Alvaro Ramos of ILWU Local 13 contributed this photo of a Matson ship at call this week in Southern California. The attack on the Jones Act threatens American jobs at Matson and Horizon Lines, which hire American crew. Most other carriers hire foreign crew.
Twenty-four foreign vessels are already working in the Gulf, according to Clark Stevens, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, in a phone interview. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James A. Watson, the federal on-scene coordinator in the Gulf, has put in place a process to allow Jones Act exemptions if they prove necessary for foreign skimming vessels to operate within three miles of the coast, according to Stevens.
That hasn’t eliminated assertions that the Jones Act is slowing efforts to help. Fred McCallister, an investment banker in Dallas with Allegiance Capital Corp., told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing today that his proposal to assemble a fleet of foreign ships for cleanup duty has been rebuffed by both BP and the Coast Guard.
“It’s an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem” in the cleanup effort, said Mark Ruge, counsel for the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a Washington-based group representing companies led by Horizon and Matson. The law preserves a domestic shipping industry that generates $100 billion a year in revenue, Ruge said.
Bill Van Loo, secretary-treasurer of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association in Washington, said the push by McCain and others to suspend or repeal the law “seems like politics more than a pragmatic approach.”
Attempts to dismantle the law are made periodically in an effort to weaken unions, said Dennis McElwee, a maritime lawyer in Houston.
Eliminating the Jones Act would “do away with the last remaining union seamen in the U.S.,” McElwee said in an interview, Fewer than 10 percent of U.S. maritime workers are in unions today, he said.