jimjam
Oiler (New Member)
Posts: 2
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Post by jimjam on May 2, 2013 16:27:49 GMT -8
Thanks for the info, ferrytraveller. I find it interesting that current employees are also trying to get their Red Seal. Well, they called my husband today to the orientation, he'll be working for the summer at least
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Post by YoursTruly on Mar 22, 2015 15:04:58 GMT -8
Hmm, I've seen a few questions in this thread... though its a bit old now..
Tsawwassen terminal, getting "regular" employment (Regular is a status, vs Casual vs Seasonal)in Catering department can take upwards of 10-15 years as a CSA or Cashier.
Van driver and CSA OFA3 are the two quickest way to becoming regular catering, let alone becoming a casual with year round work. As soon as you make casual from seasonal, you gain benefits.
For Deckhands,
having your MED A1, B1, B2 (Now the names have changed to suit STCW/95 regulations) Marine Basic First Aid ROC-M (Marine Radio Operators Certificate)
The basics for Transport Canada.
your Bridge watch rating ticket (bridge watchman) is a major bonus for getting hired at BC Ferries, or at least take the course which counts towards 4 months of sea time towards the 6 months required to write the exam at TC.
If you're a seafarer already, then by all means bring your WKM-NC/ WKM, or an AB's ticket.
For a deckhand, you have to be hard working and show that you are committed and keen to learn in order to stay on as Casual. Otherwise they'll call you back for next summer... or you did a really awful job and pissed off everyone and don't get any calls. They only take on a few casuals at the end of each Summer and having a summer or 2 under your belt already as a seasonal doesn't mean you're next in line to become a casual. You have to earn that right.
Hope that helps answer any questions. I'm not entirely sure regarding (Engine Room Assistant. From what I recall The Rupert was the last vessel with oilers since her engines had exposed valve rockers.)
-Tsw Deckhand.
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Post by Ferryman on Feb 7, 2018 10:38:52 GMT -8
Hiring season is already well underway at BC Ferries. If you look back through the history of this thread, you'll note that back then it was rather difficult to become employed at BC Ferries. I'm here to say that this is no longer the case. I can say on good faith that it's now difficult for them to find people to hire. So much so, that at Swartz Bay they're conducting pre-interviews of candidates, and offering conditional employment provided that they're able to enroll and complete the required courses for the position. If any Deck or Engineering Officers are out there reading this, who've also never applied to work at BC Ferries previously, please contact me directly and I can point you in the right direction. To have a look at positions currently available, have a look at: careers-bcferries.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1If there is a location/posting not listed that you'd be interested in, try and apply anyways.
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Post by bigcountry on Feb 7, 2018 18:48:24 GMT -8
How casual are the casual opportunities? Ie: how many hours could/should one expect?
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Post by futureferrydriver on Feb 7, 2018 21:31:48 GMT -8
How casual are the casual opportunities? Ie: how many hours could/should one expect? Speaking from personal experience** casual work was “basically” full time in the summer months (I think BC Ferries defines full time as 21 days per month, and I was never more than a day or two off of that number (sometimes more)). I’ve only ever worked summers so I can’t give you an answer about the rest of the year, however I’ve heard less than good things about the hours casuals get in the off season. The drawback to the way BC Ferries does casual is that it’s an on-call system, so generally you have limited notice of what days you will be working. If that works with your lifestyle I think it’s a great place to work, but I can see why on-call isn’t a good fit for everyone. ** Note: I’ve worked in ticketing and terminal ops at Horseshoe Bay and Swartz Bay, I imagine my answer applies to other major terminals (Dep Bay, Duke, TSA and Langdale) but things might be different for ship-board employees and smaller terminals. EDIT: My first few summers there they have a big “disclaimer” type thing in all of the orientation/hiring procedues that was basically said “you are not guranteed any hours as a casual, and you can’t be mad if you get zero shifts all summer.” It seems this has changed now, and if I recall correctly, they guaranteed seasonal employees something like a minimum of 40 shifts (minimum shift length of 4.5 hours) for the summer period (May Long Weekend to Labour Day).
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Post by 1foot2ships on Mar 23, 2019 20:30:24 GMT -8
hi all...
a lot of good information here, but the bulk of the meaty usefull stuff was posted ~2008.
two quick questions please... 1. seasonals are gauranteed 15 working days per month May-Oct. TRUE/FALSE? (updated 2018: min 40 x 4.5hrs May-Oct. TRUE/FALSE?) 2. is there a system in place like a spareboard to organise crew calling sequences? (think flight attendants)
thnx! (if you are curious, i would love to work for the corp, but i am concerned about my ability to pay monthly bills)
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Post by futureferrydriver on Mar 24, 2019 19:41:50 GMT -8
hi all... a lot of good information here, but the bulk of the meaty usefull stuff was posted ~2008. two quick questions please... 1. seasonals are gauranteed 15 working days per month May-Oct. TRUE/FALSE? (updated 2018: min 40 x 4.5hrs May-Oct. TRUE/FALSE?) 2. is there a system in place like a spareboard to organise crew calling sequences? (think flight attendants) thnx! (if you are curious, i would love to work for the corp, but i am concerned about my ability to pay monthly bills) Disclaimer, I only really know about Swartz Bay and Horseshoe Bay, and this is only based on my own personal experience. 1. Yes, as of last summer there was a minimum of 40 working days** guaranteed to seasonals over the period from May 1st to Labour Day. Working day here meaning minimum of 4.5 hours, although 7.5 is a normal day and it was pretty uncommon to work the short shift (usually only one a day and they're quite popular with the regular employees so if you want to work the full 7.5 its usually easy to). I DO NOT know if this will be in effect again this summer, but I have no reason to believe it won't be. 2. The whole crew scheduling thing is kind of a disaster at BCF, but they claim there is some fairness to it. I've been told countless different stories about how the call in list works, but the whole thing is pretty much shrouded in mystery to the "regular" employees. That said, in my 3 summers working there its always been fairly balanced between myself and the other seasonals and (during the May - labour day period) I was working a ton. Conclusion (based on my experience as a seasonal ticket agent and terminal attendant at Swartz and Horseshoe Bay): If you're working in the summer you'll get lots of work and the money is good, money shouldn't be your biggest concern with working there. Its a tough lifestyle to be tied to your phone all the time, they expect you on call pretty much all day everyday and its tough to get a day confirmed off. That makes it nearly impossible to get away for an overnight trip, and it's difficult to even do any sort of day trips. As a huge ferry lover it was worth it to live with the bad crew scheduling because I loved what I did working there and it was super cool to learn how it all worked, but after 3 years I got pretty fed up with the no days off lifestyle. From what I've heard from colleagues at Swartz Bay, its easy to get converted to casual and stay on past the end of summer, but you likely will not be working full time (sounds like 10-15 days a month is a decent benchmark for junior casual employees in the off season). But with the way crew scheduling is done it would be tough to work a part time job as well, so I imagine it would be hard to make ends meet in the winter. Hope this was helpful!
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Post by 1foot2ships on Mar 26, 2019 21:36:41 GMT -8
yes, very helpful and very timely (ive just been shortlisted for an interview). thank-you for the quick reply!!
pop quiz: 1. terminal attendants = vehicle loading, driving the luggage carts, operating walk-on gangways, collecting foot passenger tickets? 2. customer service attendants = all f&b (front of house) on the ship? (including cashiers?) 3. how come $: foot passenger ticket agent > terminal attendants > customer service attendants? 4. ? ? ? = guys driving the drop service trailers 5. why no more working for bcfc?
bonus: i have significant experience in the transportation industry. my prior job has many similarities to the duties in the tower. how are those jobs staffed? does transport canada have a say like they do in the harbour master jobs downtown? or is this all kept in house? whats the career path towards this end goal? i imagine its quite difficult.
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Post by futureferrydriver on Mar 29, 2019 8:52:40 GMT -8
yes, very helpful and very timely (ive just been shortlisted for an interview). thank-you for the quick reply!! pop quiz: 1. terminal attendants = vehicle loading, driving the luggage carts, operating walk-on gangways, collecting foot passenger tickets? 2. customer service attendants = all f&b (front of house) on the ship? (including cashiers?) 3. how come $: foot passenger ticket agent > terminal attendants > customer service attendants? 4. ? ? ? = guys driving the drop service trailers 5. why no more working for bcfc? bonus: i have significant experience in the transportation industry. my prior job has many similarities to the duties in the tower. how are those jobs staffed? does transport canada have a say like they do in the harbour master jobs downtown? or is this all kept in house? whats the career path towards this end goal? i imagine its quite difficult. Good luck on your interview! 1. Terminal attendants are responsible for directing traffic onto and off of the ships, cleaning the terminal (garbages, bathrooms etc), collecting tickets, all the baggage stuff, jump starts, traffic control, taking stuff onto and off of the ship, wheelchair push ons/offs etc. The operation of the ramps is terminal attendants but you need a special ticket (Equipment operator) so you wouldn't do that as a seasonal (have to work there for a year and be casual to be eligible for the training) 2. there are two types of Customer service attendant, shore and ship based. I dunno anything about ship based but I'm 90% sure its cashiers and everything else on the ship that isn't strictly operations or directly cooking. On the shore CSA's work in the office and take phone calls, answer questions and resolve complaints (escalating to manager if needed) they deal with lost and found and other general admin stuff. 3. ticket agents deal with money, so there's the whole robbery risk thing so the extra pay is kind of hazard pay (its a union thing). Vehicle booth ticket agents get even more because the danger of being with cars... (seasonals are hired as FPTA (foot passenger ticket agents), but you end up working both and get paid a bit more when you're in the car booths. 4. Drop trailers is a mystery to me. I'm 99% sure they are BCF employees, but I don't know if they are in the same union as operations employees. I think they are hired centrally by "drop trailer services" and are generally unassociated with the terminal people. 5. Two reasons: 1) I'm going to be working a research job at UVic this summer as part of finishing my undergrad, so obviously can't do both. 2) I want to not be on call everyday, if the research job thing didn't work out plan B was to work at the airport. After 3 years of not having a life and being glued to my phone I didn't want to do that anymore. Bonus. Tower jobs are all in house, as far as I know there is no TC stuff associated to that. The tower doesn't control ship traffic at all, just sort out making sure all the cars go to the right lanes and telling the terminal attendants which lanes to load. The most the tower talks to the ships is just the ship phones in with their ETA and then after loading the tower gives them a passenger count. There are 6 regular tower positions at SWB (2 people per watch, 3 watches) so its really hard to get in. There are maybe half a dozen of the senior terminal attendants that are trained as relief tower operators (for when regulars want time off or on busy days they staff an extra person up there). These guys are pretty much waiting for someone to retire so they can move up to the regular position. In conclusion its REALLY hard to get into a tower job, but its possible to get trained as relief if you've worked as a Term Att for long enough (we're talking like 10 years though).
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Post by 1foot2ships on Sept 15, 2021 21:51:45 GMT -8
With the pandemic, BCF saw demand disappear and the need for seasonal and casual staff drop off. Now that we are solidly in the 4th wave and seeing how everything is more or less back to normal... oh nevermind. That's for another discussion. Anyways... a few weeks ago, this made the news as a knee jerk item: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-ferries-struggles-to-attract-qualified-mariners-amid-global-shortage-1.6132625I'm sure some of you saw it. The summary is that BCF is short officers which is caused by a shortage of deckhands, which is caused by other macroeconomic factors. 'yawn'... Nothing newsworthy as this seems normal. I was just surfing around and saw on their recruitment website, this! careers-bcferries.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&hashed=-435680930Many many 'Exciting Career Opportunities'! Just in case any of you are interested, there are A LOT of positions looking to be filled. This is fantastic news for anybody out there looking for an entry! Upon closer inspection however, I'm a little confused and would like the forum to give comment please: - I know lots of seasonals from those terminals who have not been called back. - The seasonals rank behind casuals and I know a lot of them who have not been called back. Q: Am I missing something here? Is there something I'm overlooking at the moment? It doesn't really seem right to be recruiting when there are staff still laid-off. As usual, if any of my facts and/ or assumptions are incorrect, please adjust and freely respond!
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Post by 1foot2ships on Mar 27, 2022 1:01:59 GMT -8
It's been 6 months since I put up that post. This is largely a repeat of that article from Sept but can anybody lend some expertise on the matter? dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-ferries-labour-shortage1. What do they mean by 25-yr global shortage of professional mariners? Does that mean the supply of qualified mariners is at a 25yr low? Or are they saying the shortage is approximately 25yrs worth!? 2. The article also says 600 positions have been filled for this summer. Is that correct? 600 if true, would be a phenomenal amount of hires! How many quit/got fired /retired from BCF since the pandemic!? 3. I must be missing something from the BCF side. Something (actually, a lot of things) isn't adding up for me. To compare, what is the experience from our WSF cousins?
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Post by explorer on Mar 27, 2022 14:11:32 GMT -8
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Post by whalebreath on Mar 27, 2022 19:09:42 GMT -8
I wonder if any of the British ferry workers who were dumped so unceremoniously will end up here?
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Nick
Voyager
Chief Engineer - Queen of Richmond
Posts: 2,078
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Post by Nick on Mar 30, 2022 9:14:47 GMT -8
It's been 6 months since I put up that post. This is largely a repeat of that article from Sept but can anybody lend some expertise on the matter? dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-ferries-labour-shortage1. What do they mean by 25-yr global shortage of professional mariners? Does that mean the supply of qualified mariners is at a 25yr low? Or are they saying the shortage is approximately 25yrs worth!? 2. The article also says 600 positions have been filled for this summer. Is that correct? 600 if true, would be a phenomenal amount of hires! How many quit/got fired /retired from BCF since the pandemic!? 3. I must be missing something from the BCF side. Something (actually, a lot of things) isn't adding up for me. To compare, what is the experience from our WSF cousins? The world marine industry has been experiencing a shortage of ticketed seafarers (Navigational and Engineering officers) for a long time. 25 years would be about right.... anecdotally the late 90s/early 00s is when the crunch started. Lots of theories as to why, most seem to think it mostly comes down to a changing workforce where many people don't want to be disconnected or isolated. That said, there's a severe shortage of skilled workers pretty much everywhere these days. BCF has been sheltered by this for a long time, partly because they're mostly a day job that seafarers choose when they want a better work/life balance.
This release is pretty much just priming the public to "manage expectations" over service this coming summer. I'm sure they've included the 600 number to make it appear that they are doing as much as possible to mitigate the problems, and thus is probably as inflated as possible. It likely includes all the seasonals and casuals in all capacities, not just the positions they're desperately short in. 600 is not that many once you include all the seasonal terminal staff, catering, etc across the whole system.
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Post by 1foot2ships on Jun 17, 2022 21:24:29 GMT -8
timmyc Meant to post this last month, but the guy I use to work with told me his brother was big into making scale models, so I simply assumed this guy in the article was you.
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alex912
Oiler (New Member)
Posts: 22
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Post by alex912 on Aug 13, 2022 21:17:20 GMT -8
Question for anyone who has worked as a casual deckhand: How do you manage to make time for appointments, etc. if you’re constantly on call? Do you have methods of making it work, or do you just have to take a chance when you have an appointment? Hope I worded this alright.
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Post by yak on Aug 17, 2022 22:46:01 GMT -8
Question for anyone who has worked as a casual deckhand: How do you manage to make time for appointments, etc. if you’re constantly on call? Do you have methods of making it work, or do you just have to take a chance when you have an appointment? Hope I worded this alright. Haven't been a casual deckhand but I have some familiarity with the system. Everyone gets to know the Crewing department well, especially Casual employees. If you have an appointment your next call would be to Crewing to organize a period of "Casual Unavailability". Generally they are accommodating and appreciate the coordination instead of cold calling you in a panic and finding out you're not available.
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alex912
Oiler (New Member)
Posts: 22
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Post by alex912 on Aug 19, 2022 16:23:14 GMT -8
Thanks for answering my previous question. I now have another one: I’ve read that some of BC ferries workers don’t live at the same place as their port of call (eg. works out of Salt Spring, lives in Victoria). Is this true? If so, how do they pull it off? Have these workers already achieved full time status?
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Post by OneEighthMaster on Nov 1, 2022 15:10:38 GMT -8
Thanks for answering my previous question. I now have another one: I’ve read that some of BC ferries workers don’t live at the same place as their port of call (eg. works out of Salt Spring, lives in Victoria). Is this true? If so, how do they pull it off? Have these workers already achieved full time status? You'd need to be full-time and on a watch, depending on your risk tolerance. Casual means your schedule, if you have one, is subject to change at any time.
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Post by 1foot2ships on May 16, 2023 11:31:48 GMT -8
i heard there were a few recruitment drives earlier this spring. onsite interviews were conducted, but not sure if job offers were immediately extended or not. i assume they were similar to last yr's efforts where bcf puts them on by themselves.
anybody have any more information on these? and on the results of these? i dont think they went to any of the larger multi-company career fairs.
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QoNW Fan
Voyager
Queen of New Westminster fan!
Posts: 263
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Post by QoNW Fan on Jun 21, 2023 22:29:36 GMT -8
Does anyone have any experience with the gift shop Passages jobs? I know that a lot of BC Ferries workers will start at lower positions and work their way up to higher jobs, and the gift shops have always been of interest for me, but I can never seem to find where they post openings. Are they taken really fast? And is this a good place to start a BC Ferries career? Being on the ship for the gift store job sounds like a great starting point for working up to a deckhand position for example. I know deckhand requires more than just experience, I'm just wondering if that's a good way to get your foot in the door essentially.
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Post by 1foot2ships on Dec 19, 2023 18:54:08 GMT -8
to answer your questions about the gift shops...
from what i know, these positions and all cashier positions go only to senior catering employees. the gift shop looks to be the cushyiest of all cashier positions, so its probable only the highest seniority employees get these?
as for starting a career through this route, and as a general fact of life (in BCF world), i think u can forget about working in the gift shop until u become a 'regular' and that means spending whatever amount of time required doing the dirty jobs nobody likes... while on-call. fwiw, ive heard the speed of becoming a regular differs significantly between each terminal, so u could get lucky with timing i guess.
in regards to being a DH, that is an entirely different world within BCF. if i understand correctly, i think jobs onboard are divided between catering and deck. being a DH requires a lot of education. ~probably also expensive?
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Post by 1foot2ships on Dec 20, 2023 15:50:10 GMT -8
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Post by paulvanb on Mar 12, 2024 15:40:15 GMT -8
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