Screw it, I worked onboard a CCL ship when shit hit the fan, AMA.
Is that a COVID thing or is that par for the course with cruise ship companies?
I had an uncle who worked for years painting cruise ships (back in the 80s/90s mind you), and he had all kinds of stories about how the blue-collar staff on cruise ships were treated like shit, both by the company and by "management" on the ship itself.
To be honest I'm not sure I believed half his stories even as a kid, but I had no one else to ask. =)
Most of the blue collar workers are indeed treated almost slave-like tbh, I mean you are free to leave, but you will pay your own ticket and stay at the hotel and you will be escorted by a literal bodyguard the whole time to ensure you won't stay in the U.S.
If you obey management and don't get to anyone's bad side, you are allowed to stay and the staying part is actually the shitty one. Almost all of them have no choice though, so they have to sacrifice their mental and physical health, as well as their pride.
I was personally technically an officer on the ship so we get a bit better treatment, such as a housekeeper and we have our uniforms cleaned and ironed. Still, the hours even for us happened to be hell, sometimes on the embarkation days (when guests board the ship) it would go up to 13-14 hours.
The blue collar workers, especially in housekeeping normally worked around that 12 hours a day mark, regularly, for 7-9 months onboard.
The article mentions 8-10 hours, but that is an exception, not a norm.
All in all, CCL likes to aim for a 10/10 treatment for the guests and I guess they consistently hit 8/10 with their core customers. Crew however, a solid 3/10 max.
No he's a white guy from Canada but he lived in Argentina for years.. and he was often, according to him, the only white guy on the paint crew. So you're basically correct..
They painted the engine rooms, and even the outside of the boat, during the actual cruises.. He told me once a story about doing the work "in international waters" so they could avoid taxes or something but that always seemed fishy (no pun intended).
He wasn't exactly an accountant so I suspect perhaps he thought that was true?
For the corona crisis, everything was done as basic and cost-saving as possible.
Without the corona situation, god forbid you get fucking sick on the ship. They feed you up with some basic 2 pills they give to whoever is sick of anything. As far as I could notice, those were some stimulants with the end goal to have you back on duty as soon as possible.
Even if you get sick, like legitimately sick and get treated, you end up with a mafia-style talk with your manager about "your recent performance". If you keep yourself off the sick train for the next months, you will get a pat on the back and a good review, where the 'recent performances' one from previously seemingly never happened. Truly disgusting practices.
Cruise ship business was being slowly dragged¹ into the public eye as of last year… and then COVID hit. I imagine things must have gotten only worse in the general chaos of the pandemic.
E.g. you will not find any carribean cruise ship from the big lines that is under a US flag.
According to WaPo’s report last year, the most commonly alleged crime is sexual assault (with a third of the victims being minors), and it is not required to be reported. Considering passengers have to put up with that, I struggle to imagine what many crew members have to deal with.
I believe there are 0 US flagged ships that are part of the cruise industry that in the U.S.
Message to the carnival guys monitoring this: Hey guys, I am not coming back, you can't do shit about this, this isn't Facebook. I know you know who I am already, I just don't care.
(Obligatory: Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)