Meagan Nye doesn’t always know when or if her workweek will end. She’s an engineer on the Alaska Marine Highway System ferry Columbia. She is supposed to work two-week shifts at sea. But more and more often, those two weeks will turn into six.
“I love my job, but I don't want to be there all the time, and I want to have a schedule so I can plan my off time and know if I'm going to be able to go home,” Nye said over the phone.
Nye is a second engineer. She works in the Columbia’s bowels, maintaining the ferry’s three boilers, fuel, HVAC, refrigeration, basically every complicated, whirring thing. She and five other engineers work in split twelve hour shifts so the engine room is manned 24 hours a day.
“We’re short staffed. We don't pay what everyone else pays but we are under a contract. You can't just leave, right? You could be subject to disciplinary action. You could be fired if you just leave. You cannot do that,” Nye said.
Many communities along Alaska’s southern coast are dependent on state ferries to get around and to fuel their economies. But those ferries move thanks to teams of on-board engineers, who say they are critically understaffed and the only solution is more state funding or fewer sailings.
The M/V Columbia – the largest ferry in the state’s arsenal – is meant to rotate two six-person teams of engineers every two weeks, meaning that the vessel has a total 12 engineer postings.
If that metal box in the bottom of the ship isn’t properly manned, then the ship doesn’t sail. Nye said it comes down to safety; there is a minimum number of staff needed to keep the vessel and its passengers safe.
“That’s our nightmare – having to cancel a sailing,” Nye said. “I feel personal responsibility if there's any cancellation. That's terrible.”
According to her, there are two ways to become a ferry engineer. You can do four years at a maritime academy or you can be what they call a “hawsepiper.” Hawsepipers essentially apprentice on the ferries as an “oiler” or unlicensed engine room staff for five or so years at sea, then study independently to take five licensing tests. Historically, many Alaskans have come through the hawsepipe to become ferry engineers. That's what Nye did. But she said hawsepiping is more difficult now.
“We have a lot less people coming up the hawsepipe, because they have families, the cost, and they can't just leave for that time and not be working. It's just a lot more difficult now,” Nye said, adding that the regulations have tightened and brought more classes and more costs. “So we don't have that source of engineers with the Alaska Marine Highway anymore.”
Staffing shortages aren’t exclusive to below deck crew. About three years ago, 60% of the ferry system’s jobs were vacant. They’ve been slowly closing that gap but AMHS Marine Director Craig Tornga said the ferry system is 10% short of the fleet’s minimum number of masters and bridge crew. The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, the union representing Alaska’s state ferry engineers, said their vacancy rate is nearly 20%.
The ferry engineers’ union distributed a public petition entitled “The Alaska Marine Highway System is Sinking” that urged Gov. Mike Dunleavy to prioritize higher wages for ferry employees. The petition read that engineer shortages were making state ferry service unreliable and impacting the health of ferry-dependent communities.
Josh Chevalier, the chief engineer on the Columbia, said staffing is a problem for all ferry jobs but because engineers are behind the scenes, they are often forgotten by the public and lawmakers.
“When people are stressed out and unhappy, I have to balance the needs of the vessel with the needs of people's lives,” Chevalier said.
Chevalier has worked in the ferry system for over twenty years. He noticed the problem with filling jobs beginning about a decade ago when wages for engineers went up on container ships and ferry systems in other states, while state funding for AMHS declined.
For Chevalier, the ferry system’s funding woes go back to a larger problem he sees in the state: the state’s major population centers like Anchorage have far more sway in the legislature and for voters on the road system and northern lawmakers, infrastructure like the ferries and the engineers down in their bellies are out of sight, out of mind.
“We haul a tremendous amount of traffic that never stops in Southeast. They drive up to Southcentral and stay in hotels and buy fuel and groceries, stay in Airbnbs, and so it's a very valuable economic engine for the entire state, but I believe it's viewed as a sort of welfare for Southeast Alaska,” said Chevalier.
The union for ferry system engineers brokered their current agreement with the state back in 2022. That agreement governs everything from what engineers wear to when they can get off the ship. It expires next month.
The state ferry engineers’ union has been bargaining with the state. They recently reached a tentative new three-year agreement. Union representatives declined to comment on the terms of the new agreement until it is made official. Union ferry engineers are currently voting on if they will accept the state’s terms. A spokesperson said the details of the new agreement will be released in early June.
Engineers like Nye said that agreement could essentially determine the ferry system’s future.
“I mean, the number one thing that will fix the problem is money, right? It's the pay. It’s a pay issue, trying to attract people from the academies. It's just not enough to attract people when they can make so much more money elsewhere,” she said.
The state recently reached an agreement with a different, bigger union of state government employees. That agreement included more healthcare coverage and an 11% pay increase.
According to Chevalier, a hiring push for engineers is a race against time. 30% of the ferry system’s engineers are approaching retirement age and he said in five years, busted boilers or a faulty refrigerator could be a much bigger problem.
