The Caldari Navy Assembly Plant orbiting the fourth moon of Jita IV in The Forge region.

The Association of Independent Starship Captains (AISC) agreed today to raise minimum wages for standard ship crews by 3% in response to the chronic crew shortage affecting the industry. The Association’s bi-annual crew pay review meeting was held at their head office on Jita 4-4 station.

Hanza Gregor, Chairman of the Association said, “There are issues with normal hard-working captains finding and retaining good crew. This is a galaxy-wide issue and is not a problem limited to one or more Empires. The capsuleers do not use AISC agreed union rates and generally pay wages far in excess of these. These rates are so high that non-capsuleer ship owners are often unable to pay equivalent rates. Unfortunately, many crews are lured by these excessive pay rates without thinking of the consequences. Capsuleers don’t usually advertise that last year over a billion crew were killed whilst serving on capsuleer vessels.”

He later added that “trying to get a true number is almost impossible and a billion lives lost may be a low estimate.”

Capsuleer crew positions, whilst lucrative, often come at a price.

Tech4News visited the capsuleer docking hangers to ask some of those looking for crew work why they were risking themselves.

Mart Eglart is a 22 year-old engineering technician fresh out of university. He told our correspondent that capsuleer crewing was all he was interested in because “money is much better than standard crew and you get all the adventure.”

A woman calling herself Sheeza declined to give her full name and said “these pod jockeys pay too well. I’m a qualified nurse so there is always a need for people with my skills, especially on their ships.”

Our correspondent also visited the lower-deck docking areas where the non-capsuleer ships can be found. It was notable that the hangers were lacking the crowds and buzz that was found in the capsuleer hangers. We spoke to Shizim Haart, captain of the Badger Class Industrial Solar Wind:

“It is just impossible to find good crew. Most of the best crew are up on the capsuleer deck. I offer AISC pay, a full medic bay, fresh food too, none of those ration packs! We have a proper galley and cook. However, what are these when the eggers are offering ten times the local credits that I am. If I paid capsuleer rates I’d not break even on my most lucrative runs. Main benefit I offer is it’s very unlikely you’ll end up as a frozen corpse, drained of blood by the Raiders or end up one of them Sansha zombies. But even that doesn’t hold water against the cash the capsuleers are throwing around”

A rookie crew in training.

There have been calls from AISC representatives to regulate capsuleer crew pay but the unanswered question is who would set the rates. CONCORD has stated that it not looking into the matter at this time and current political climate makes it unlikely that any agreement will be reached between the major governments on this matter.

With the current crewing crisis already starting to increase the cost of basic house-hold imports there may be soon renewed calls to being capsuleer pay in line with AISC rates.