Lithuania as a marine state is strongly motivated to create a favourable employment relationship system satisfying the interests of seamen. All marine states are interested that their citizens would work in national fleets and would not be forced to look for work on the ships of other states or on the ships of “convenient flags”. Work analyses the peculiarities of work on ships on the basis of legal act differentiation, i.e. it analyses how employment relationships are regulated by general and specific legal acts. The analysis of employment relationships of different institutions is performed by comparing provisions applied to employees in general and to seamen exclusively in order to highlight the peculiarities of work on ships. The work is based on international: ILO and EU and Lithuanian legal acts. The peculiarities of work on ships is revealed examining main aspects of employment relationships. Employment requirements for seamen as well as employment contracts with seamen and the terms and conditions thereof: payment, work and rest time, vacations – are analysed. Work safety, implementing authorities and liability for injuries of the employees are also discussed. The analysis of the project of ILO consolidated maritime labour conventions is provided. This instrument is intended to facilitate the procedure of ILO standard ratification, i.e. to enable the member states to implement more ILO maritime labour conventions into national law by one ratification act and this way... [to full text]