Royal Navy: Ex-Royal Fleet Auxiliary captain paints bleak picture of overworked staff amid Portsmouth strike

Capt Simon Booth, who served in the RFA for 37 years, said individuals are often having to act up and take on the work of multiple people, all while not being paid accordingly. Members of the Nautilus International union went on strike and held a demonstration near Whale Island in Portsmouth yesterday afternoon (August 15). Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union also engaged in strikes.

As previously reported in The News, union members felt “overworked, underpaid and undervalued”. Capt Booth said he was not surprised by the strike, which almost took place in 2022-2023 but did not meet government thresholds for industrial action.

“It has been cumulative,” the 61-year-old told The News. “Junior officers were feeling overloaded. The RFA has changed immeasurably since I started. The compensation has not kept up with the changes, and the work we’re involved in with the defence of the UK. I understand why they’re frustrated, and I know the salaries paid by the RFA are not entirely competitive, especially with the leave ratios.”

Capt Booth, of Lincoln - a former union body member - retired from the RFA in April last year after taking charge of various vessels, including RGA Cardigan Bay while on deployment in Bahrain. “It has taken on a far more military role and now does tasks traditionally done by the Royal Navy,” he added.

“RFA vessels have been doing work near Gaza and that would have been done by a warship. When I started, when you went out to do disaster relief in the Caribbean, you went with a frigate or a destroyer and you were the logistics support ship.” Capt Booth said RFA Mounts Bay, Argus and Lyme Bay have all done “very significant hurricane relief work” and routine “counter-narcotics work” where millions of pounds worth of drugs have been seized.

The Royal Navy has retained a presence in the region. HMS Trent recently conducted Seaboat and Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) drills. Capt Booth believes more can be done to honour RFA personnel alongside them.

“We do a different job and bring a different set of skills, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn't acknowledge the scope of the work they do,” he said. “People have learnt an immense amount of skills from counterparts, and deliver output everyday of the week. Some Royal Navy members, particularly junior and mid-rank, barely understand that they have an RFA which delivers all this stuff for them, never mind the importance of work we deliver.

“The level of seamanship and engineering technical knowledge is far superior. When an RFA has fronted up with a crew of a third of the size of a Royal Navy ship to do disaster relief, they put out far more output because they come with the skills which underline fixing stuff for people, which in the past, the Navy would have done.”

Capt Booth said the Royal Navy needs the “vital” support which the RFA offers. “They cannot deploy ships forward without logistical support,” he added. “The level of tanker availability at the moment is dire. That has been a constant worry. The fact we haven’t got a proper logistics ship to support the aircraft carriers now is criminal. I was involved in that project in 2004, so I know how long it’s dragging on. It’s successive governments, you can’t blame one specifically.”

Union members have said they felt disrespected by the MoD after the pay offer was forced upon them. A spokesperson previously said: “The Royal Fleet Auxiliary are highly valued, and we are committed to listening to their concerns and keeping a continued dialogue with them to address the issues they have raised.” Capt Booth believes MoD civil servants do not appreciate what the RFA does.

He added: “They want to see them as a neat little box of civil servants like everyone else, who goes to work in a perfectly normal 9-5 job, goes home and has weekends off. They don’t understand the leave we get, they think it’s excessive and I’ve seen remarkable jealousy in the past from people who should be negotiating on behalf of the RFA to get better conditions.”

The lack of support for staff and resources for them to do their job is a particular concern for Capt Booth. He said there is a chronic shortage of personnel and skills, with the system not doing enough to promote people to cover higher rank jobs. The veteran said on one of his ships, a Navigator was doing his own role and that of the Operations officer - without being promoted or paid any extra.

“Basically, he worked himself into a situation where we had to let him go because he burned himself out,” he said. He added: “We’ve always got whatever was the worst, whether that is a change in regulation or a pay award. Whichever one was the lowest was the one the RFA tended to get. That cumulative effect drains morale and creates frustration for union members who have finally said enough is enough.”

Capt Booth said looking at the actions the new government is taking, there is no reason why the strikes can’t be resolved. Other industrial action took place in Merseyside and Dorset yesterday, which included officers. The MoD has met with the RFA twice in the first few weeks of the new government, with members of the armed forces receiving a five per cent pay rise.

Officers have far more scope to make life difficult for the Ministry of Defence in delivering what it wants if they chose to do so, Capt Booth said. “They have taken positive action with a number of long running disputes,” he added. “They might argue this one is a relatively new one, but it’s not, because Nautilus have been in dispute over pay rises for at least four years. Only now has it finally got the stage where it has gone over the edge and into industrial action.”