Cite as: 520 U. S. 548 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
was covered by the LHWCA, as fact of union membership was unrelated to the purposes of the LHWCA's coverage provisions). The question is what connection the employee had in actual fact to vessel operations, not what a union agreement says. Papai was qualified under the IBU Deck-hands Agreement to perform nonseagoing work in addition to the seagoing duties described above. His actual duty on the Pt. Barrow throughout the employment in question did not include any seagoing activity; he was hired for one day to paint the vessel at dockside and he was not going to sail with the vessel after he finished painting it. App. 44, 48, 51. This is not a case where the employee was hired to perform seagoing work during the employment in question, however brief, and we need not consider here the consequences of such an employment. The IBU Deckhands Agreement gives no reason to assume that any particular percentage of Papai's work would be of a seagoing nature, subjecting him to the perils of the sea. In these circumstances, the union agreement does not advance the accuracy of the seaman-status inquiry.
Papai argues he qualifies as a seaman if we consider his 12 prior employments with Harbor Tug over the 21/2 months before his injury. Papai testified at his deposition that he worked aboard the Pt. Barrow on three or four occasions before the day he was injured, the most recent of which was more than a week earlier. Id., at 35, 44. Each of these engagements involved only maintenance work while the tug was docked. Id., at 34-35. The nature of Papai's connection to the Pt. Barrow was no more substantial for seaman-status purposes by virtue of these engagements than the one during which he was injured. Papai does not identify with specificity what he did for Harbor Tug the other eight or nine times he worked for the company in the 21/2 months before his injury. The closest he comes is his deposition testimony that 70 percent of his work over the 21/4 years before his injury was deckhand work. Id., at 34. Coupled with
559
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