Though most companies like Carnival are headquartered in the U.S., they are able to skirt U.S. labor laws and taxes by incorporating overseas and flying foreign flags, called “flags of convenience.” Their crews are primarily foreign, with many hailing from Third World countries and knowing only rudimentary English—long considered a safety concern for communications during a disaster. Workers from the Philippines make up the largest percentage of employees, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. Asked what percentage of crew, generally, are U.S. citizens, a CLIA spokeswoman tells Newsweek, “It is a small percentage.”
It’s no wonder that few Americans work on cruise ships. Crew members are routinely taken advantage of, working months on end with few days off, often laboring under unsafe conditions and provided with poor medical care when they are ill, say critics like Miami attorney Charles Lipcon. “It’s like slavery,” Lipcon says. “It’s the modern-day version of the sweatshop.”
But the crew will work hard for every penny, and, separated from their families, agree to the long hours. Some percentage of them are likely in debt, having fallen prey to unscrupulous agents who help them get these shipboard jobs in exchange for an advance cut of their salaries (up to $4,000 in some cases, says a maritime attorney). As with the underground labor market in the U.S., crew members generally make more money than they would at home. A CLIA spokesperson notes that “crew members are often paid higher wages and provided more opportunity than is available in their home countries. When working on a cruise ship, expenses are kept low, considering housing, utilities, food, and medical and dental care are provided all by the cruise lines. In fact, 80 percent of crew members return for multiple work engagements.” Carnival boasts that “many shipboard team members support entire families in their home countries with their salary while others have used their income to send children to college, build homes, and establish businesses.”
A subsidiary of Carnival in the U.K., P&O Cruises, recently announced it would pay its crew members a basic salary of 75 pence an hour (about $1.20 U.S.), with automatic gratuities added to the passengers’ bills. But rather than forwarding the tips to the crew, the cruise line has threatened to withhold them from crew members whose customer-service rating falls below 92 percent, according to the British press. There is little fear of lack of workers; Carnival U.K. CEO David Dingle told The Guardian that “we have a manning office in Mumbai. There are queues out on to the street.”
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