Stop all ROV work worldwide until Day rate are increased

[Savante]

ach, tis all relative to the industry surely?

How much are we paying for Scot Severin these days? 😆 Does comparing another industry (like the civil service/military) really give a good perspective on the oil market?

Also, in all those careers you get good final salary pensions. Day raters get nuffink unless they tend to their own.

I don’t think ROV pilots salaries are particularly out of the ordinary – compared to say divers, well intervention engineers, drillers, tool pushers, roustabouts, vessel masters, survey chiefs, data processors……..

[Mrhappy]

The fact that you do or do not get your tax back has nothing to do with the rates of pay.

[Anonymous]

Savante,

Ah good to see at least one non ‘office scumbag’ on this thread. Lets hope day rates hit £1000 a day soon!!! still less than a footballer, and yet we make more money for the oil industry than Scott does for Aberdeen!!

and I see another office wally SGB (probably plead oh no I am a offshore person who thinks I am so over paid!!) trying to give it 12 hours a day, as I said before you want to think it’s 12 hours a day then get us home every night and back to work in the morning!!

This post should be changed to Office wankers bullshit!!

As for tax back so what!! I also heard the taxman is now saying bodyshops can not have PAYE only self employed, so this means UKPS, Proffs, subserv, technip, oceaneering and many others will not be getting tax back, and in fact may be requested to repay the tax from the past 2 years. so as the office knobs want to somehow make a rediculous calculation that means we are all on 120K+ a year due to tax bakc, then I take it they will be paying our tax bill for us!!

So office scum, go away you are meerly leeches on our back and we don’t care what you think or say!!

Savechange

[SGB]

Put your dummy back in for Gods sake.

Just a couple of points…..

I was offshore for 14 years so I know what its like you silly little boy.

By the way I am not salaried with any company, I work freelance and I have no influence on the level of offshore salaries, I have only indicated that the strike action ordered by the oily 10 (remember them?) will only encourage more companies to recruit crews who have lower wage expectations from other areas. It would be a fool not to realise that. This will not happen overnight but gradually, certain companies are already actively recruiting from outside the UK, some in mainland Europe (Poland for example), South Africa and the Far East. If companies paid a global standard rate this would not be a problem but they don’t and we all have an opinion on that.

The day rates charged to clients include cost apportionment / allocation and profit. If the profit is reduced then that could be passed down, the cost allocation element cannot. If you were a company man you might like the idea that this profit contributes to company benefits such as pension, medical care and other benefits. As agency you choose not to have these benefits and the difference between agency and company rates should reflect this.

The tax situation that the agency crews are experiencing is wrong in so many ways. A friend of mine had to pay 2 years tax back because his accountant screwed up. He was told that he was responsible for the debt as he signed the self assessment even though an accountant prepared it.

ps I hope you get £1,000 a day, although that would mean doubling the current rates passed onto clients. They wouldn’t mind, would they?

[Cabledog]

Sav,

The pension thing is the same for dayraters no matter what industry you work in. Perks of being self-employed I’m afraid.

Jim,

Welcome back to the wacky world of the skimmers 😀 😀 😀

Save,

No offence, but you have come out with some of the most ridiculous drivel I have had the dis-pleasure to read or hear in years. Forces lads have something to winge about when it comes to pay and conditions, like getting shot at for 50 Quid a day 😯 😯 8O. Not much to complain about working in the North sea really is there. A bit different on a roach barge in Indo mind, but we digress.

As things are at the moment you get everything done for you, transport to work paid for from your door, food, laundry, phone calls home, internet access etc all paid for and you get a bloody good wage which you can claim the tax back on. Forces guys spend more time away from home than most who work off-shore and still cannot claim the tax back irrespective of where they work/die ❗ ❗ ❗ ❗ ❗

As for all this office worker crap, grow up 😯 😳 😳 I realise that you think that everyone who does not agree with you must work in an office, maybe you should try that side of things for a couple of months. At the end of the day if YOU have a problem with YOUR wages or YOUR conditions or YOUR office team then grow some nuts and talk to them like a man instead of crying on here. You may get a result, or get shown the door, either way you will get an answer.

[Savante]

CableD,

Yeah, the perks of being a merc!!! Looking seriously into pensions at the moment as my accountant says there are tax incentives etc! Heh heh, at last maybe the tax man will give a little back 😆 Anyone else contributing to their own pension scheme?

I don’t think 1000GBP a day is realistic unless you’ve pioneered a new type of genetically modified ROV crew and can get the data twice as fast and cut down the vessel hire time considerably !! I’m happy beating the hell out of inflation to be honest – makes me feel like I’m progressing!

I have no problems with onshoreys at all. We get our perks, they get theirs. Frankly, I’d like to be able to go out at night and "socialise"/play golf. But you do have to accept that their roles are totally different to ours. They also have an advantage in promoting high ROV crew rates at a time of high utilisation; they can charge more to the clients (within reason). That will change eventually, but I’m happy sitting on this rollercoaster!!

What would be interesting for me is if we had a graph from the ROV day-rates page showing the rate at which the rates have been increasing?

Gina does this data exist? – you do it quarterly or monthly don’t you?? I can spreadsheet it if you don’t have the time?

[temp]

The argument about whether offshore you are actually at work for 24 hours and therefore should get paid pro-rata for 24 hours is a bit flawed.

There are plenty of people onshore doing e.g. contract work etc who work away from home – maybe just during the week with weekends at home, or are maybe away for weeks on end.

I have done so myself many times for non-offshore electrical engineering contract work, on building construction projects etc in UK and overseas, often in some sh*t-hole in the middle of nowhere, and you generally only get paid for the hours you actually work (or else you get a day-rate based on 10 or 12 hours etc). You also often don’t get paid for your additional time spent doing reports etc on your laptop in the evenings, unless you are really mercenary and can get away with charging your client for it.

OK, you can get a drink and go down town in the evenings and are not confined to a ship or rig, but you are still away from home in some poxy hotel or B&B. Also, especially if self-employed / Ltd Co, you invariably have to pay for accomodation, food and sometimes travel out of that.

There are contract engineering jobs onshore where, if you have in-demand skills, you can earn similar rates to offshore, and get home at night. But there is more to a job than just the money, otherwise why would you go offshore?

Yes, maybe sometimes offshore, especially if it’s all going tits up you end up working past your allocated shift 12 hours, but mostly it is just 12 hours (unless the opposite shift are useless and can’t sort things out themselves). OK, being on board a ship means that you are effectively captive at your workplace, and it is easier to get called out to sort problems out on deck etc., but it is not that it happens that often. Of course in Norway they can claim for overtime hours, which is probably a more reasonable way of doing things.

It is reasonable to expect that the ROV pay rates should be more or less in line with similar level technical trades offshore, there should not be significant discrepancies within the same industry at the same worksite. It is unrealistic though to expect rates to be fixed in a worldwide industry, and it is easy to price yourself out of a job if people from other areas are willing to work for less.

But, as with any job, if you are not happy with your lot, then negotiate a better rate if you think you are worth it, or go and do something else, sell your skills on the open market to the highest bidder if money is your main priority. If you are not happy with e.g. drill crew getting more, then go and do that yourself.

The chances of successful collective industrial action are minimal, even though the divers did manage to do it. It is unlikely that there will ever be enough solidarity amongst ROV people, plus have enough bargaining leverage.

I’m currently taking a couple of years break away from the ROV and offshore sector. The main thing I miss (apart from the fantastic camaraderie, operating ROVs, and life on the ocean wave of course!) is the freedom that the time off gives you. Having only 30 odd days annual leave a year is a real bummer after being used to having several months off.

If you are not happy with your lot, don’t just whinge about it, do something to change your employability and earning skills. Still, it’s entertaining to read the same old arguments that have been going on for years. The whole ‘offshore heroes vs onshore w*nkers’ argument is really juvenile. Front line troops always need rear echelon m-f’s in support also.

temp

[Anonymous]

oh dear you office boys are so serious, and you all clearly think offshore workers are so thick they believe you when you spout crap about being an offshore worker who is feeling overpaid!! get a grip you bunch of twats. what’s completely hidiuos is that you bunch of fools are running this industry and you don’t know your arse from your elbow from an rov!! and some of you idiots are running training courses now for the likes of fugro, and churning out more poor saps who have wasted their time listenening to people with zero knowledge!! who couldn’t cut it offshore and so kissed ass their way into the office!!

[Savante]

aww man, chill out; be happy. this year is going to be a friggin’ goodun and everyone in ROV is going to make a nugget.

it’s time to build on the confidence of 2006/2007 and not worry about onshore/offshore politics – too distracting !!

Vive les mercenaires!!

[Anonymous]

Savante,

I’m always chilled out, life’s so boring out here, what else is there to do but piss these turkeys off, keeps me awake!!

[Savante]

heh heh heh, I prefer to shoot fish in a barrel…..

😆 😆

[Anonymous]

Savante,

just a quick one, being serious for a brief minute, pensions forget them, property overseas is best!!

[Savante]

cheers – will investigate!!

[temp]

savechange

Not sure if your reply was intended for me, or just general comment as mine was? Or maybe just stirring things up for a wind-up – you must be bored. What was that somebody said about deserving to be paid for 24 hours work? Not many real jobs you have time spare to spend in on-line forums or watching movies.

Never been an office tw*t or base b*tch, and never will be I hope.
14 years offshore ROV, the last few years mixed with onshore contract work in building construction/electrical engineering industry – nothing to do with oil & gas industry.
I just visit this website to keep in touch a bit with what’s happening in the world of ROV.

Point I was trying to make is that these arguments are the same as when I started offshore, and I observed same in the military, and the same in the other industries I’ve worked in – usual complaints about poor support from office/base etc for ‘front-line’ operational guys. It’s never as cut and dried as we think though. Easy to criticise support staff and pen-pushers if you haven’t seen both sides of the fence.

I don’t think offshore is such a bad way of life – it’s what you make it, a lot depends on attitude. Bit of a culture shock for me working back in the real world for a bit. Hope all the jobs haven’t been taken by cheap labour by the time I return.

temp

[Anonymous]

Temp,

This industry is blighted by the quality of office support being so poor, porbably because there is so little responsibility taken by office staff, basically as long as they fill the slots then they don’t care beyond that, as they just blame people, there is no accepting that they decided who goes working for them, so they have to accept responsibility for the people who work for them.

Spares, what a joke!!

As for the 12 or 24 hours, there is no other job that you are on the worksiteand governed by the worksite rules for 24 hours and only paid for 12. The only sensible way to look at it is to say your dayrate is split into 12 hours working rate and 12 hours stand by rate. So that could take the working dayrate up to say £20 an hour and the stand by rate £10 an hour, how ever it is carved up, it is still not a huge salary. Also all this comparison with on shore workers, offshore workers even if you use 12 hours a day work more hours than an onshore worker.

Save

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