The
National Mariners Association is a national organization that currently
coordinates its activities from a functional office borrowed from its
Secretary’s well established “day job” of researching and editing textbooks for
mariners.
NMA is an Association of credentialed
“limited-tonnage” merchant mariners who serve or served primarily on merchant
vessels of less than 1,600 gross tons.
Our Association abandoned the Coast Guard term “lower-level mariner”
because we believed it was demeaning, unpopular, and out of date.
Our Association progressed from its Gulf
of Mexico regional base to a nationwide organization. Our Directors live and work in diverse areas
on the east, west, and Gulf coasts, on inland waters and the western rivers. We changed the name of the Association to
“National Mariners Association” although many of our older “reports” still bear
our old GCMA logo.
We invite mariners from all over the
country whether union or non-union to support our efforts on behalf of all
126,000 “limited-tonnage” active or retired credentialed mariners wherever they
may be and on whatever commercial vessel they may be working. In addition, there are many entry-level
mariners not counted in this number who could profit from sharing information
gathered from other mariners.
Our membership also includes a number of
attorneys who serve as counselors and have been willing to share their
expertise with our members. We invite
our members to call upon them for legal advice and counsel before they need
their legal services. Our lawyers are
listed on our website.
We also suggest that all our
credentialed officers consider purchasing license insurance to provide personal
legal protection in case some unexpected job-related casualty suddenly
strikes. NMA Report #R-204-C, Rev. 6
explains our reasoning. A number of past
events explained in NMA Report #R-204, Rev. 4 provide concrete examples of the
variety of legal perils our mariners face.
For mariners who believe that all
maritime employers treat injured mariners fairly and with compassion, we suggest
that examining some cases our Association encountered in NMA Report #R-202,
Rev. 5. That said, we are NOT lawyers at
NMA; we do not offer “legal advice;” we do NOT sell insurance; and we DON’T get
“commissions” from lawyers or insurance companies! However, we DO accept donations and provide
access to our professional products with the payment of modest membership dues
of $36.00 per year to defray our expenses.
Our Association works to encourage
professionalism, improve working conditions, health, safety, and welfare of
masters, mates, pilots, licensed and unlicensed engineers, tankermen,
deckhands, and cooks who work on vessels including tugs, towboats, small
passenger vessels, uninspected passenger vessels, offshore supply vessels and
other “workboats” and other commercial vessels.
To be a professional, you need to keep
informed of what is going on in the industry.
We try to help you to do this in our NMA Newsletter. However, we ask you to take the time to read
our newsletters and reports. We use the
www.nationalmariners.us website maintained for us by Captain J. David Miller in
Davenport, Iowa. Hopefully, our mariners
can remain better informed than mariners who are unwilling to take the time to
keep up-to-date on the issues.
Our Association was founded in 1999, has
a thirteen-year track-record, and has left a well-documented paper trail in the
form of NMA Reports and Newsletters that our Webmaster lists or displays on our
website. If you want a copy of any
report, either e-mail richardblock@nationalmariners.us
or call us and leave a message at 985-851-2134.
To stretch
our limited funds, we generally forward “reports” and “newsletters” by
e-mail. We ask mariners to visit our
website, find out everything we are trying to do and help document and support
our activities because….
- We
are an active Association that consistently stands up for issues that affect
our mariners. We count on our mariners
to provide us with information to develop our issues. We want to share the collected information
with them! This is a two way street
using phone, fax, and e-mail.
- We
are “The Voice for Limited Tonnage Mariners” and speak out on important
national and regional issues that affect mariners. However, we need the help of mariners to
bring these issues to our attention and the attention of the “right people” in
government and industry. That’s why we
try to reduce everything to writing and leave the “paper trail” to follow. We count on mariners to read our writings and
then describe events that affect you in your own words. If you believe “something must be done” that
will benefit other mariners, ask us if what you are asking makes sense within
the “big picture” – so together we can work effectively to make it happen. We will try to guide mariners to the right
contact person for any given issue and help make the contact. But, it works both ways. Sometimes mariners must tell us what is going
on and then keep us posted.
- Most
of our Directors are now or have been working mariners with years of experience
on the western rivers, inland waters, or on oceans or coastwise waters. We will encourage our mariners to contact
them by phone relative to their areas of expertise.
- By
joining us, a mariner has an opportunity to become part of the solution and not
part of the problem. However, we must
work hard and touch all bases to make the solution the right solution. We encourage mariners to take advantage of
that opportunity by participating in our activities whenever you have the
chance to do so.
— Our
Report #R-350, Revision 6, boils down the major issues we brought to the
attention of the 112th Congress. Our
Newsletter will give mariners any changes in the status of these issues. Report #R-350, Rev. 6 updates the 25 primary
issues we first brought to the attention of Congress years ago. A number of changes favorable to our mariners
appeared in the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 that we covered in Newsletter
#73 (Oct. 2010) and reprinted in NMA Report #R-203-F. This reflects four years of work in the 110th
and 111th Congress that will affect our mariners in the future.