MLAA Founder Files Legal Complaint Against Crowley For Physical & Psychological Abuse Aboard M/V Washington Express. Complaint Alleges Attacks Were Retaliation From MMP President Don Marcus
John Ryan Melogy
December 3, 2021
Adam Vokac
President
Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association
444 North Capitol Street, N.W.
Suite #800
Washington, D.C. 20001
Re: Grievance, M/V Washington Express
Mr. Vokac,
This letter constitutes a Grievance per the dispute resolution provisions of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association and Crowley Maritime Corporation (Crowley) for the M/V Washington Express.
From November 28, 2015 to March 18, 2016, I served as 3rd Mate aboard the M/V Washington Express. I obtained the 3rd Mate’s job aboard the Washington Express in the Charleston union hall of the International Organization of Master, Mates & Pilots (MMP). When I obtained the job aboard the Washington Express, I was an “Applicant” in the MMP and the job was called for 120 days. A copy of my discharge from the M/V Washington Express is attached as EXHIBIT A.
During the time before and after I obtained the job, and during the entire course of my employment aboard the vessel, I was never informed that the vessel was not a MMP-contract ship. I was also never informed that the CBA covering my employment aboard the vessel was negotiated by the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association (MEBA), nor was I informed that the CBA’s dispute resolution provisions required that any grievance related to my employment aboard the vessel be filed with the MEBA instead of the MMP. I was informed of those facts in early 2019 by Donald Marcus, the President of the MMP after I told Marcus in a phone call and in emails about the harassment, bullying, abuse, assaults, and retaliation I endured while serving as 3rd Mate aboard the Washington Express, and after I informed Marcus of my desire to file a grievance. Donald was the President of the MMP during my time aboard the Washington Express, and remains President of the MMP as of the date of this letter.
From November 28, 2015 until approximately January 11, 2016 (approximately 45 days) I served as a deck officer aboard the vessel under Captain Karl Fidler, a senior member of the MMP and a permanent employee of Crowley. After spending approximately 45 days aboard the vessel with Captain Fidler, Captain Bridges relieved Fidler in Houston, Texas. On March 18, 2016 I quit my job aboard the Washington Express in Charleston, South Carolina before completing the 120 day contract. I had earned approximately 111 sea days at that point, and was only 9 days shy of completing the assignment.
The reason I quit the job before completing the 120 day assignment was because Captain Fidler was due to return to the vessel in Houston, Texas, approximately 5 days later, and I was deeply afraid of sailing with him again. During the time I spent working under Fidler at the beginning of my time aboard the Washington Express, Fidler subjected me to an absolutely outrageous, illegal, and persistent pattern of harassment, bullying, targeting, and physical and psychological abuse.
Fidler’s abusive conduct towards me included two physical assaults that both occurred on the bridge of the ship at night while maneuvering in Northern European ports. What I endured aboard that vessel while serving under Karl Fidler was the worst experience of my life, of any kind, up to that point, and I was afraid to sail under him again—even for less than a week.
Before I joined the vessel in 2015, Captain Karl Fidler’s open and illegal abusive conduct had been both condoned, encouraged, and enabled by Don Marcus, the MEBA, and Crowley for many years. But I was specifically targeted by Fidler and subjected to a level of abuse aboard the Washington Express that was extraordinary even by Fidler’s sickening standards. I believe Karl Fidler intentionally targeted me for abuse aboard the Washington Express in retaliation for something that happened approximately 10 months before I joined the vessel.
In late November of 2014, almost exactly one year before I joined the Washington Express in Charleston, I joined the M/V Maersk Idaho as 2nd Mate. I obtained the 70 day 2nd Mate relief job aboard the Maersk Idaho through the MMP union hall in Jersey City, New Jersey. On February 3, 2015, while serving as 2nd Mate aboard the Maersk Idaho, I submitted a report of sexual misconduct against Mark Stinziano, a member of the MMP and the Chief Mate of the Maersk Idaho, to Captain Paul Willers, the master of the Idaho. Willers was a member of the MMP.
In the report of sexual misconduct I delivered to Captain Paul Willers, I alleged that Chief Mate Mark Stinziano had sexually assaulted me twice aboard the vessel, I alleged that I saw Stinziano sexually assault a USMMA cadet by grabbing him from behind on the bridge of the ship and forcefully simulating a sex act on the cadet’s backside, and that I saw Chief Mate Stinziano sexually assault a 2nd USMMA cadet by reaching under the dinner table in the officer’s mess and groping the young man right in front of me.
In addition to these four criminal sexual assaults, all of which constituted federal crimes per 18 U.S. Code Chapter 109A, I reported that Stinziano, through his nearly constant sexually inappropriate conduct, had created a hostile work environment aboard the vessel, and that his pattern of outrageous, abusive, and illegal behavior towards the USMMA cadets constituted “sexual abuse.”
After submitting my report of sexual misconduct to Captain Paul Willers aboard the Maersk Idaho, I was told by Willers that I would be contacted by Maersk in the course of their investigation into my allegations. I told Willers that I was looking forward to speaking with Maersk. However, Maersk never contacted me. Months later, I learned that Chief Mate Mark Stinziano had not been fired for his sexual misconduct, and that he was still sailing as Chief Mate aboard the Maersk Idaho. This greatly surprised me, and I concluded that Maersk had engaged in a coverup of my allegations following my departure from the vessel in Genoa, Italy on February 3, 2015.
My conclusion that Willers and Maersk had engaged in a coverup of Stinziano’s crimes aboard the Maersk Idaho would be confirmed in June of 2021 during the “Suspension & Revocation” trial of Mark Stinziano that was held before a U.S. Coast Guard Administrative Law Judge in Baltimore, Maryland. Two former USMMA cadets testified at Stinziano’s trial. One former cadet testified that he had been pressured by Mark Stinziano, Paul Willers, and other senior officers, including the Chief Engineer (a member of MEBA) of the Maersk Idaho to deny that Stinziano had sexually assaulted or harassed him, or otherwise acted inappropriately towards him. The U.S. Coast Guard’s Amended Complaint charging Stinziano with shipboard sexual misconduct related to my time aboard the M/V Maersk Idaho is attached here as EXHIBIT B.
After I submitted my report to Maersk on February 3, 2015, I was deeply concerned that I might face retaliation within the MMP for blowing the whistle on a senior member of the union “brotherhood.” Nevertheless, on the evening of November 28, 2015 I joined the M/V Washington Express in Charleston, South Carolina. During the “turnover” with the young 3rd Mate I was relieving, I found myself sitting in one of the ship’s offices filling out sign-on paperwork with the off-signing 3rd Mate. Captain Karl Fidler entered the room and told me that he had “heard things about me” and that these things were “not good.” After making these threatening statements, Fidler left the room. Fidler did not specify what “things” he had heard about me, but I assumed he was referring to the fact that I had blown the whistle on Mark Stinziano’s pattern of criminal sexual misconduct aboard the Maersk Idaho. Stinziano was Fidler’s union brother.
The off-singing 3rd Mate warned me that Fidler was in very poor health. He told me that Fidler often experienced prolonged coughing attacks on the bridge, and that these attacks scared the 3rd Mate. The 3rd Mate told me that every morning he was required to give Fidler a wake-up call, and that each time he sincerely wondered if Fidler would not pick up the phone because his time on earth had expired during the night. The 3rd Mate also told me that some people did not like Fidler because he had a reputation for sometimes “screaming” at people. However, the 3rd Mate told me that he had not himself been screamed at by Fidler and had suffered no ill treatment from Fidler during the more than 4 months that he had served aboard the vessel as 3rd Mate.
For most of the initial coastwise trip, I did not experience any kind of extreme harassment or abuse from Fidler. However, I did begin witnessing his terrifying coughing attacks and evidence of his extremely poor health condition almost immediately. The first coughing attack occurred on the bridge on our way out of the port of Charleston and out to sea. As we moved down the river with the pilot at the conn, Fidler left his chair and exited through the sliding door that led to the starboard bridge wing. He left the sliding door open and stood just outside the door where he began to smoke a cigarette. The smell of the burning tobacco began to immediately drift into the wheelhouse, which had large “NO SMOKING” signs prominently posted in several places above the forward bridge windows.
After a short while, Fidler began releasing a long string of deep, rattling hacks that reverberated throughout the bridge. This coughing, over and over again, was uncontrolled and left him gasping for air. Every time he managed to suppress the coughing, he would take another drag on his cigarette, and then begin another round of violent coughing. As he coughed, Fidler would hack up phlegm, and would spit the phlegm all of the bridge wing. Because of his practice of spitting his phlegm all over the starboard bridge wing, some of the crew referred to the starboard wing as the “biohazard area.”
This cycle of hacking and spitting and smoking went on for 10 or 15 minutes. In all of my time sailing, I had never seen anything like it from any member of a ship’s crew. It was obvious to everyone aboard the vessel that Captain Fidler was suffering from some kind of serious, chronic respiratory disease. And yet Crowley, the MMP, and the MEBA allowed him to sail as the captain of a large container ship. I have no doubt that if any other member of the crew had launched into a similar coughing fit that lasted 10 or 15 minutes, on any ship I had ever sailed on, including the Washington Express, that person would have been sent ashore to a hospital and declared unfit for duty. But there was a separate, unique, and dangerous double standard for the captain of the Washington Express. This double standard that Crowley, the MMP, and the MEBA maintained with respect to Fidler’s health condition placed the safety of the vessel and her crew in danger.
This pattern of smoking and coughing would play out several times during each maneuvering operation, and would often be commented upon by the pilots who came aboard the vessel and commented upon by other crewmembers on the bridge who were forced to endure the disgusting and horrifying attacks along with Fidler. The coughing attacks were extremely distracting, affected the morale of the bridge team, and negatively affected the ability of the bridge team to focus on our jobs.
Norfolk, Virginia was our last coastwise port. On approximately December 10, 2015, we departed Norfolk to begin the ocean crossing to Europe. This is when Fidler’s harassment began in earnest. As we sailed out of Norfolk, I was standing at the Engine Order Telegraph (EOT) when Fidler asked the pilot if he wanted breakfast. The pilot responded that he did not want breakfast. Fidler said, “well my old man always said if you’re gonna be a big spender, be a big spender on breakfast!” The pilot said something to the effect of, “well your old man was right about that, Captain.” Then Fidler, who was holding the phone, asked me if I wanted breakfast. Per the CBA, I should have been allowed to go below to eat breakfast, but Fidler did not want to pay someone else an hour of overtime to relieve me.
When Captain Fidler asked me if I wanted breakfast, I said, “yes, sir” and told him I wanted an omelette. Upon hearing the word “omelette,” Fidler slammed the phone down and began screaming at me.
“What the fuck are you talking about,” he screamed. “You think I’m taking your fucking order or something? You think I’m your fucking waitress? If you want breakfast, you get on that goddamn phone and call down to the galley and tell them what the fuck you want! Jesus fucking Christ!”
It was an explosion of anger and outrage that completely stunned me and everyone else on the bridge, including the pilot. When I moved to pick up the phone near the console to call the galley, Fidler began mocking me.
He said, “What the fuck do you want me to do next, 3rd Mate? Scrub your fucking dick for you?”
I was so distracted, confused, and shocked that I was unable to even dial the numbers to the galley. As I tried to regain my composure, the Captain began mocking me by speaking in a loud, high-pitched, feminine voice. He said something like, “Yesss, I’ll have an omelette, and some fruit, and some rye toast, and cut the crust off the toast…” and then switched back to his normal, angry, scary voice and screamed, “Are you fucking shitting me!?”
As he screamed at me I became paralyzed, and simply held the phone as I tried to gather my thoughts and composure. That’s when Fidler said something to the effect of, “What’s the problem, you can’t order your own breakfast? Do you need me to teach you how to order fucking breakfast?”
At that, I hung up the phone and told the Captain that I was going to skip breakfast, and he replied, “That’s the best fucking idea you’ve had since you got on here.”
It was clear at that point that something in our relationship had changed, but I did not understand why Fidler had suddenly decided to absolutely belittle, disrespect, harass, and bully me in front of the pilot and other crew members. Looking back, I don’t think it was a coincidence that Fidler waited until the moment we left the coast and began the ocean crossing to begin tormenting me. He knew that if he had begun his abuse during the coastwise I would have been able to quit, and he knew that I would have had cell phone access in order to call someone about what was happening. And he knew that once we were in the ocean I was trapped. The Washington Express did not have any internet access for the crew, and the only way to communicate with land was through an internal batch email system that was monitored by the captain, who could block any outgoing emails he wanted--as I would later find out.
The day after we left Norfolk, or maybe two days later, Fiddler held a fire and boat drill followed by a safety meeting. As the Safety Officer, I was responsible for bringing a DVD from the ship’s training library to the lounge for viewing by the crew. Fidler told me to show an instructional video to the assembled crew members. I recall the topic was on the proper use of portable fire extinguishers. As I was preparing to leave the bridge (my Fire & Boat station) to retrieve the DVD, I asked Fidler if there were any special instructions or additional training he expected me to deliver aside from playing the video.
“Why the fuck are you asking me that?” he said to me. “That’s why I pay you, so I don’t have to think about shit like that.”
That interaction was typical of every single interaction I had with Fidler for the remainder of the time I had to spend aboard the vessel with that monster. Any interaction I had with Fidler, no matter how trivial, was laden with intimidation, disrespect, bullying, and intentional condescension directed at me by the Captain.
The safety meeting required a muster sheet, which Fidler had prepared and placed on the chart table. As I passed the chart table on my way to the safety meeting, I grabbed a black pen sitting next to the muster sheet and signed next to my name. Then I went down to the crew’s lounge with the DVD and told the 2nd Mate to relieve the Captain on the bridge.
The DVD was almost finished when Fidler entered the lounge. Fidler was carrying the muster sheet. He had attached the muster sheet to a clipboard and there was a pen attached to the clipboard. The muster sheet went around the room and when it came to me I passed it to the next person as I had already signed it on the bridge. When the movie finished I stood up to turn off the television. Fidler then began talking, and eventually the clipboard returned to Fidler, with the muster sheet signed by everyone present. Fidler grabbed the clipboard, looked at it, and stopped talking. Then he began staring at me with hatred in his eyes.
What I did not realize was that Fidler had attached a ballpoint pen with blue ink to the clipboard. He would later claim that the blue ink replicated better than black ink when he made photocopies of the muster sheet. The pen I had used to sign the sheet on the bridge had been filled with black ink. This was apparently an unpardonable sin, and the man absolutely exploded on me in front of the entire crew. He flew into an absolute physical rage.
“Everyone on the ship signed it in blue ink, except you!” he screamed at me. “Are you stupid? Are you stupid? Tell me if you are stupid!”
Everyone in the small lounge was staring at me, and I was staring at Fidler, dumbfounded and again paralyzed. The man was so intensely angry that he was shaking and his face was filled with blood.
He kept asking me the same question: “Are you stupid?”
When I didn’t answer, he yelled, “I’m asking you a fucking question!” Then he began to talk very slowly, as if I were a young child or someone who did not understand English well. “Do. You. Understand. My. Question!?” he asked.
I told him that I was sorry for signing the sheet in black ink instead of blue ink, and that I would not make the same mistake again.
But that response did not satisfy Fidler, and he continued his unhinged screaming at me. When he allowed me a chance to answer him, several more times I apologized and told him that it would not happen again. In the middle of this verbal attack, I realized that I was also shaking. My hands were shaking and my voice was wavering. Never in my life had someone spoken to me that way. Never, ever. I was a 33 year old man, a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (magna cum laude), and in front of almost all of my shipmates, Fidler was screaming at me and belittling me as if I were a subhuman who had committed some kind of heinous crime. His verbal attacks were surreal and inexplicable and frightening.
“Black fucking ink!” he screamed as he interrupted me again and again. “Black ink, you moron!”
I could feel the left side of my face twitching, my left eye twitching. I was waiting and hoping for Fidler to stop the attacks, but he could not let it go.
“Everyone else used blue INK!” he screamed. “BLUE! You are the only person on this ship not smart enough to use BLUE fucking INK.”
“It won’t happen again Captain,” I said in the calmest, clearest voice I could manage.
“Did you go to college!?” he screamed.
I stared at him and said nothing.
“Did you go to college?” he screamed again.
“It won’t happen again, Captain,” I said.
“It won’t happen again, Captain,” he said in his high-pitched, feminine mocking voice. “It won’t happen again, Captain.”
“How the fuck did they let you on this ship?” he screamed. “You can’t even tell the difference between BLACK and BLUE!”
Fidler’s outburst of madness lasted perhaps 2 full minutes. The man had lost control of himself completely. The crew were shocked, confused, speechless, and generally horrified. Everyone, that is, except for the Chief Mate, a man named Richard Boullion, who was a senior member of MMP. Boullion thought the bullying, public humiliation, and verbal abuse I was having to endure in front of the entire crew was funny. Boullion was sitting in the corner of the lounge, behind the Captain, facing me, and I could see Boullion’s face over Fidler’s left shoulder. During the entire unhinged tirade, Boullion smiled and chuckled to himself. He was thoroughly entertained.
Finally, Fidler completely exhausted himself, ended the meeting, and stormed out of the lounge. Over the rest of that day, approximately half a dozen crew members approached me and asked me some form of “what was that all about in the safety meeting?” And some asked me how I was handling it. “Are you alright?” was a serious question I received. I told them all that I had no idea what it had really been about, and that I was fine. But the reality was that I was not at all fine, and I felt like I was living in hell.
After the verbal abuse and public humiliation I endured in the crew’s lounge, my life on that ship completely changed. Up to that point, life had been bearable. But after the incident in the lounge it was clear that I was trapped on a ship with someone determined to make my life absolutely miserable. And I was truly trapped. In the middle of the ocean, the scene replayed itself in my mind over and over and over again on an endless loop. The abuse I had already suffered completely interfered with my ability to focus and concentrate on my job. And I could only surmise that this was payback from the MMP for having reported Stinziano’s sex crimes aboard the Maersk Idaho. I understood that, but I could not understand how it was possible that Fidler could openly abuse and humiliate me in front of the entire crew, and with the support of the Chief Mate and the senior MEBA officers, none of whom stood up in the meeting to tell the sadist that he was completely out of line. From there, Fidler’s abuse continued and grew even worse.
It was winter in the North Atlantic as we made the crossing. The weather was rough, the seas high, and it was often difficult to sleep through the pitches and rolls. It was already an unpleasant environment, but in addition to enduring the stormy seas, I began to experience anxiety, insomnia, feelings of intense loneliness and despair, and significant impairment in my ability to concentrate on my job. Because my job was to ensure the ship did not collide with land or another vessel, the effect of Fidler’s abuse was to endanger the safety of everyone aboard the Washington Express.
Throughout the crossing, Fidler continued to torment me. Fidler harassed me with his eyes by making menacing visual contact with me and directing looks of completely unprovoked disgust and anger at me. He isolated me from the other deck officers and made me a pariah. They made fun of me and made quiet jokes to each other about me and looked in my direction and laughed, or looked in my direction to shoot me looks of scorn and derision. The 2nd Mate was a MMP member named Ed Hurley. Fidler referred to Hurley as “Eddie” and went out of his way to show me how much he liked Eddie.
It was surreal to watch Fidler interact with the 2nd Mate. Fidler was kind to him, patient with him, joked with him, and never seemed to criticize him or offer harsh words to Hurley, even when he made mistakes. It was obvious to everyone that I was being singled out for Fidler’s abuse, and obvious that I was being targeted by the Captain for some reason. Hurley picked up on Fidler’s cues and himself directed harsh and insulting behavior towards me. Chief Mate Boullion also acted intentionally disrespectful to me. For example, when I would greet Chief Mate Boullion with a “good morning, mate” or a “good evening, mate,” Boullion would simply stare at me with a blank face without responding, and then dryly begin the watch turnover.
Fidler locked the officer’s lounge and forbade anyone from entering it, for no legitimate reason, which left me without a place to relax outside of my own cabin. He forbade any music or audio recordings from being played on the bridge, even in the middle of the ocean. The long, silent night watches were torture, which was the way he wanted them to be. As there was no internet connection on the vessel, there was no way to communicate with any friends or family other than through the batch email system Fidler controlled. This left me feeling more isolated and alone than I had felt on any ship I’d ever worked on.
Our first port after the long, miserable ocean crossing was Antwerp, Belgium. To reach Antwerp, we passed through the English Channel and the Strait of Dover, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and arrived in Belgium on approximately December 19, 2015. Outside of Antwerp we took on a pilot who would take us to the dock. It was dark and I was standing at the EOT with the pilot at the conn. Fidler went out onto the biohazard area and began smoking a cigarette, and then the inevitable happened: the Captain began one of his terrifying coughing attacks. It was something I had already experienced numerous times, but it was a first for the Belgian pilot.
The pilot was standing near the centerline, at the forward bridge windows, and I could see that he was becoming extremely concerned and agitated about what was happening on the starboard bridge wing. After a few minutes of unabated violent coughing and hacking and spitting, the pilot walked back to where I was standing at the EOT.
“Mr. Mate,” he said, “what is wrong with your Captain?”
“Oh, that’s normal,” I told him quietly. “He does that all the time. It usually goes on for about 10 or 15 minutes while he smokes.”
“That’s not normal,” the pilot told me. “He needs to see a doctor. He sounds like he is dying.”
I told the pilot that I agreed Fidler sounded like he was dying, and that I strongly agreed with him that Fidler should be taken to a doctor. I also told the pilot that he should tell Fidler himself.
“I will,” replied the pilot. “This is a serious problem for your vessel.”
I told the pilot that I agreed Fidler’s health condition was a serious problem for our vessel. The situation was embarrassing, even for me. When Fidler finally finished smoking and coughing, he came back inside and sat in his chair as if nothing had happened. That’s when the pilot approached him.
“Captain, I think you are not well?” the pilot said.
Fidler dismissed his concerns and told the pilot he was fine.
“Captain, there is a very good hospital in Antwerp,” said the pilot. “I can arrange for a doctor to see you when we have docked.”
At that point Fidler became angry and defensive and again told the pilot he was fine, but the pilot was persistent.
“Captain, really, I don’t think you’re ok,” said the pilot.
Then Fidler exploded and began screaming and cursing at the pilot and told him to “just drive the fucking ship!”
The rest of the pilotage was tense.
As we approached the docks in Antwerp, I was standing at the EOT in the dark, not far in front of the now enraged Captain, who was sitting in his chair behind me.
On the console, near the EOT lever, were the controls for the ship’s bow thruster. Fidler claimed that he did not trust me to follow the simple sequence of pushing buttons required to initiate power to the thruster, and insisted that he always do it himself. The thruster required about 20 minutes to warm up before it was available to use, but since it wasn’t my job, I had learned to wait for Fidler to decide when he was going to initiate the startup sequence.
We were coming down the river Scheldt, and the docks and cranes were coming into view. Fidler and the pilot were not speaking. It was fairly quiet on the bridge other than radio chatter, and I was standing at the EOT, staring off into the distance. Suddenly, I was blindsided and assaulted by Fidler. The Captain had slipped out of his chair behind me, quietly snuck up to me on my left side, and then full-force hip and shoulder-checked me with the right side of his body. The force of the unprovoked assault caused me to stagger several steps to my right in order to regain my balance, and I nearly fell over. If he had extended both of his arms and shoved me as hard as he could, I don’t think he could have caused me to move as far away from him as I did after he thrust the weight of his entire body into my left hip and side and nearly knocked me over.
When I regained my balance and stood all the way back up, Fidler had his little flashlight out and was initiating the bow thruster start sequence. Instead of asking me to move, he had simply shoved me out of his way like an animal. He never said a word to me, only grunted. Because it was dark on the bridge, and because of his obvious practice in executing the silent assault, no one else on the bridge was even aware that it had happened. Not even the helmsman, as far as I could tell.
After Fidler grunted at me and almost knocked me to the deck, I began to truly hate him in a way that I think is a natural reaction to being physically assaulted by someone for absolutely no legitimate reason and without any warning. Compounding the injury was the fact that the assault was an outrageous abuse of power. It infuriated me and left me with no obvious recourse, and with no good options for dealing with the situation. My mind became focused on how I could make him stop bullying me and stop him from making my life a living hell. He had already destroyed my mental health, which was his goal. All of the negative thoughts and emotions began to overwhelm me, and I began to fall into a desperate depression because of the helplessness and hopelessness that I felt.
After Antwerp, we sailed for Bremerhaven, Germany. The pilotage into Bremerhaven was similar to the pilotage into Antwerp. Again we arrived at the dock in the evening on my watch. Again there were alarming coughing attacks in the biohazard area while the Captain smoked cigarettes. Again the German pilot openly expressed concern for Fidler’s health to the Captain. Again Fidler exploded on the pilot and told him to mind his own business. It was all very distracting and unpleasant.
When we were about half an hour from the dock, I was standing at the EOT in the dark when Fidler again snuck up behind me and assaulted me with another ferocious hip and shoulder check on his way to the bow thruster. Again, he nearly knocked me to the deck. Again he merely grunted at me. At that moment I wanted to use force against him, and I felt that I was within my legal and moral rights to use force in self-defense. But he was the Captain, and if I touched him, I knew that he would claim he had never touched me, and he would claim that I was lying about the fact that he had violently assaulted me twice.
That second assault made me want to quit the job, and I almost did quit. While I was ashore in Bremerhaven, I came very close to not returning to the vessel. It was truly one of the lowest, most desperate points of my life. I felt there was nothing I could do to stop him. But I needed the money, and I was only an applicant in the MMP. I knew that if I quit it would be very difficult to obtain another job, and that I would have to spend months waiting in the union hall for another ship. And I knew I would likely have to pay my own flight home, and pay for a relief to fly out, which would probably eat up any wages I had already earned on the trip. Fidler, of course, knew all of that as well.
The man seemed to want to find out how far he could push me. I felt his hatred of me constantly, and it was completely undeserved. I had done nothing wrong, had done nothing to objectively offend the man, and had not made any significant professional mistakes. His behavior was simply coming from a place of evil, a place of retaliation, and a desire to teach me a lesson about how the MMP worked. The lesson he was teaching me was what happened to MMP applicants who snitched on senior members of the MMP; what happened to applicants who blew the whistle on sex predators within Donald Marcus’ labor union.
As the trip wore on, Fidler’s health steadily declined. His coughing attacks grew worse, and he became weak. Crew members speculated that he may have been carrying a transmittable respiratory disease. Based on his symptoms, I thought he might have tuberculosis. Permanent crew members said that he had been having the coughing attacks and breathing trouble for more than a year, and that his problems were progressively worsening along with his insanity. Everyone agreed that he was outrageously unfit for duty, and that he had no business working on a ship, much less sailing as the captain. But no one would report him, because they were afraid of retaliation, losing their jobs, or worse.
I wanted to stop Fidler from tormenting and assaulting me, but I knew that reporting him to Crowley, the MEBA, or the MMP for harassing, bullying and assaulting me would have been pointless. Crowley obviously knew he was an abuser and knew that he was unfit for duty, but they did not care. The MEBA knew. MMP also knew and also protected him. And I had already learned the lesson that these senior union members were untouchable on the M/V Maersk Idaho when, the year before, I reported sex crimes committed by a MMP member and Maersk employee, and then saw that nothing at all happened to the perpetrator.
In desperation, I decided to report Fidler’s health condition to Crowley and to the U.S. Coast Guard in the hopes that they might take a health hazard more seriously than shipboard assault, bullying, and abuse. I composed an email on my laptop, transferred the text to the ship’s shared email computer, and sent the message to Crowley’s Designated Person Ashore (DPA) and to several U.S. Coast Guard Safety Offices. The email read:
URGENT: Report of Hazardous Condition Aboard M/V WASHINGTON EXPRESS
To Whom It May Concern:
I am reporting what I believe to be a “hazardous condition” aboard the vessel that should be reported to the United States Coast Guard per 33 C.F.R. § 160.215.
Per 33 C.F.R. § 160.215 the owner, agent, master, operator, or person in charge of a vessel is required to immediately notify the nearest Coast Guard Sector whenever there is a hazardous condition aboard the vessel, and the USCG has stated that an ill person on board may constitute a hazardous condition that should be reported.
The hazardous condition I am reporting is the chronic respiratory disease and general health condition of Captain Karl Fidler, one of the two permanent Masters of the M/V Washington Express.
Captain Fidler is a heavy smoker, is in very poor health, and has a serious, chronic respiratory disease that has been affecting him for more than a year. Over time his condition continues to worsen. Crew members are very concerned about his health and his ability to handle the responsibilities of a ship’s master, but cannot do anything about the situation because he is the Captain and the most senior officer on the ship.
Crew members are concerned that we could be in danger because we do not know what he is suffering from, and it seems possible that he is suffering from a disease that can be transmitted to other people. One disease that crew members have speculated that the Captain may have is Tuberculosis. According to sources found online, some of the symptoms of Tuberculosis are “Coughing that lasts three or more weeks” “chest pain, “pain with breathing or coughing” and “fatigue.” Fidler displays all of these symptoms.
He has been having coughing attacks for more than a year. These episodes of violent coughing often last for 10 or 20 minutes and often happen on the bridge and in his office. When he is having the attacks on the bridge he will generally be on the starboard bridge wing smoking cigarettes. He hacks up fluids from his lungs and spits all over the bridge wing. Crew members have reported that Fidler uses asthma-style respiratory inhalers that he keeps in his office and uses large quantities of anti-cough medications, but none of it seems to work.
Everyone who hears his coughing attacks is shocked by them. Pilots who come aboard the vessel for the first time are always shocked by the coughing attacks. They ask the Captain “are you ok?,” “what’s wrong?,” etc. In Antwerp, Belgium the Captain was on the bridge wing smoking a cigarette and having a 10-15 minute coughing attack. The sea pilot asked a crew member on the bridge “what’s wrong with your Captain?” The crew member responded “oh, that’s normal, he always does that.” The sea pilot then said “that’s NOT normal. The man needs to see a doctor. He sounds like he is DYING.” The pilot said this with absolute seriousness and concern. This is a helpless and embarrassing situation for crew members that plays itself out over and over again.
The Captain seems to have trouble breathing normally aside from the coughing attacks and he often appears to be in physical pain and exhaustion. Over the course of his 70-day rotations as Master of the vessel his condition steadily worsens. It appears that he is frequently unable to sleep. He has trouble climbing stairs and tires easily and he has been seen on the bridge during fire and emergency / abandon ship drills in such a state of depletion that he is barely able to whisper into the walkie talkie while communicating with the emergency squads and lifeboats. I have no doubt that in a real emergency situation he would be unable to lead the crew and would put everyone’s life in peril.
One thing is clear: NO ONE IN HIS CONDITION WOULD BE ALLOWED TO WORK ON THIS SHIP (OR ANY SHIP). The first time that a senior officer heard one of his coughing attacks he would be told that he was unfit for duty and sent home. And yet he continues to work because he is the Captain and there is no one senior to him aboard the vessel.
Crew members wonder, why is there a different standard for the Master of the vessel than for everyone else on the ship? Why is the most important person on the ship allowed to command the vessel while suffering from a condition that would prevent anyone else from even signing aboard?
It would be in everyone’s best interest if this matter is investigated. Someone who has a serious chronic lung condition should not be commanding a large ship or be responsible for the lives of the crew.
I have sent this anonymously because Captain Fidler will retaliate against any crew members that he suspects of informing the Coast Guard about his medical condition. I also fear retribution from labor unions and the owner and operators of the vessel for reporting this very hazardous condition.
I seek all available “whistleblower” protections for myself and other crew members.
thank you,
A Concerned Crew Member
After I sent the email from the ship’s shared email computer I waited and hoped. But nothing happened. I would later learn about the fact that the ship’s email system was a “batch email” system that allowed the Captain to read all emails before they were sent off the ship, and allowed the Captain to intercept and delete emails that he did not want going out. And I would learn that both Fidler and Captain Bridges intercepted my outgoing emails regarding Fidler’s health.
On the way back across the Atlantic from Europe, Fidler came on the bridge during my morning watch and went to the rough logbook located near the chart table. He scanned the log entries and found that I had abbreviated the word “weather” as “WX” in the ship’s rough logbook. He barked at me to come to him, and when I arrived he began screaming at me. While close to my face, he called me a “stupid motherfucker.”
He was shaking and deranged. It was absolutely irrational for someone to be so completely upset and explosively angry over an abbreviation in a logbook, but he was constantly looking for any reason to harass, bully, and belittle me. For abbreviating “weather,” he repeatedly screamed at me that I was “lazy,” told me to “stop being lazy,” and repeated these things over and over again while working himself out of breath. I was working for a mad man.
At some point on the crossing back to the States, I was on watch in the morning when I heard something banging around above the wheelhouse. When I walked out on the bridge wing and looked up, I saw that one of the long halyards used to hoist flags up the mast had come untied from its cleat on the flying bridge. The two heavy brass swivels used to hold the flag ends were locked together, and the long line was swinging around wildly, threatening to swing into the rotating radar antennas. After telling my A.B. to keep a good lookout, I climbed up on the flying bridge, but I couldn't reach the halyard. We’d need a long rod to reach it, I realized. When I returned to the wheelhouse, I did what I thought any prudent mate would have done: I called Fidler in his stateroom.
“Captain, this is the 3rd Mate on the bridge,” I said.
“What do you want?” Fidler barked.
I briefly explained the situation to him, and then Fidler said, “Why the fuck are you calling me about it?” Then he slammed down his receiver without saying another word. The disrespect, incredible unprofessionalism, and hatred directed at me were all eating me up inside. If the man had died in his sleep on that ship, I would have been happy. I would have been able to relax, do my job in peace, and my own life condition would have improved immensely. But he did not die, despite his dire health problems.
As we approached Charleston after the 2nd ocean crossing, I was preparing the final tally of the slop chest for the voyage using an excel spreadsheet. I had a problem with some of the formulas within the spreadsheet, and as an absolute last resort I very reluctantly informed Fidler and requested his help. Fidler called me on the phone from his stateroom while I was on the bridge for my morning watch, and launched into another unhinged tirade against me. He repeatedly called me a “stupid motherfucker,” screamed at me that I was “lazy,” and asked me over and over again whether or not I had “gone to college.”
When I refused to answer his ridiculous question about whether or not I had “gone to college,” he became even more unhinged and began screaming at me to the point that nothing he was saying was even intelligible. It was just a furious noise. I held the receiver up in the air and motioned for my watch partner to listen. Even though he was standing about 10 feet away, he could hear the unintelligible screaming coming out of the phone. I thought the episode was more evidence that Fidler had gone completely insane. Eventually I could not bear any more of his abuse, and I hung up the phone with him still screaming. It was hell, and my time working for that man remains the worst thing I have ever endured. Fidler wanted to run me off his ship, out of his union, and out of the industry. That was clear.
When we reached Houston, Texas following my first trip to Europe, Fidler was relieved by Captain Bridges, and my life immediately improved. There could not be two men more different from each other. Upon joining the vessel, my plan had been to take a one-trip relief following either the first or second round trip to Europe. Taking a trip off creates a reset in the mind, and helps greatly with mental health issues faced by all sailors who go to sea on long trips. But with the abuse I suffered under Captain Fidler, taking a trip off became an impossibility for me. Captain Bridges would be on for 70 days, and if I took a trip off, I would have to sail with Fidler again, which was out of the question.
When I finally quit the ship in Charleston on March 18, 2016, my brain was thoroughly fried. Captain Bridges was fairly easy to work with, allowed music to be played at a reasonable volume on the bridge during the ocean crossings, and unlocked the officer’s lounge that Fidler had closed in order to make everyone even more miserable. But the trauma Fidler had inflicted upon my brain reverberated for the next two months, even while Fidler was back at his home. After I left the ship and returned to my house, I spent over a month in a deep depression as I tried to process what had happened to me on the Washington Express, and as I contemplated how I could move forward in my life after what I had been through. In the span of a little more than a year I had been sexually harassed and assaulted on one ship, then retaliated against, assaulted, and subjected to psychological abuse on the next ship. It was a dark time, and my experience with Fidler left me feeling that I could no longer endure life at sea.
After I left the Washington Express, I wanted to find out why my emails to Crowley and the U.S. Coast Guard regarding Fidler’s dangerous health condition had gone unanswered, and wanted to test my theory that they had been intercepted by Fidler and Bridges. To do this, I printed out approximately 5 copies of my Report of Hazardous Condition and mailed unsigned, anonymous whistleblower letters to the Crowley DPA and various USCG Safety Offices via the U.S. Postal Service. I would later learn from a member of MMP who relieved me as 3rd mate aboard the Washington Express that the letters had reached Crowley and possibly also the USCG. This MMP member told me that in response to my letters, Fidler had been removed from the Washington Express in an American port and ordered to undergo an examination by a local doctor. This MMP member further explained to me that Fidler had refused to see the doctor, insisted on seeing his own doctor in Washington State, and when that request was denied, Fidler subsequently retired from Crowley and the MMP. This MMP member told me these facts while we were both students in residence at the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies (MITAGS), the MMP training school, in late 2018.
I spent approximately two months in late 2018 as a student in residence at MITAGS in an effort to complete all of the USCG-required classes necessary to obtain my unlimited tonnage chief mate’s license. In November of 2018 I was enrolled in “Leadership and Managerial Skills (LMS),” which was one of those USCG-required classes. LMS was a 5-day, 40 hour course, and there were approximately 10 students in the class. We were all taking the course in order to upgrade to a management-level license. During one of the 5 sessions, Captain Bob Kimball, the instructor (also a senior member of the MMP), asked each member of the class to speak about a “good leader” and a “bad leader” we had sailed with in our careers.
When it was my turn, I began telling the class about what I had experienced aboard the Maersk Idaho, and about the behavior of Captain Mark Stinziano, one of the many sexually predatory MMP members who are zealously protected and enabled by MMP President Donald Marcus. As I told the class about the sexual harassment and sexual assaults I and others had endured during my two months aboard the Maersk Idaho in 2014 and 2015, the class was shocked. Everyone in the class, including the instructor, told me that I should report Stinziano to Maersk. When I told the class that I had reported Stinziano to Maersk and that no action had been taken, everyone in the class, including the instructor, told me that I should report Stinziano to Donald Marcus and the MMP leadership. Believing that he may have had a legal obligation to report my allegations of Stinziano’s shipboard sex crimes himself, the instructor decided to report my allegations against Stinziano to Don Marcus and Steve Werse, which is an episode you can read more about in the “MMP Grievance” I filed with MMP regarding what I endured aboard the M/V Maersk Idaho. The MMP Grievance is attached at EXHIBIT C.
In addition to talking about my experiences with Mark Stinziano in the LMS class, I continued to tell the class about the hell I had endured aboard the Washington Express the following year while serving under Captain Karl Fidler. In response to my stories about Fidler, the instructor told the class that he had worked with Karl Fidler. He told the class that Fidler was notorious in the MMP as a shipboard bully and harasser, and that Fidler was “an old Lykes Line guy” who had learned his abusive behavior at Lykes Lines where it had also been tolerated.
Kimball told the class that what I had experienced at Fidler’s hands was called “riding a guy” or “finding a whipping boy,” and Kimball said that the behavior indeed sounded like it was retaliation for having filed a sexual misconduct report against Mark Stinziano on the Maersk Idaho. Other class participants who were members of MMP, and who knew of Fidler’s reputation, still expressed shock at the intensity of the abuse Fidler had directed towards me, especially the physical assaults. These MMP members told me that the abuse sounded retaliatory and was likely connected with the report I had filed aboard the Maersk Idaho. “That’s how the union works,” one of them said.
I also told the class about Fidler’s outrageously dangerous health condition, and told them that I had twice attempted to report Fidler to the Crowley DPA and to the U.S. Coast Guard while a crew member. I told the class that I believed my emails had been blocked, because after I left the ship I sent a paper copy of my letter via the U.S. Postal Service that had reached the Crowley DPA. Crowley is in possession of this letter.
The LMS instructor then began explaining how the email system on the Washington Express worked, and I took detailed notes of the LMS instructor’s response. The instructor explained that he had sailed as chief mate aboard the St. Louis Express, a sister ship of the Washington Express. The instructor told the class that both ships had a “batch email system” and that all emails were sent out via satellite in batches. According to the instructor, the captain controlled when the email batches were released, and he told us that the captain could go in and actually read all emails before they were sent out, and that the captain could delete any emails before they were sent out.
The instructor further stated that while he was serving as chief mate, an A.B. had come to his office on the St. Louis Express to complain that he had sent emails to the Crowley DPA via the ship’s email system, but had not received any response from the DPA. Instead, on both occasions, he had received responses directly from the captain. The instructor told the class that he then approached the captain of the St. Louis Express and asked him if he had intercepted the A.B.’s emails to the DPA. The Captain admitted that he had done so and stated, “It’s my responsibility to read all messages. I’m not gonna have that shit come off my ship, because I don’t want to embarrass my ship.”
The instructor of the LMS class told us that he then told the A.B. that in the future he should save a copy of any emails that he sent to the Crowley DPA. These statements by the MITAGS professor are proof that even if I had reported Fidler’s assaults and abusive conduct to the Crowley DPA, instead of only attempting to report his hazardous health condition, my emails would have been intercepted by Fidler.
After I told these stories to the LMS class at MITAGS, and after the instructor took allegations I had made in a classroom at MITAGS and shared them with Donald Marcus and the MMP leadership, Marcus attempted to intimidate me into silence while I was in residence at MITAGS completing the courses required to sit for my Chief Mate’s license. The outrageous and illegal retaliatory attempts to silence me are recounted in the MMP Grievance.
In that document, I describe being hounded by the instructor of the LMS class during my remaining time at MITAGS, and I described an incident where MMP President Don Marcus sent Steve Werse, his deputy and the #2 official within MMP, to my classroom to intimidate me. I wrote:
Tuesday December 4, 2018 at around 08:00, I was hurrying to the start of Kimball’s Meteorology class holding a cup of coffee. I had been awake for less than 30 minutes. As I turned a corner, Kimball popped out at me from behind the wall and almost caused me to drop my coffee.
Kimball stopped me and came very close to me. He was jittery and talking fast. He told me that Steve Werse, the Secretary/Treasurer of the IOMMP and the #2 man in the IOMMP leadership was waiting outside the classroom and that he wanted to talk to me. I was furious. I reminded Kimball that he had told me he was keeping my name confidential, and I accused Kimball of giving Werse my name.
Kimball said that he had not given Werse my name, but that he had told Werse that I was in the class and that he should wait outside the door to the class for me at 8 am. I expressed my strong disapproval of Kimball’s and IOMMP’s methods, and I told Kimball that I had just woken up, that I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do about the situation, and that I was absolutely not going to talk to Steve Werse at that time.
More details related to Don Marcus’ attempts to threaten me into silence regarding the events that occurred aboard the Maersk Idaho and the Washington Express while I was a student in residence at MITAGS, along with some of the illegal and scurrilous tactics used by MMP President Donald Marcus in his campaign of terror and retaliation against me, are contained in the MMP Grievance.
After I finished my chief mate course at MITAGS I returned home and soon decided to report to MMP President Donald Marcus the sexual harassment and sexual assaults I had endured aboard the Maersk Idaho under Mark Stinziano, and the outrageous retaliation I had endured aboard the Washington Express the following year under Karl Fidler. In February of 2019, via email, I wrote to Donald Marcus about these events. On February 11, 2019 I had a phone call with Donald Marcus to discuss my horrific experiences aboard the Maersk Idaho and the Washington Express. I described part of that phone call in my MMP Grievance. Steve Werse was also on the call, but Marcus did all of the talking, shouting, badgering, and gaslighting.
On that call I told Marcus that I was very upset about the way I (and others) had been treated aboard the Maersk Idaho, and very angry about what I had endured aboard the Washington Express. I also accused Marcus of retaliating against me through MMP member Karl Fidler. Additionally, I told Marcus that, at a minimum, I held him responsible for creating and enabling a culture within the MMP that empowered predators and abusers like Fidler and Stinziano and encouraged retaliation against whistleblowers.
Karl Fidler had retired at this point and was no longer able to terrorize crew members, but Stinziano was still sailing. I told Donald Marcus I was extremely concerned that the MMP and Maersk were harboring a sex predator with a known and reported propensity to engage in abusive sexual contact with teenage boys who were sent out to his ship to serve as deck cadets, as well as with other male crew members like myself. However, the fact that the MMP was harboring a senior officer who was almost a pedophile did not even make Donald Marcus blink. That was perfectly fine with Donald. In Donald’s mind, I was the problem, not sex predators, sex criminals, pedophiles, bullies, harassers, abusers, and retaliators within his own union.
Don Marcus’ conduct on that phone call was disgusting. As I attempted to tell Donald Marcus about what had happened aboard the Maersk Idaho and the Washington Express, the President of the MMP launched into a shocking and aggressive attack. As I attempted to tell him my story, Marcus began rudely and sarcastically interrupting me, which is exactly what someone would do if he had ordered retaliation against me aboard the Washington Express.
Instead of taking my complaints about the abuse I had endured seriously, Marcus was, all at once, sarcastic, disrespectful, denigrating, and completely devoid of empathy or compassion. Looking back on the conversation, I realized that Marcus had been “gaslighting” me. He downplayed the seriousness of the abusive behavior I tried to report to him, criticized me for waiting so long to report what they had done to me, constantly interrupted me, and exaggerated the amount of time that had elapsed since I had signed of the Washington Express and Maersk Idaho, forcing me to correct him repeatedly.
In our phone call, Donald Marcus was determined to put me on the defensive, to place the blame for both situations entirely on me, and to make me defend myself. Over and over and over again, he tried to shift blame away from Mark Stinziano and Karl Fidler and onto me, the victim. It was practiced psychological manipulation, and Marcus’ overarching goal for the call was to intimidate and frighten me, to silence me, to strongly discourage me from pursuing the matters any further, and to convince me that nobody was going to take me seriously or believe me.
Donald Marcus made it clear that he would defend Stinziano and Fidler with the full powers of the MMP, and that I was not a union member deserving of protection from my union leader, but rather an enemy who would be defeated.
All I wanted was to be taken seriously. I wanted to have the abuse, assaults and retaliation taken seriously, and to have the matters properly investigated. But Donald Marcus had no interest in any of that. During our call, I had asked Marcus a number of questions designed find out what Marcus knew about the report of sexual misconduct that I had filed against MMP member Mark Stinziano on February 3, 2015. My questions were designed to prove that Marcus had knowledge of my report to Maersk, and the knowledge required to order a retaliatory attack against me aboard the M/V Washington Express. On February 12, 2019, which was the day following my phone call with Donald Marcus and Steve Werse, I sent Marcus an email summarizing our call. In that email of February 12, 2019 I wrote:
Don,
We spoke on the phone yesterday for approximately 20 minutes. You were joined on the call by Steve Werse, the International Secretary-Treasurer of MMP. I took notes during the call, and this email reflects a summary of our conversation.
You told me that you were aware that a 2nd Mate, MMP Applicant aboard the Maersk Idaho filed a report of sexual misconduct against Mark Stinziano in February of 2015.
You told me that you were aware that the report was given to Captain Paul Willers, who is a MMP member.
You said that you did not know the name of the Applicant (me), and did not have any knowledge about the specific allegations made in my report against Stinziano until February 11, 2019, when I shared some details of my experience working for senior ship's officer Mark Stinziano with Patrice Wooten, the "Director of Human Resources & Membership Administration" for MMP, in response to an email I received from Mrs. Wooten in which she requested that I share with her information regarding my work experience aboard the various MMP vessels that I have sailed upon.
You said that you did not know Mark Stinziano, have never spoken to Stinziano about this matter, and that you had never even met Stinziano.
You said that Maersk Line, the largest shipping company in the world, had done a "thorough investigation" of my allegations, that Maersk Line had "put Captain Willers through the paces," and that the result of the investigation was that all of my many specific allegations against Stinziano were all determined to be lies, and that Stinziano was completely cleared of any wrongdoing and misconduct by Maersk's investigation.
You said that you have never spoken to Captain Paul Willers about the investigation...
During our phone call on February 11, 2019, Don Marcus admitted to having knowledge that I had reported Stinziano for sexual misconduct. Although he claimed that he did not know my name, Marcus obviously knew my name because even rank and file MMP members have access to an online job history report that shows the dates and rank and names of every job filled within the MMP along with the name of the ship. Anyone within the MMP who knew that a report had been filed against Stinziano could have looked up my name.
It is simply not believable that Don Marcus found out that an Applicant within the MMP filed a very serious report of sexual misconduct against a senior member of MMP, learned of the results of the investigation conducted by Willers and Maersk, and then failed to subsequently look up the name of that Applicant. In my email to Don Marcus of February 11, 2019 in which I summarized our phone call, I also explained to Marcus that I was afraid of further retaliation for coming forward to speak up about the abuse I had endured at the hands of senior MMP members. I wrote:
I told you that my goal is to ensure that no one else is subjected to the kind of abusive treatment that I have been subject to on multiple MMP vessels at the hands of MMP Members.
I told you that my goal is to prove that I am not a liar.
MMP is my livelihood, and it is through the union that I have been making my living for the past 4 years. I have been told by MMP Members that by pursuing the truth in this matter and in the matter of the extreme workplace harassment and physical assaults that Captain Karl Fidler inflicted upon me, that I will be denied membership in the union despite the fact that I have fulfilled all of the requirements for membership. I have been told by MMP Members that I will face retaliation from other MMP Members, and that I could be "blackballed" from the industry...
I was extremely disappointed in you yesterday, Don. Your callous disregard for the wellbeing of the cadets and junior officers aboard MMP Contract ships was shocking to me, and it will be shocking to any reasonable person who hears about it.
When I asked Donald Marcus what options I had to file formal complaints against Stinziano and Fidler with the MMP, Marcus told me that my only options were the dispute resolution provisions of the collective bargaining agreements that covered my employment aboard the Maersk Idaho and Washington Express. Marcus told me I would be required to file two separate “grievances,” one for each ship. Marcus told me I should file the grievance regarding the events aboard the Maersk Idaho with MMP, but my grievance for the abuse I suffered aboard the Washington Express would have to be filed with the MEBA, because I had been working under a MEBA CBA, not an MMP contract.
I found this connection to MEBA very confusing, because I had never been told that the Washington Express was not a MMP contract ship. However, on April 12, 2019 I wrote to MEBA President Marshall Ainley and requested the CBA for the Washington Express. In that email I wrote:
Brother Ainley,
I am an Applicant with the IOMMP. I am formally requesting a copy of the CBA that covers IOMMP members who work aboard the M/V Washington Express. I requested the document from Don Marcus, but he told me I would have to request it directly from the MEBA.
An email containing a digital version of the CBA is acceptable, or a paper copy mailed to me will also suffice.
Thank you very much for your assistance in this matter.
Fraternally,
J. Ryan Melogy
On April 15, 2019 I received an email from Ainley in which he stated that he would not send me a copy of the CBA. In that email Ainley wrote:
Ryan,
I’m not sure if you are onboard ship now or not, if so the Captain should have a copy of the MOU.
If the vessel does not have a copy, then the Captain should request a copy from the M.E.B.A. Gulf Coast VP, Erin Bertram, copied in.
As a policy the M.E.B.A. does not forward MOUs to our members or applicants on request.
The Company should be able to provide the vessel a copy or the Union can directly to a Captain / Chief Engineer, through our contract representative.
You can always request to review the MOU at one of our M.E.B.A. hiring halls.
Rgrds,
Marshall
The President of MEBA only relented in his refusal to send me the Washington Express CBA after I sent him several emails that included lengthy legal explanations that referenced my rights to receive a copy of the CBA per provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. After Ainley relented, the President of MEBA required me to mail a check to the MEBA in order to pay for a copy of the CBA as well. I obtained a copy of the CBA for the Washington Express in May of 2019.
Because the task of writing and filing one comprehensive grievance was a daunting time and resource intensive proposition, and because Stinziano was an immediate and ongoing threat to cadets and other crew members, I decided that it made the most sense to begin by writing and filing the grievance regarding my time aboard the Maersk Idaho first. That first grievance led to a U.S. Coast Guard investigation into Mark Stinziano’s conduct aboard the Maersk Idaho, led to Don Marcus further retaliating against me by illegally denying me membership in the MMP and stripping me of my Applicant status, and then eventually led to a case before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that took more than one entire year to resolve. I acted without counsel in all of those proceedings, which required a great deal of my time and energy. The NLRB case related to my grievance filed with MMP regarding my time aboard the Maersk Idaho was closed in November of 2021.
With that chapter finally closed, I began working on the second grievance related to my time aboard the Washington Express. This is that document.
For more than 6 years Donald Marcus, President of the MMP, has engaged in a sustained campaign of harassment, bullying, intimidation, violence, ostracization, retaliation, slander, blackballing, and general illegality against me. Donald Marcus has supported, enabled, and defended known sex predators such as Mark Stinziano and violent, psychopathic Captains such Karl Fidler within the MMP, and he has vigorously defended the rights of his senior union members to abuse people with absolute impunity. Don Marcus ordered retaliatory attacks against me aboard the Washington Express because I reported sexual abuse within the MMP.
After he failed to silence me, failed to terrorize me out of the MMP, and failed in his attempts to intimidate me into dropping my pursuit of a law enforcement investigation into the criminal sexual behavior of Mark Stinziano, Donald Marcus kicked me out of the MMP in retaliation for speaking up against the abuse I endured at the hands of Mark Stinziano and Karl Fidler.
In his campaign of harassment, violence, intimidation, and character assassination against me, Donald Marcus has engaged in felonious conduct by instructing union dispatchers to seize my personal mail that was sent to union halls on my behalf while I was waiting to ship out. He instructed the dispatcher of MMP’s Los Angeles union hall to deny me my rightful priority for job assignments, which nearly caused me to lose out on a job aboard the M/V President Cleveland as 3rd Mate. Fortunately I discovered what was being done in time and was able to intervene to secure the job that was rightfully mine.
Both of these incidents occurred in MMP’s Los Angeles union hall in September 2019. I wrote about these two incidents in an email to Don Marcus sent on September 29, 2019. In that email, which featured the subject line “The Safety of a Whistleblower at Sea,” I wrote:
Don,
…
two specific events that have occurred during the past week have deeply disturbed me, made me feel unsafe, and given me the sense that I am continuing to be singled out for targeted harassment, job discrimination, and harm to my career.
At job call on Monday September 23 in the IOMMP LA/Long Beach Union Hall, 2 IOMMP applicants were given the opportunity to bid on jobs before me by the iommp dispatcher, despite the fact that I had an older card than either of the two men, and, per union shipping rules, should have had priority.
Fortunately, after the jobs were awarded to the men, I approached the dispatcher and inquired as to the reason that the union shipping rules had not been followed. Her explanation was that she had not realized that my card was dated from 2018, not 2019, and she subsequently awarded me the job in accordance with union rules.
I do not know if this was an honest mistake or if it was a deliberate attempt to prevent me from working, but in light of the attacks, assaults, harassment, and retaliation I have experienced from members of the IOMMP over the past 4+ years, it is a highly suspicious incident.
The other event is much more serious, and truly alarming.
On Friday September 27 I entered the LA/Long Beach Union Hall to retrieve a tracked ups letter that I had mailed to the union hall in care of myself. As you know, it is a routine practice for union members to receive mail at the union hall due to the fact that they are often away from home when trying to get work in the halls.
When I asked the dispatcher if I had received a parcel, she said that, yes, I had. However, she said that she was not sure if she was allowed to give it to me, and that she might need to call brother Don Marcus at union headquarters to find out if she could release my personal mail to me.
She showed me on her computer monitor an electronic note that had been attached to my personnel record. The note said that any of my personal mail that was received at a union hall was to be opened, scanned and sent to Don Marcus.
NOT mail “from” me. Mail “for” me.
There is a record of this note.
The dispatcher was confused by this order, said she had never seen anything like it attached to a union member's or applicant's record, and she was hesitant to give me my personal mail. When I strongly protested that it was outrageous for Don Marcus to be intercepting my personal mail, she relented and gave me my mail.
Donald Marcus' campaign to silence and smear me in retaliation for blowing the whistle on predators and abusers openly operating within MMP has never relented. Don Marcus participated in the destruction of my career, and he continues in his efforts to destroy my life. Sadly, Crowley Maritime Corporation and the MEBA have assisted Don Marcus in his efforts to destroy me. It is absolutely outrageous that the captain of a ship operated by Crowley under a collective bargaining agreement with the MEBA should be able to openly terrorize and abuse a crewmember, and that Crowley employees and senior members of the MMP and MEBA standby and do nothing to intervene or to help the victim. The anti-harassment policies of both of your organizations are lies and do not reflect the reality experienced aboard your vessels. Acta Non Verba.
It is an outrage that a man suffering from a life-threatening respiratory disease can break into prolonged coughing attacks in front of the crew of a Crowley vessel, in front of senior members of the MEBA, in front of pilots all over the world--pilots who believe he should be hospitalized--and still be allowed to command the ship, putting the lives of the crew and the lives of the crew of others ships in grave danger.
Further, it is absolutely outrageous that Crowley maintains an email system that allows abusive captains to intercept cries for help from crewmembers before the messages leave your vessels. This is incredibly dangerous, but the batch email system was intentionally designed by Crowley to work that way. Acta Non Verba.
I am furious, still, about the way I was treated aboard the M/V Washington Express, and I don’t want anyone else to go through anything like that ever again. I want to see changes. And I want to be made whole.
Sincerely,
J. Ryan Melogy
Exhibit List:
Discharge from M/V Washington Express
U.S. Coast Guard’s Amended Complaint against Captain Mark Stinziano
MMP Grievance regarding Mark Stinziano’s conduct towards myself and others aboard the M/V Maersk Idaho.
Crowley Maritime Anti-Harassment Policy