, the nation gradually loses domestic seafarers, which, in the worst case, leads to a depletion of national human resource needed for its maritime cluster to continue to exist. In that sense, the personnel shortage issue is a fate for top runners in the marine transport world, where international competitiveness is inevitable. The Japanese maritime sector is just facing this issue. In this paper, the current situation in the maritime sector and its dependence on foreign labour, the cause and process of the change and the problems of the outcomes are explained, and the possible solutions in terms of the social mechanism of personnel development and utilization are discussed.