Seafarer Employment Lawyer in France: Contracts, Wages, Dismissal, Injury and Shipowner Liability

A 32,000 tonne bulk carrier flying the Panamanian flag comes into Sète to discharge soybean meal. On board, nine Filipinos and two Ukrainians have not seen a transfer in four months. The port State control inspector boards, asks for the financial security certificate and finds that there is none. Within forty-eight hours the file stops being a payroll delay: detention of the ship, a repatriation request, a ship arrest, and a shipowner discovering that his seafarers are his best ranked creditors.

The firm acts for shipowners and managers of merchant vessels under the French flag, under the French international register or under a foreign flag calling at French ports, for placement and manning companies, for seafarers and officers, and for insurers and P&I clubs. This page deals with maritime labour on board merchant and fishing vessels, and extends the pillar page on maritime law. Yachting follows neighbouring rules but a different practice; it is dealt with separately.

Who counts as a seafarer and which law applies

Everything starts with a classification, and that is where half of these files are lost. Article L. 5511-1 of the French Transport Code distinguishes seafarers in the broad sense, mariners, and seafarers other than mariners. Decree no. 2015-454 of 21 April 2015 on the qualification of seafarers and mariners sets out those categories: a mariner is a person whose activity relates directly to the operation, navigation, maintenance and running of the ship; a seafarer other than a mariner is a person employed on board for a professional activity without taking part in that operation; a person sailing for fewer than forty-five days in any six month period is not a seafarer at all. The consequence is brutal: the mariner falls under the ENIM and under Book V of Part Five of the French Transport Code, while other than mariner personnel fall under the general social security scheme and, in essence, under the French Labour Code.

The second reflex is the law of the flag. It remains the principle, but it is no longer a shield. The Maritime Labour Convention 2006 of the International Labour Organization entered into force on 20 August 2013; France deposited its ratification on 28 February 2013 and the convention has applied to France since 28 February 2014. For the French international register, Articles L. 5611-1 and following of the French Transport Code set up a regime of its own, with a Title II of Book VI applicable to non resident mariners. For foreign ships performing cabotage or ship services in French waters, Articles L. 5561-1 and following impose the social conditions of the host State. The illusion of the flag consists in believing that the law chosen at registration exhausts the question. It never does.

The seafarer employment agreement

The seafarer employment agreement is made in writing (Article L. 5542-1 of the French Transport Code) and must contain the mandatory particulars listed in Articles L. 5542-3 and L. 5542-4: identity of the parties, position, place and date of conclusion, amount and method of calculation of remuneration, length of leave, repatriation arrangements, social protection, and where applicable a reference to the collective agreement in force. Standard A2.1 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 requires the same writing, delivery of a copy to the seafarer and a period to examine the agreement before signing. A copy handed to the seafarer, in a language he understands: the formality looks incidental, and it decides everything that follows.

The agreement may be for an indefinite term, for a fixed term or for a voyage. The choice is not neutral. The voyage agreement, peculiar to maritime law, exposes the shipowner to arguments about the true end date when the ship is diverted or laid up for repairs, and reclassification as an indefinite term contract is the usual outcome of a poorly documented run of successive voyages. The absence of a written agreement does not deprive the seafarer of his rights: it deprives the shipowner of proof of his own.

Where the seafarer is recruited through a placement service or made available by a maritime labour supply undertaking, the contractual chain splits in two and liabilities overlap. This point is developed in our analysis of the recruitment and placement of seafarers and in the practical guide devoted to recruitment.

Wages, hours, rest and leave

The mariner’s remuneration is governed by Articles L. 5544-34 and following of the French Transport Code as to its determination, by Articles L. 5544-50 and following as to its payment (advances, instalments, frequency) and by Articles L. 5544-58 and following as to its protection; food, or the allowance in lieu, is due free of charge throughout the term of the agreement (Article L. 5542-18). As to working time and rest, Article L. 5544-4 caps working hours at fourteen in any twenty-four hour period and seventy-two in any seven day period, and Article L. 5544-15 guarantees at least ten hours of rest in any twenty-four hours, which may be split into no more than two periods, one of them of at least six consecutive hours, in line with Standard A2.3 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006. Paid leave accrues at three calendar days per month (Article L. 5544-23). These figures are not management targets: they are thresholds, and exceeding them shows in a record and is penalised.

The hours record is the document that costs badly organised shipowners the most. Filled in after the event, with identical days week after week, it discredits itself and leaves inspector and judge alike to rely on what the seafarer says. Regulation 5.1.5 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 further requires an on board complaint procedure allowing the seafarer to go to the master and then, if need be, to the competent authority. Many shipowners see it as a burden. It is their best defence: a complaint handled on board, dated and traceable, is worth more than a dispute discovered two years later.

Then comes the heavy weapon. The mariner’s wage claims are secured by a maritime lien on the ship, which allows the unpaid seafarer to arrest her and to force a judicial sale, the crew ranking ahead of the mortgagee. The conditions, the courts having jurisdiction and the release of the arrest are set out on our page on ship arrest.

Sickness and injury of the seafarer

Articles L. 5542-21 and following of the French Transport Code place on the employer the cost of caring for a mariner injured in the service of the ship or falling ill during his engagement, until the injury has stabilised or the illness has become chronic (Article L. 5542-22), the maintenance of his wages throughout that period of cover, within a limit of four months from the day he was left ashore (Article L. 5542-26), his repatriation and, in the event of death, the funeral expenses and the repatriation of the body (Article L. 5542-21). Standard A4.2 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 lays down the same obligation. The mariner also falls under the special social security scheme created by the Decree Law of 17 June 1938, administered by the Établissement national des invalides de la marine.

The litigation turns on going beyond the scheduled benefits. The interaction of the texts was long read as barring a mariner who had suffered an accident at work from suing his employer for inexcusable fault. The Conseil constitutionnel put an end to that in decision no. 2011-127 QPC of 6 May 2011: it held Articles L. 412-8 and L. 413-12 of the French Social Security Code to be constitutional, subject to a decisive interpretative reservation to the effect that those provisions cannot deprive seafarers of the right to seek, before the social security courts, additional compensation where the accident results from the employer’s inexcusable fault. Every serious accident on board now turns on awareness of the danger and the absence of precautions: a missing piece of protective equipment, a manoeuvring instruction ignored, an enclosed space opened without atmosphere testing.

For the shipowner the consequence is financial. The accident must be declared without delay and the P&I club notified immediately, failing which employer’s liability cover may be argued about at the very moment it becomes necessary. The case is won in the first few hours. Not before the judge.

Dismissal and termination of the agreement

Termination of an indefinite term employment agreement requires a real and serious cause and compliance with a procedure. Economic grounds take particular forms here: laying up the ship, sale, change of flag, loss of a liner service. None of those circumstances by itself brings the employment agreements to an end. The sale of the ship does not release the shipowner from his obligations to the crew merely because ownership has been transferred, and a change of flag does not extinguish rights acquired under the former one. Termination is governed by Articles L. 5542-38 to L. 5542-47 of the French Transport Code: the statutory notice period, which is a matter of public policy, is one month after six months of actual continuous service on board and one year of seniority, and two months after two years of seniority (Article L. 5542-43), and a fixed term agreement expiring in the course of a voyage is extended until the first port where the ship performs a commercial operation, or until the French port if the return is expected within the month (Article L. 5542-45).

Early termination of a fixed term or voyage agreement, absent gross misconduct, force majeure or the agreement of the parties, gives rise to the remuneration remaining due until the end of the term. Whatever the cause of termination, one obligation remains, and shipowners underestimate its cost: repatriation. Regulation 2.5 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 and Articles L. 5542-29 and following of the French Transport Code set out its principle, the cases in which it applies and who bears it, which is the shipowner.

The 2014 amendments to the Maritime Labour Convention 2006, in force since 18 January 2017, added a compulsory financial security covering abandonment: it covers unpaid wages up to four months, the seafarer’s repatriation and his essential needs during the abandonment. A crew is never abandoned all at once. It is abandoned in stages, and each stage leaves a dated trace, from the first late transfer to the last drum of fresh water; it is that chronology, reconstructed from bank statements, messages from the manager, the master’s reports and the victualling records, that then makes it possible to say at what precise moment the abandonment began, hence which financial security was in force, how many months of wages the seafarer is owed, and whether the shipowner breached an obligation carrying criminal sanctions.

Litigation: jurisdiction and procedure

An individual dispute between a mariner and his employer does not go before the conseil de prud’hommes. It falls to the tribunal judiciaire under Article L. 5542-48 of the French Transport Code, and must be preceded by an attempt at conciliation before the administrative authority, organised by Decree no. 2015-219 of 27 February 2015. The conciliation is conducted by the departmental director for territories and the sea, and the record issued at its close is what allows the court to be seised.

That formality is no formality at all. By a judgment of 2 October 2024 published in the bulletin (Cass. soc., 2 October 2024, no. 22-10.649), the social chamber of the Cour de cassation held that a claim brought by a mariner other than the master without a prior attempt at conciliation meets a bar to the action which cannot be cured in the course of the proceedings, even where the employer himself applies to the administration after the writ has been served. The solution is harsh on the seafarer in a hurry, and questionable on access to a court since it makes admissibility depend on an administrative step with no second chance. Questionable or not, it applies.

Time limits follow ordinary employment law: twelve months to challenge the termination of the contract (Article L. 1471-1 of the French Labour Code), three years for wage claims (Article L. 3245-1). Where the file has a foreign element, two regulations govern the matter. As to applicable law, Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation of 17 June 2008 prevents the parties’ choice from depriving the employee of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where he habitually carries out his work; the Court of Justice refined that test in Koelzsch of 15 March 2011 (C-29/10) and Voogsgeerd of 15 December 2011 (C-384/10), decided on Article 6 of the Rome Convention of 1980, whose substance Article 8 reproduces, requiring the place from which the employee performs his obligations to be identified before falling back on the place of business which engaged him. As to jurisdiction, Section 5 of the Brussels I bis Regulation of 12 December 2012 (Articles 20 to 23) protects the employee, and Mahamdia of 19 July 2012 (C-154/11) held that a jurisdiction clause agreed before the dispute arose cannot be relied on against him to remove him from his protective fora. Nor does a foreign flag calling at a French port escape French overriding mandatory rules.

Shipowner liability beyond the contract

Title 4 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 organises social protection, Title 5 its implementation and enforcement. A ship flying the flag of a State party must hold a maritime labour certificate and a declaration of maritime labour compliance. The port State control inspector checks those documents and, where he finds serious failings in living and working conditions, unpaid wages in particular, may detain the ship until matters are put right. A forty-eight hour detention at Rouen costs more than three months of wage arrears. Shipowners always find that out too late.

The French Transport Code backs those obligations with criminal sanctions, in Articles L. 5523-2 and following, which punish exercising command or a shipboard function without the required qualifications, sailing without a minimum safe manning document or with insufficient manning (six months’ imprisonment and a fine of 4,500 euros, raised to one year and 6,000 euros on a passenger ship, Article L. 5523-5) and allowing seafarers on board without a medical certificate or a valid training certificate (Article L. 5523-6), as well as in Articles L. 5542-50 and following for breaches of the employment agreement, the ordinary law on concealed employment applying in addition. The shipowner is also answerable for the acts of those who act for him, the master included.

The least well understood point concerns seafarers employed by a third party. Where the crew is supplied by a maritime labour supply undertaking, Articles L. 5546-1-1 and following of the French Transport Code regulate private recruitment and placement services and maritime labour supply undertakings, which must in particular satisfy themselves that the shipowner holds the financial security against abandonment (Article L. 5542-32-1), on pain of a fine (Article L. 5546-1-8); and the shipowner, defined by Article L. 5511-1 as the person on whose behalf the ship is operated, irrespective of the employers performing certain tasks in his name, remains bound by the obligations of the Maritime Labour Convention towards the seafarers on board. A manning agreement therefore does not transfer the risk: it allocates it, and the shipowner remains the ultimate debtor both towards the seafarer and towards the enforcement authority. We take a clear position: a clause stating that the placement company assumes all social obligations as its own affair has effect only between the parties, and has never prevented a ship being detained or a shipowner being ordered to pay.

Prevention and maritime labour audit

Maritime labour is better prevented than litigated. The audit we carry out covers the standard form agreements used across the fleet and their compliance with the particulars required by the French Transport Code and by Standard A2.1 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006, the way the record of hours of work and rest is actually kept, the on board complaint procedure required by Regulation 5.1.5, and the consistency between the supply agreements made with manning companies and the employment agreements signed by the seafarers.

We also prepare for inspections. A forewarned shipowner knows which documents the inspector will ask for, and above all he knows what to say when a record shows an anomaly, because an anomaly explained on the spot does not become a deficiency. Where the situation has already deteriorated, with the manager insolvent or the crew effectively abandoned, the work changes in nature: calling on the financial security, arranging repatriation, securing the wage claims, and deciding whether arresting the ship serves the seafarer or condemns him to wait for a judicial sale. That choice is made file by file. Never as a matter of principle.

How the firm works

The firm advises and defends shipowners and managers of merchant and fishing vessels, placement and crew supply companies, seafarers and officers, insurers and P&I clubs. It drafts and audits seafarer employment agreements and crew supply agreements, conducts the prior conciliation before the administrative authority, appears before the tribunal judiciaire and the social security courts, assists the shipowner where the ship is detained by the port State, and organises the calling in of the financial security and the repatriation of the crew.

Based in Paris, the firm acts in every French port, in mainland France and overseas, before the commercial and civil courts of the coast and before the Paris Maritime Arbitration Chamber, and works in English with P&I clubs, insurers and foreign counsel.

Analyses and guides

On the recruitment chain and the sharing of liability with the placement company, read our analysis of the six points that determine the shipowner’s liability, together with the practical guide to the recruitment of seafarers. For the crews of commercially operated pleasure craft, see our French-language analysis of the yacht crew, applicable law and dismissal of the master and the page on yacht disputes. Where unpaid wages lead to the ship being immobilised, the page on ship arrest sets out the procedure, and the page on maritime litigation places these disputes within the wider range of port proceedings.

Frequently asked questions

My shipowner has not paid me for three months, can I have the ship arrested?

Yes. A mariner’s wage claims are secured by a maritime lien on the ship, which allows an arrest and then, in the absence of payment, a judicial sale. The arrest immobilises the ship, so it carries weight. It has a downside: if the shipowner is insolvent, the seafarer waits months for the proceeds of the sale. Calling on the financial security introduced by the 2014 amendments to the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 is often quicker.

Must there be a conciliation before going to court?

Yes, for individual disputes relating to the seafarer employment agreement. Decree no. 2015-219 of 27 February 2015 organises an attempt at conciliation before the administrative authority, conducted by the departmental director for territories and the sea, on an application made using form cerfa 15369, before any writ is served. By a judgment of 2 October 2024 published in the bulletin (Cass. soc., no. 22-10.649), the Cour de cassation held that the absence of a prior attempt renders the claim inadmissible and that this cannot be cured in the course of the proceedings. A writ served without a record of failure to conciliate is therefore lost.

Which court hears a dispute between a seafarer and his shipowner?

The tribunal judiciaire, under Article L. 5542-48 of the French Transport Code, and not the conseil de prud’hommes. By contrast, seafarers other than mariners within the meaning of Article L. 5511-1 of the same code, like employees working ashore for the shipowner, come under the conseil de prud’hommes. The employee’s classification therefore dictates the court, and a mistake on that point is paid for with a ruling of lack of jurisdiction and lost time.

Can a seafarer injured on board obtain more than the benefits paid by the ENIM?

Yes, where the accident results from the employer’s inexcusable fault. In decision no. 2011-127 QPC of 6 May 2011, the Conseil constitutionnel held Articles L. 412-8 and L. 413-12 of the French Social Security Code to be constitutional, subject to the reservation that they cannot deprive seafarers of the right to seek additional compensation before the social security courts in the event of inexcusable fault. The shipboard reports, the standing instructions and the safety records are the decisive documents.

Who pays for the repatriation of a seafarer put ashore abroad?

The shipowner. Regulation 2.5 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 gives the seafarer a right to repatriation at no cost in the cases it lists, among them expiry of the agreement, dismissal and illness. Articles L. 5542-29 and following of the French Transport Code implement that right. Since the 2014 amendments, in force on 18 January 2017, a financial security must cover repatriation in the event of abandonment, together with four months of unpaid wages and the crew’s essential needs.

Does a contract choosing the law of a foreign flag exclude French law?

Not necessarily. Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation of 17 June 2008 provides that the parties’ choice cannot deprive the employee of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law applicable in the absence of choice, which is in principle that of the country where he habitually carries out his work. The Court of Justice required that place to be identified on the facts in Koelzsch of 15 March 2011 (C-29/10) and Voogsgeerd of 15 December 2011 (C-384/10).

How long does a seafarer have to challenge his dismissal?

Twelve months from notification of the termination, under Article L. 1471-1 of the French Labour Code, which applies to mariners by reference from the French Transport Code. Claims for wages or wage related items are time barred after three years (Article L. 3245-1). The conciliation before the administrative authority must be started early enough for the writ to be served within the period. Waiting until the end of the next engagement is the commonest way of losing a good case.

Can the port State detain a foreign ship over unpaid wages?

Yes. Title 5 of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 organises port State control of living and working conditions on board foreign ships calling at its ports. The inspector checks the maritime labour certificate, the declaration of compliance and the financial security certificates, and may detain the ship where he records serious failings, first among them unpaid wages and breaches of rest periods. The detention lasts until matters are put right. The cost of the delay almost always exceeds the amount owed to the crew.

Matters in this field are handled by Hervé Guyader, lawyer at the Paris Bar and doctor of law.