a cruise ship can be like a slave ship

a cruise ship can be like a slave ship<br /><br />My grandparents loved taking cruises. Ironically, my grandfather, a photographer, grew up in a working class family in San Francisco. Touring the world in the mega luxury liners were a crowning symbol of his success and achievement later in life. But when I took a job on a cruise line, in 2005, I realized there was a little more to cruising than his pretty pictures convey.<br /><br />Since I was asked for clarification about this phrase, yesterday, here it is:<br /><br />cruise ship can be like a slave ship for the people who work there. I remembering the words of an African American chef who worked with me. He had spent more than sixty consecutive days, fourteen to sixteen hours daily chopping and arranging countless vegetables for salads, fruit for fruit plates, and creating the beautiful and bountiful display of cheese and crudit for cocktail hour. His great ambition was to work on an oil rig, because he believed the pay would be better and the work easier. at home don know what it like, he said as he walked by me in the passageway one morning, deep in the crew quarters that are always located under the waterline of the ship. think it paradise. They don know it like a slave ship. And it true that every time I tried to explain this experience to others I stumbled in truly conveying the powerlessness of the situation. Between four and five others and I did all the cleaning, all the fine dining service, and even served cookies and punch on the beach in Mexico for 103 passengers for ten weeks straight. No, it wasn what my contract stated, per that document, I would have a day off each week, and only work up to 84 hours instead of the 94 and more I did but it was work or go home. Some work can be fun. And there nowhere better to sleep than a boat, once you adjust to the waves. It like sleeping in a cradle. And the stars in the night sky. But, as even a drunken woman at dinner one night could observe, aren enough of you. labor laws at least theoretically as protection, and always, the option of leaving. But most cruise liners dont hire Americans for the same kind of work we worked on an American flagged ship, which is somewhat unusual. Larger cruise lines hire third world workers and even charge them a $2,000 fee or more to get the job. In Indonesia or India this is so much money that workers mortgage everything they own and/or they take out loans at exorbitant rates of interest. Some people may not realize that in many countries, among poor people, honor is everything. Many will pay these loans back no matter what the working conditions are like. A man will be hired and told he will work as a waiter. The recruiting agent will him by stringing out a job offer over six months, so that the man is more and more desperate for the job and has been unable to take other permanent work because this job could start at any moment. Then once he has his contract in his hand, he will only be offered a job like a potato peeler or a person stacking deck chairs. The pay will be lower than he anticipated. He will work continuously at least twelve hours a day for eight months or so. His airline ticket home will be deducted first, and after that he can be fired with any infraction of the rules and sent home at his own expense. He must, in other words, work as an indentured servant for three or four months, before financially breaking even.<br /><br />Some of this is illegal. Technically jobs on cruise ships aren supposed to be sold to workers. But just like clothing brands like the Gap don always that there are kids working in garment factories that sew their labels, cruise ship companies can always claim not to know the recruiting agents in the Philippines are charging these fees. An extensive joint report by the ITF and the War on Want documents that average time worked on a cruise ship went from three years, in the 1970 to eight months in 2004. Eight months the length of one contract the average time any cruise worker stays on. That, alone, says a lot. Not many workers would pay a $2,000 fee plus airfare for a job they knew they couldn bear to keep for more than one contract.<br /><br />And there no reason that the industry has to be like this. In fact, bills to better regulate and improve the cruise industry have been introduced to Congress; they just haven had enough support. Considering who has been in power over the past eight years and more, I guess this is not surprising. When Bill Clinton was president, a bill was introduced to change the registry of cruise ships to become territories of the United States instead of territories of Hondurus or wherever their flag registries were made; you can guess how many millions were spent by the industry on lobbying to kill that bill dead.<br /><br />But as for myself, I think an emotional epiphany happened one day when I was serving breakfast and I was in the throttles of pain. Medicine hadn helped, and there aren really sick days on cruise ships. I asked my boss, an otherwise nice person, if I could wear a dark sweater that matched my uniform to keep warm because it would help ease the pain. She thought about it, but said no. There is a cost to everything looking so perfect on a cruise ship, I thought.<br /><br />Below, one of my coworkers and a good friend of mine now, Naya, took the job on the cruise ship in order to help save the money she needed for American citizenship. She was already married to an American, but since she didn have anyone wealthy enough to sponsor her, she had to save money as well. She worked for two months for the cruise line before getting fired as our whole department did over a pay dispute. I not sure how her citizenship papers are coming along, but it good bet she took a very pretty photo, pictured here.<br /><br />Update: I appreciate all the interest in this topic and I wanted to post a list of sources for further reading for anyone interested, of books and sources that I have found invaluable on the subject:<br /><br />1. Kristoffer Garins, Devils on the Deep Blue Sea the chapter Hidden in Plain Sight discusses the situation of cruise workers.<br /><br />2. Ross Kleins Cruise Ship Blues, this book is sometimes not well organized, but it does present many firsthand interviews and interactions with crew by a sociology professor and industry watcher who has traveled widely on cruise ships.<br /><br />3.<br /><br />4. Im linking the a second time for any who have missed it, above. This study done by the International Trade Federation and the British charity organization the War on Want an offshoot of Oxfam is a reputable report. Its heartbreaking. And I urge anyone who honestly wants to see the other side of the industry to read it.<br /><br />Im happy to e mail with anyone who has questions or wants to discuss this further. Thank you for reading, and for your comments.<br /><br />I have been on a couple of cruises, mostly to be with my family. I have always been uncomfortable with the legions of Phillopino and Carribean men working all day long without a break. Im also uncomfortable with how theyre asked to perform in the dining room. Contrast this with mostly wealthy white passengers who spend their time in the hot tub talking about all the jewelry they bought in port. Makes my skin crawl. . Im going to post this on my Facebook page and ask people to think twice about cruising.<br /><br />I dont buy for a minute that Gap officials were clueless about sweat shop conditions in factories where some of its products are produced overseas. If not mistaken, Gaps culpability was exposed.<br /><br />Id like to suggest that what youve described here is not exclusively endemic to the tourist industry. Unfortunately, its been happening in the larger service spectrum for years and continues today.<br /><br />As long as theres a form of currency exchanged, corporate greed will likely exceed the need to make operational adjustments unless employees demand them in tenuous times such as these, thats a difficult decision. Damn, what one must endure to bring the bacon home. the tips they get is often all they earn more or less and theyre often divided down between several layers of workers that arent above deck.<br /><br />thanks emma peel. crime is a huge problem and ross klein who I mentioned above testified before Congress. More regulation of the industry would guarantee better results in many ways, for the workers, the environment, and obviously safety. I know from personal experience when crew have only had 3 4 hours sleep they are more likely to make mistakes that can jeopardize the safety of themselves and others.<br /><br />Suede, thanks I could not agree more both about the gap and how this is a global problem. the cruise companies keep the passports of their crew, so jumping off in port is not as easy as it looks. I dont think they keep statistics, but suicide at sea does happen. Klein talks about it in his book, Cruise Ship Blues. Its pretty bad.<br /><br />And Lea Lane, thanks for your comments. I know that cruise members often dont say whats really going on or how they feel because they can lose their jobs which as hard as these jobs are keeping them is also their goal. I wish for systemic changes to the industry and I believe these changes are possible. But obviously without being pushed, the industry has felt at ease exploiting vulnerable people for great profit. Its part of their flagship of convenience situation which has also helped them to skirt labor and environmental laws. These companies have their corporate offices in Miami. Your title takes away from the gist of your post.