Martin Lex is the pen name of the 7S1L safety desk: SOLAS, lifesaving and firefighting gear, muster drills, emergency signals and safe work on board. Portrait is illustrative.
The crewing office in Manila, Mumbai or Odesa has a desk, a pen and a clock. The ticket is booked. The agent slides the seafarer employment agreement across and says the ship sails Friday. That is the moment most bad clauses get signed, and it is the moment the MLC Contract Check was built for. This is how to use it, from the flag on the stern to the PDF in your kitbag.
Watch: how to use the MLC Contract Check
The video runs two minutes on a laptop. The written version below covers the same three steps and what the report means once it is on your screen.
What you need
Your contract, in any form you have it: a PDF from the agent, photos of the paper pages, or the text pasted in. The flag the ship is sailing under. And about two minutes. There is no account, nothing to install, and the page is the tool: mlc-contract-check.7short1long.com.
Step 1: pick the flag
The flag state implements and enforces the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 on board ships flying its flag. Not your home country, and not the address on the company letterhead. So the check starts with the flag. You find it on the stern, on the ship's certificates, or in the contract itself. Tap it in the grid. If you do not know it yet, pick MLC only: the check then runs against the convention baseline, and you can come back with the flag later.
Seventeen registries have their own module, among them Liberia, Panama, the Marshall Islands, Malta, the Bahamas, Singapore and Hong Kong. A flag module adds the flag administration's complaint contact and governing law to the report. If your flag is not in the grid, use the "Add the flag of my ship" line under it. Every message is read.
Step 2: add your contract
Three ways. Upload the PDF. Drop in photos of each page, or take them with the camera on your phone. Or paste the contract text if that is all you have. Photos are shrunk and given a clean scan look on your own device first, and camera data, including GPS, is removed before anything is sent. Nothing leaves your phone or laptop until you press the button, and you can remove every page again before you do.
A real contract has at least a few hundred characters. Wages, rest hours, repatriation and medical care should be in the part you upload, so include the annexes if the wage table sits there.
Step 3: check my contract
Press Check my contract. The reading usually takes under a minute. The tool compares the wording with the MLC 2006 minimums, current ITF employment standards and, if you picked one, the flag state's rules. The reading is done by an AI language model: sent encrypted, processed once, not stored, and not used to train the model. The check counts one more contract under its flag, and that is all it keeps.
Which flag is on your contract
Three registries fly close to half the world fleet, and they sit on most of the contracts the check has read so far. Panama, the largest registry by tonnage: the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) stands behind the SEA, MLC complaints go to mlcsegumar@amp.gob.pa. Liberia: the Liberian Registry (LISCR) in Virginia, MLComplaints@liscr.com. Marshall Islands: International Registries, Inc., also in Virginia, complaints routed through the Seafarers section of register-iri.com. Cruise crew mostly see the Bahamas (Bahamas Maritime Authority, stcw@bahamasmaritime.com), Malta (Transport Malta, mlc.tm@transport.gov.mt), Bermuda, Italy or Panama on the stern.
Every supported flag has its own page on the tool with the authority, the governing law, the MLC complaint contact and the SEA checklist: all 17 flag states, or directly Panama, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Bahamas and Malta. How the three big registries handle a complaint in practice, with the paper trail to keep, is in our flag guides: Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands.
How to read the report
The report opens with a score out of 100 and a short verdict. Then it goes clause by clause. Green meets the MLC minimum. Amber means the wording is unclear or incomplete. Red means a core protection is violated or signed away. Missing means the contract says nothing about it, and at the crewing desk an absent clause is as dangerous as a bad one.
Every finding names the standard behind it: MLC Standard A2.2 for wages, A2.3 for hours of rest, A2.5 for repatriation, A1.4 for recruitment fees, Regulation 4.2 for medical care. That matters, because "the MLC says" is an opinion and "Standard A2.5, paragraph 3" is a quote the agent cannot wave away. Below the clauses sit your red flags, collected in one list, and the escalation path if something is already wrong on board: supervisor, master and the on-board complaint procedure, DPA and company, flag state, Port State Control, ITF inspector or union. With a flag picked, the flag administration's contact is right there.
Save the report as a PDF. Keep it with the signed original of your SEA, which MLC Standard A2.1 says you are entitled to, along with the chance to review the agreement and take advice before you sign.
What to do with it
Take the red flags back to the desk as questions. "Clause 9 deducts half the flight home from my final wage. Standard A2.5 puts repatriation on the shipowner. Can you take that out?" An agent who can fix it will. An agent who cannot has told you what kind of company this is. Our list of the clauses that come back again and again is in 10 Red Flags in a Seafarer Contract, and the wage floor the check compares against is explained in Seafarer Minimum Wage 2026. If you paid the agency anything for the job, read Manning Agency Fees before you fly.
Run the check on every contract, every time. Start here: MLC Contract Check.
Crew questions
Does the MLC Contract Check store my contract?
No. The document is sent encrypted, read once and not kept. What stays is an anonymous counter per flag and the red flags for the annual report, nothing that identifies you or the ship.
Does it work for cruise ship crew contracts?
Yes. Hotel, galley, deck or engine: the MLC applies to seafarers on commercially operated ships, and cruise crew contracts are checked against the same standards. Pick the flag on the stern of the cruise ship, often the Bahamas, Malta, Panama or Bermuda.
Is the report legal advice?
No. It is an automated document check against published standards, and the methodology and sources are documented on the methodology page. For a dispute, the report is your evidence list. The ITF, your union, the flag administration or a maritime lawyer are the next step.
Sources
Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, as amended (ILO); ITF Seafarers: help and inspector lookup; MLC Contract Check: methodology and sources (flag-state facts verified against the official registry websites, July 15 and August 7, 2026).
7SHORT1LONG® is a Seafarer Identity Brand. The check is free because the crew who built it remember the desk, the pen and the clock. YES, WE ARE CREW.
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