MSC's Mariner Math: Rebuilding the Workforce Behind the Fleet

The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command is a critical part of the United States’ national security equation, as any navy only goes as far as its supply chain allows. RADM Benjamin Nicholson, Commander, U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command, visited with Maritime Matters: The MarineLink Podcast, for a deep discussion on MSC, including changes in mariner pay and benefits that will enable it to attract and retain the seafarers it wants and needs.

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Military Sealift Command occupies an unusual position in the U.S. Navy enterprise. Its ships rarely generate the attention afforded an aircraft carrier, destroyer or submarine, but the Navy’s ability to operate globally depends on MSC getting fuel, ammunition, food, equipment and spare parts where they need to go. For Rear Admiral Benjamin Nicholson, Commander, Military Sealift Command, keeping the MSC logistics machine running starts not with ships, but with mariners. “You can have all of the things in the world, but if you don’t have the people to make the things operate, nothing works,” Nicholson said. “So my number one priority is our mariners, specifically the civil service mariners.”

That priority comes after several difficult years for MSC, when personnel shortages became serious enough that the command removed ships from operation to concentrate available CIVMARs aboard the remaining active fleet.

Today, Nicholson sees signs that the personnel picture is moving in the right direction. MSC has grown from roughly 5,500 CIVMARs when its “force generation risk reduction” effort began to more than 6,200 today. While attrition has fallen from approximately 15% to 7%, Nicholson’s target is growth: to approximately 9,300 CIVMARs, or another 3,000 people. That number, he stresses, is not simply about filling billets. It is about building enough depth into the workforce so mariners can rotate off ships on schedule, take leave, attend training and deal with inevitable medical and personal issues without creating another personnel problem somewhere else in the fleet.

For a U.S. maritime industry wrestling broadly with a shortage of qualified mariners, that makes MSC’s recruitment and retention effort worth watching. The command is attacking the problem from several directions, including significantly higher entry-level compensation, removal of longstanding pay constraints, paid training, new recruiting pipelines and improvements in shipboard quality of life.

Image courtesy Military Sealift Command

$188,000+

For a newly licensed graduate from one of the maritime academies, Nicholson said the average first-year salary for a third mate or third officer at MSC is now more than $188,000, accompanied by a signing bonus approaching $58,000.

Engineering graduates can earn even more. “If you have a third engineer’s license, average starting salary at MSC is almost $209,000 with almost a $76,000 signing bonus,” Nicholson said. “Enormous numbers. I mean, there’s no other school in the country that you can take someone that just graduates out and really make that kind of money, and it just goes up from there the longer you stay with us.”

But recruiting young officers is only part of the equation.

MSC is targeting the state and federal maritime academies for licensed mariners, while expanding its search for unlicensed personnel. Nicholson points to 88 maritime high schools around the country as a pool of young people who have already demonstrated an interest in the industry. MSC is also reaching into high schools with strong STEM and mechanical programs and attending the National Convention of High School Counselors to put maritime careers in front of students who might otherwise never consider going to sea. Another initiative, dubbed “Mil to MSC,” targets service members leaving the military. The objective is to make it easier to translate Navy shipboard experience into USCG merchant mariner credentials.

Under the program Nicholson described, candidates could enter MSC in a paid training position rather than automatically starting at the bottom. MSC would then help translate their military records into Coast Guard requirements, identify missing qualifications and provide the necessary training.

Image courtesy Military Sealift Command

Removing the Pay Cap

Perhaps no personnel change has been as immediately consequential as the modification of MSC’s CIVMAR pay caps. “The pay cap removals were huge to us,” Nicholson said. “We saw almost instantly a change in the workforce.”

The old system created an obvious competitive problem. Senior MSC mariners could earn compensation comparable to commercial mariners across the pier, but they could not necessarily take all of that money home. For masters and chief engineers, compensation exceeding the federal cap accumulated in a non-interest-bearing account that could not be accessed until retirement. “You’re asking someone to work for you, but they’re not bringing home the same amount of money that the person across the pier is doing,” Nicholson said. “That’s a problem.” The base salary cap technically remains, Nicholson said, but it has been raised sufficiently that it is above MSC’s current pay levels. More importantly, the separate aggregate pay cap affecting overtime earnings has been eliminated. MSC was also able to return money previously withheld under the old limits.

“For some of our folks, it was like lottery winning payouts,” Nicholson said. “It really made a big difference in the workforce.”

Taking Ships Offline

The workforce problem had reached the point where MSC leadership made the difficult decision to take ships out of service. Nicholson uses a football analogy to explain it. MSC, he said, is not the flashy player making magazine covers, but it is the player a team has difficulty winning without. For years, that player was hurt and kept playing hurt. 

Eventually, something had to give. 

“Our can-do attitude was killing us because we kept saying we could do stuff and we just really didn’t have the people to do it properly,” Nicholson said. Initially, 17 ships were taken offline. Doing so allowed MSC to move mariners onto operational ships, bring crewing closer to required levels and improve rotations. At the time of the interview, 15 ships remained offline, with Nicholson expecting a couple more to return in the following month or two as workforce numbers increased. His long-term objective is straightforward: enough mariners to fully crew the fleet regardless of whether ships are operating or undergoing maintenance, while still allowing personnel to take leave and receive training.

Image courtesy Military Sealift Command

Recruiting & Retaining

Money matters, but Nicholson readily acknowledges that MSC has to compete with commercial shipping on the complete employment package. One gap was connectivity.

“The commercial industry for quite some time has had full-blown internet at sea and we didn’t,” Nicholson said.

MSC responded with CIVMAR Wireless Internet Network (WIN). At the time of the interview, the system had been installed aboard 26 government-owned, government-operated ships, with another installation underway. New ships will receive the capability during construction, and MSC is deploying temporary kits to ships operating in areas where permanent systems have not yet been installed. “That’s a super important thing, having that connection with people,” Nicholson said, and is an acknowledgement of how much life at sea has changed. “There was a day where a ship would pull into port and all of the sailors, they were looking for the closest bar,” Nicholson said. “Now we pull into port, the sailors are looking for the closest Wi-Fi.”

Connectivity means video calls home, but it also means handling the routine parts of modern life, from paying bills to following news while deployed.  Training represents another competitive tool. MSC pays for technical training, and Nicholson wants a workforce large enough that mariners can take leave and then attend required schools without having that training charged against their leave.

The opportunity extends to career advancement. MSC has mariners serving as masters who began as ordinary seamen, with the command paying for training throughout their progression. An AB-to-mate program allows selected able seamen to attend school and return with a third mate’s license, and MSC is working toward a similar engineering pathway. Student loan repayment is another recruitment and retention tool.

Nicholson is also expanding leadership training beyond technical competence. “I want masters and chief engineers that our people want to work for,” he said. MSC has begun week-long programs for senior CIVMARs emphasizing the “softer skills” of managing and leading people. Nicholson’s goal is eventually to create a leadership training continuum accompanying advancement through the organization.

Image courtesy Military Sealift Command

An Aging Fleet

The people problem cannot be separated from the hardware. MSC operates 62 government-owned, government-operated vessels crewed by CIVMARs and another 43 government-owned, contract-operated vessels crewed by approximately 1,500 contract mariners. Add an average of roughly 61 chartered vessels, a figure that fluctuates with requirements, and Nicholson puts MSC’s total fleet under its purview at approximately 166 ships.

Government-owned ships are typically operational about 60% of the time, Nicholson said, with roughly 40% of their time involving maintenance in some form. “That becomes more difficult as the ships start to get older,” he said. “You need a little bit more maintenance, a little more love and care to keep those ships going.” Age is increasingly part of MSC’s fleet equation.

Nicholson puts fleet replenishment oilers high on his recapitalization list, particularly accelerating introduction of the new 205-class ships to replace the aging 187-class oilers.

In commercial shipping, Nicholson notes, recapitalization commonly occurs around 20 to 25 years. Some of MSC’s 187-class oilers could reach 40, 46 or even 48 years before retirement. “That is a lot of strain on a ship to do that,” Nicholson said, particularly given the physical demands of underway replenishment.

The Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships are themselves approaching the 20-year mark, while MSC’s hospital ships and submarine tenders present additional aging-fleet challenges.  Nicholson believes the answer should involve more than simply replacing old ships one class at a time.

He advocates greater commonality across future MSC vessels. Hospital ships, submarine tenders and other platforms perform very different missions, but that does not necessarily mean their basic machinery and systems must be entirely different. “They could have common engineering plants, common propulsion systems, common ship control systems,” Nicholson said. The mission-specific portions could change while the basic platform remains substantially common. That could lower lifecycle costs through common training and spare parts while giving shipyards the benefit of repetition. “The more we can have commonality between vessels, I believe the faster we can have ships coming out,” he said.

Nicholson also sees MSC’s chartering practices as potentially important to broader U.S. commercial fleet renewal. Longer-term charter commitments, he suggested, could provide operators with the demand signal needed to secure financing for new vessels rather than requiring the government to own every ship itself.

Image courtesy Military Sealift Command

People Make the Logistics Chain Work

MSC’s fleet ultimately exists for one reason: to keep the Navy supplied. Nicholson describes the Navy-Marine Corps team as “America’s away team,” capable of operating far from home without depending entirely on nearby bases because MSC provides the continuing flow of fuel, ammunition, food and repair parts.

That makes ships essential. It makes maintenance essential. It makes shipbuilding essential. But it circles back to Nicholson’s first priority: people. The command has already learned what happens when the mariner equation does not balance. Ships had to be removed from operation because there were not enough people to sustain the fleet properly. Today, the numbers are improving, compensation is more competitive and overdue relief has been sharply reduced, but the journey from roughly 6,200 CIVMARs to Nicholson’s target of 9,300 remains substantial.

For young mariners weighing career choices, MSC is making a clearer pitch than it has in the past: competitive six-figure earnings, large signing bonuses for licensed officers, paid education and training, a path from the hawsepipe to the wheelhouse, improved connectivity and the opportunity to do work unlike most commercial shipping.

As Nicholson put it, an MSC mariner is not simply carrying cargo between two ports. Much of the job happens between those ports, conducting underway replenishment and supporting naval operations at sea.

“It’s when they’re doing those underway replenishments, it’s when we’re doing those things that no one else can do like we can do,” Nicholson said. “And that is so super exciting. It’s a lot of adventure.”

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Listen to the full interview with RADM Nicholson on Maritime Matters: The MarineLink Podcast: