Union sues Coast Guard over Aker/OSG tankers

Union sues Coast Guard over Aker/OSG tankers The Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has sued the U.S. Coast Guard, claiming that a series of 10 tankers for coastal trade being built by Aker Shipyards in Philadelphia are not in compliance with the Jones Act.
   The suit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, charges that a ruling issued last year by the Coast Guard's National Vessel Documentation Center that said the ships could trade coastwise, ignores the Jones Act requirements that stipulate that ships moving between U.S. ports must be built in the United States.
   Aker has an agreement with the Hyundai Mipo shipyard in Korea to procure parts it uses in the construction of the tankers.
   The suit asks the court to find the Coast Guard's interpretation of regulations 'to allow the preassembly and pre-outfitting of a vessel's equipment modules and piping systems in foreign facilities, to be arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with law,' and to prohibit the Coast Guard from issuing certificates of documentation endorsed for coastwise trade to any vessel that the Coast Guard deems to be U.S. built despite the vessel's equipment modules and piping systems having been preassembled and/or pre-outfitted at a foreign facility and rescind any certificates already issued.
   Aker has finished one of the tankers, the 'Overseas Houston.'
   In a press release announcing the lawsuit, the Metal Trades Departments also expressed concern about nine tankers being built for U.S. Shipping Partners L.P. by Nassco, the General Dynamics shipyard in San Diego. Nassco has an agreement to obtain designs and services related to construction of the ships from another Korean company, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.
   The Metal Trades Department said the terms of the contracts that the U.S. yards have with the Korean shipbuildings 'provide proprietary Korean designs for new tankers, along with stipulations that require the U.S. partners to exclusively use bow and stern assemblies, piping, winches, even entire engine rooms and crew quarters supplied by the Korean partners.'