Sailors employed by COSCO await visitors on deck in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province.[Photo/China Daily]

"Welfare standards for seafarers must be safeguarded by legislation," said Yu Hongjiang, consultative director at the Maritime Safety Administration. "Many Chinese seafarers sign up for temporary contracts with few benefits," he said, adding that few mariners have health insurance.

Furthermore, wage arrears are commonplace, and it's not unusual for companies to hold salaries back for three to four months. In some cases Yu has studied, the sailors were forced to wait more than two years to receive wages they were owed, despite repeated protests to the shipowners and maritime officials.

According to Yu, when a mariner signs a five-month contract, the employer will usually pay a percentage of his wage at the start, usually 50 or 30 percent, but when the contract ends, it's highly likely that the employee will not receive the remainder of his payment.

The situation gets worse if an occupational injury occurs. "The risk of injury or even death is high when working on the open ocean. Employers definitely don't want to pay for cover, and if the sailors don't have insurance, they have to pay all the costs themselves," he said. "Of course they can sue, but it takes years, and even more money, to get a result."

The decline of the shipping industry since the 2008 global economic crisis has placed shipowners under even more pressure, he said.

"Let's say hiring a sailor costs 10,000 yuan ($1,500) a month. If the sailor asks for benefits and insurance, it pushes the cost up to 40,000 or 50,000 yuan a month, so the shipowners will try anything to avoid paying for insurance," he said.

The convention will ensure decent working and living conditions for sailors, and will also protect shipowners who provide decent working conditions for their employees from unfair competition from substandard operators, he said.

Global importance

China is one of the most important maritime nations in the world, with the third-largest merchant fleet and the biggest number of seafarers－620,000, one-third of the global total.

"The ratification of the convention is not only a prerequisite for the Chinese shipping industry, it's also critical for the industry worldwide, and even more important for the global economy," Yu said.

Since 2010, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co, the country's largest global shipping business, has made efforts to keep in step with international labor standards.

After launching a pilot project on one of its cargo ships in 2010, COSCO imposed the convention's standards on all its vessels in 2013.

Inspections are much more detailed for uncertified ships, and a "no more favorable treatment" clause in the convention is designed to ensure that the ship has complied with the convention's provisions.

In that way, the convention also applies indirectly to ships of non-member countries if they plan to call at ports owned by a member state, according to Jia Guangchao, a human resources manager at COSCO.

"We were determined to meet the standard anyway. So, since the very beginning, COSCO has invested a lot to implement the convention," he said.