Who is included in the Special Scheme for Sea Workers?

- Workers employed by another person, compensated with a salary or employees in any of the following activities:

• Merchant Navy
• Sea fishing in any form.
• Extraction of other sea products.
• In-port trade, sports and recreational vessels and pilotage.
• Administrative, technical and auxiliary jobs in companies dedicated to the activities above.
• Port stevedore work.
• Auxiliary health, boarding and kitchen service provided to Spanish emigrants aboard vessels that transport them.
• Personnel at the service of the Fishermen's Guilds and their Federations, and the Sea Co-operatives.
• Any other maritime-fishing activity whose inclusion in this Scheme is determined by the Ministry of Labour and Immigration.

- Owners of ships of over 10 tonnes or that have more than 5 crew members. If they are listed as employees and receive a share in the fishing profits ("Monte Menor") as compensation for their work or a salary as a crew member, they are assimilated as workers employed by another person, except for the purposes of unemployment.

Port pilots who establish port pilots' corporations or substitute bodies to carry out their pilotage duties are assimilated as workers employed by another person, except for the purposes of unemployment benefits and the Wage Guarantee Fund.

- Self-employed workers who habitually, personally and directly carry out any of the activities listed below, as long as it is their primary means of living:

• Owners of ships not exceeding 10 tonnes gross registered weight, that do not have more than 5 people enrolled including the owner, and in which the owner is enrolled as a technician or crew member.
• Those dedicated to extracting sea produce.
• Net-makers who work for a particular fishing company.

To be included in this Special Scheme, it is presumed that these activities are their main way of life if they provide the income that covers the workers' own necessities and, if appropriate, of their family, even if they have other jobs that are not specifically to do with the sea or fishing, which would determine their inclusion or not in another Social Security Scheme, occasionally or permanently.

The spouse and family members, up to the second degree of kinship, affinity or adoption, of the self-employed worker may also be included, if they work, live with and depend economically on the worker, except when there is proof that they are workers employed by another person.

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Special Agreements

Sea workers who are terminated from the Special Scheme for Sea Workers and are not included in any other schemes, may sign the corresponding "Special Agreement" with the Marine Welfare Institute. This covers the contingencies of permanent disability, death and survival, due to common diseases and non-work-related injuries, retirement, social services and health care, where appropriate. Applications may be made at any time if the requirements and conditions that generally apply to other workers are met.

Spanish sailors and their children who have Spanish nationality, independently of whether or not they have been affiliated to the Spanish Social Security previously or not and regardless of the country in which they work and whether or not that country has signed an agreement on Social Security affairs, can sign a Special Agreement under the terms of Royal Decree 996/1986 of 25 April.

General conditions and requirements: the same as for the General Scheme.

Processing: Provincial Offices  and Local Offices of the Marine Welfare Institute (ISM)

Basic regulations

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