Below Deck: Filipinos make up nearly a third of all cruise ship workers

I worked as an independent Google contractor before for less than $11 an hour with very stringent rules, ever increasing performance requirements, no holidays, no sick pay, no nothing.

If you're poor and uneducated you're disposable dirt anywhere these days, even though people would like you to think otherwise and it's obviously even worse in 3rd world countries, where people looking for relatively unskilled jobs far outnumber available positions.

But as the article pointed out, that choice of where you work can make a huge difference if anything goes wrong like an injury, and that's where none of the lines are really all that great. Even there while there are always new people they can hire, word does get out who to work for, and if your rep takes a fall because you treat people like crap, you won't be able to hire good people, and the guests will see the quality drop to point where revenue gets hit. Cruise ships are enormously expensive to run, and competition is strong. But my family has been on enough cruises to know who we would rather be on, and how decently they treat the employees is a good indication of whether you should spend a little more and get a better experience.

What surprises me to this day is how little it costs to buy American congress. 1,000,000$ lobbying costs? That's less than a lot of houses in SF or NYC.

Shouldn't it cost more to buy American congress decisions? Like 50 - 100 million USD price range? 1 billion perhaps? Why American politicians are so cheap? Raising lobbying prices would seem a logical conclusion Here :)

It's interesting that as our bases shut down and we left that our cruise lines started picking people up.

I think this article should be a cautionary tail to those who would think that large businesses can be trusted to treat people properly on their own.

The cruise ship guys, comparatively, have it good. There are innumerable stories of entire freighter crews being marooned in third world ports by shipowners who didn't want to pay them.

The global shipping industry is, unfortunately, a race to the bottom. Every time that John McCain proposes the repeal of the Jones Act, I cringe with the thought of what it would do to what's left of the American merchant marine.

I saw those ships turn over ~3,000 people every 5 - 7 days and according to Carnival that would be the first and only cruise for 75% of those guests! That's across a fleet of 25 ships! Needless to say it cured my number numbness for conceptualizing the size of the 'masses.'

I wonder why they do this. The $$$ savings for the lesser hours are peanuts given the low wages. Only reason I can think of is to break the will of the workers. If they feel powerless to complain about the hours they've worked, they're less likely to complain about the rest of their conditions.

> But arbitration in the Philippines is nothing like the American judicial system. In the United States, seamen can file for damages on the basis of dangerous working conditions or shoddy medical care, for example. They can receive payments that cover any future loss of wages and ongoing medical expenses, which can span a lifetime. In the Philippines, on the other hand, seamen are offered payouts based on a predetermined compensation chart, in which each body part has a price tag. If there’s a spinal injury and the company-sponsored doctor says a seafarer’s back has lost a third of its mobility, it’s valued at $7,465. If a crew member loses his penis, he’s paid $20,900. If a worker dies: $50,000. The maximum payout, for permanent disability, is capped at $60,000. Unionized workers can receive more, but Carnival Cruise Line crew members are nonunion.

I'm not sure how one "loses his penis" but I'm damn sure I'd demand more than $20,900 in compensation from the party responsible.

> Recently, the cruise industry has pushed to pass a law that would prevent all foreign cruise workers in U.S. waters — not just Filipinos — from any protection under U.S. law.

Sounds like they want it both ways. If you're docking at US ports and picking up US customers, you should be expected to follow some level of US law. It's hard to say what protections should apply though as it's possible they could conflict with foreign laws as well. My internal sense of justice says it should be something though.

Having rules is meaningless if you aren't trying to enforce them.

The biggest issue I have seen is that they can be naive. I have had to talk a few of my Filipino friends out of some scams.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Carnival, and all their princess subsidiaries should be boycotted

About 13 years ago I took my first cruise, and from that point forward, about yearly or more, I cruise (though it's been two years since my last). I prefer Royal Caribbean (and Carnival is low on my list, though I've cruised with them many times). I always joke that it's the perfect vacation for geek decompression: it's on a ship where getting in contact with me is very difficult and expensive. Internet is expensive and only somewhat works on board. You don't have to think much -- very little upfront planning is required -- and there's a lot of time spent being left alone with your thoughts. It's very uncomfortable, at first, having to wait in lines without being able to pull out your smart phone and be distracted by Facebook/Reddit/Twitter, but after a day of it, you're forced into a form of relaxation that's missing from life these days.

The biggest reason I love cruising is the staff. Reading an article like this, you'd expect the staff to appear unhappy or otherwise be less than stellar. And while this is anecdata, at best, in the 15 or so cruises I've taken, I've not only never encountered a member of staff that had a bad attitude, I've never encountered a member of staff that was willing to ride an elevator with me without smiling and asking how my vacation was going. It's been impossible for me to find a member of staff who appears, at all, to not be having fun, even though we know full well that they're very underpaid and treated poorly by the western standards that almost all of their guests come from. I've stayed in high-class hotels in specialty suites for work and haven't experienced the quality of staff that I've received staying in an interior, windowless state-room in a small ship. This very personal interaction, with unbelievable attention to detail[0], is why I keep cruising.

These men and women not only work hard under poor conditions, they do so with a work ethic that you'd be hard pressed to find in the best paying jobs in the US. Part of this was pointed out in the article -- in a lot of cases, this is the best job they can get to support their family back home. My wife and I are very extroverted and a ship filled with people who, at worst, are pretending to want to get to know you and make your vacation better is a guarantee that we're going to make friends (genuine or not, though I've never gotten the sense that it was anything but genuine). We got to know a few members of maintenance staff (one of them broke several rules[1] to show us parts of the ship that were off limits, including crew quarters, pre-9/11). These folks know the best places to visit on the islands and where to go to get goods and services inexpensively[2]. One point that was made is if you want to reward a member of staff, cash is king and conceal cash tips from view. They do everything they can to make extra money on the side (and I chuckled because our guy was "a Christian who rented DVDs" and DVD players though I doubt it was the same guy from the article). On one of the cruises we took, we were told that the mandatory tips that are included in your bill (it wasn't always this way) are pooled and your room steward/waiter aren't going to be rewarded directly from any extra generosity you offer[3].

[0] My daughter once worried that the towel animals were not comfortable sleeping in the room because they were placed on the covers -- this was said to us within earshot of the room steward. The next time we arrived in our stateroom, the towel animal was snuggled into the bed with its head on the pillow. Seriously.

[1] We were told that many of these rules can be broken without consequences if they're being broken at the wishes of the guest.

[2] We ended up on a tour on St. Thomas, paid for with a ten dollar bill for the two of us, that was filled with Royal Caribbean customers who had dropped $55/ticket for the same tour. We were told, wait until the afternoon and show up when they're loading customers on. Someone will be standing outside selling off the rest of the seats. Our "bus" was half-empty, to boot. In another case, we were pointed in the direction of a restaurant off the beaten path, filled with locals, where we were fed two large meals with appetizers and bottomless drinks for about $7.50 and it was the best food and drink we'd had off-ship that week.

[3] We learned some more disturbing things, as well. Casual sex is rampant. We were told of several stories that made the lower decks sound like they have a frat house/orgy atmosphere (this is something I've heard from folks who work at Disney and other resorts).