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

159 points by edward 10y ago

dyu- 10y ago
That's terrible man. $190/month as a dish washer $45/month as a waiter (with tips that could reach to 2k if you always work overtime and not complain about the lack of extra pay)
- golergka 10y ago
  Terrible by what country's standards?
  - contingencies 10y ago
    Almost every country.
    - ci5er 10y ago
      On top of room & board?
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      GDP per capita in the Philippines is ~$220/mo. For someone working on a cruise ship to make 2x to 8x that and have a substantial portion of their living expenses covered is not at all "terrible" by their home country's standards, IMO.
      - contingencies 10y ago
        You can't use generic statistics to obtain significant insight in to people's lives: those on minor incomes are probably dependent / semi self-sufficient / agrarian / fishing / unbanked, so simply do not appear to have or need much money. In addition, barter and sharing are still widely practiced amongst agrarian communities. For some perspective, in a report from recent (last 2 months) research that I read this morning, the very lowest household income amongst Myanmar migrant workers (largely factory workers) interviewed in Thailand was almost exactly this figure (7kTHB), whereas 2-5x this figure (~20-35kTHB) was common. Similarly, relocating Chinese villagers I met last month reported being given 290元 (~$42)/head/month + lifetime generous monthly rice/oil allowance + initial bulk hardship payment + free housing when relocated to facilitate a new hydropower project. A family of four Chinese farmers in this situation essentially receive this income forever without the need to work at all.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  > with tips that could reach to 2k if you always work overtime and not complain about the lack of extra pay How does a dishwasher make tips?
  - dyu- 10y ago
    Only waiters get their share from the tips. I've spoken to waiters (mostly filipino) during a cruise and the $50 monthly excluding tips is real. I made a typo in my above comment. As a dishwasher, you get $450/month - fixed and without tips.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      That's more plausible. I assume also room and board are "free".
      - dyu- 10y ago
        Yeah they're included.
laser 10y ago
Hate to nitpick, but how is "Regie eventually settled for $25,000 — after attorney fees were taken out, roughly equivalent to a year’s middle-class income in the Philippines." factual if the GDP per capita of the Philippines is ~$2600?
- throwaway5000 10y ago
  maybe because the equivalent of "middle class" is so rare there?
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    Judging from my own time living in Manila I can vouch for this. The middle class has been slowly emerging since the 1980s - thanks to increased education and foreign investment - but it's still a tiny proportion of the country. I used to live in Makati and when touring the rest of the country it felt like the entire non-poor, but non-superrich were confined to just that part of Manila. (Shout out to ISM Bearcats!)
    - wyclif 10y ago
      The Filipino middle class is developing in the same way that the Philippines is a developing country...very slowly and incrementally. So, for instance, you're starting to see things like Ayala malls, iStores, and more upscale cars. But those aren't hugely popular or mass-scale because most people in the Philippines cannot afford to buy them or shop there.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  The income distribution of the Philippines, like many developing economies is very uneven, which leads to great disparities between median and mean incomes. I'm not convinced that GDP is a reliable proxy for "average income" anyway.
stoolpigeon 10y ago
I visited Olongapo a number of times in the late 80s with the US Navy. As the article mentions we had a very large number of Filipinos in the USN and there were whole departments completed dominated by Filipino leadership (at the enlisted level). 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.
dvtv75 10y ago
Coincidentally, a Filipino man was killed in an explosion on a cruise ship just a few days ago: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11798211 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
wyclif 10y ago
If you're a Filipino man and reading this, please don't be tempted to take one of these jobs. Your health is something that you can't replace.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  What do you suggest that Filipino man does instead?
  - liotier 10y ago
    Found a startup, pitch on HN, get rich - c'mon man, get with the program !
    - alfiedotwtf 10y ago
      For a different perspective, conditions may have changed now... I have about 6 cousins from the Philippines that are all around the world on various cruise ships, tankers, and cargo ships. Each one sending money back home, each one happy, they all love their jobs, and go back for reassignment.
      - SeanBoocock 10y ago
        So did the man profiled in this story and several of his friends until health problems and workplace conditions wore down their enthusiasm. Even if the vast majority of cruise ship employees are satisfied with their employment, one should worry about the effort to weaken laws and regulations meant to protect these vulnerable workers.
  - wyclif 10y ago
    Anything that doesn't end up destroying his health and life. I reject the notion that cruise ship work is the only job available to him.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
readhn 10y ago
This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship (or any resort in Mexico, Dominican etc). Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave working for pennies while you are supposed to enjoy your vacation and relax- I couldn't, no thank you. 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 :)
- stuaxo 10y ago
  Can we just rename the lobbying system the kickback system to make things more explicit ?
- jasode 10y ago
  >This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship [...] Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave I'm not doubting your sincerity and principles but I'd like to go beyond this particular injustice of cruise workers and understand how consumers reconcile all the "slave" inputs for the other products they buy. In the USA, many fruits and veggies are collected by cheap labor from Mexico.[1] In UK, the analogous group is Africans. Those strawberries in the supermarket are not collected by white middle-class teenagers working the field as a fun summer job. It's back-breaking work with terrible pay. Similar situation for many foods like coffee beans, beef/poultry/pork processing. Or the shoes for your kid to run or play soccer in. Made by sweatshops (many staffed with children) in Asia. Or how about smartphones?[2] This includes kids mining for minerals so we can have iPhones.[3] Yes, some of these happen because many consumers are oblivious to how products are made. (You mean the strawberries don't come from a magical strawberry fairy?!?) Or maybe why we tolerate many of these scenarios is "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics"[4] which has been discussed by HN before. If I don't physically have to touch or lay my eyes on that child labor in Africa, my iPhone is fine. What would a lifestyle that avoided all use of "tainted" products used look like? (No iPhone, no cheap produce from the supermarket, no affordable shoes or clothing. etc.) I've not seen a really good essay discussing all the inconsistencies of ethics applied above and advising us how to live guilt free without retreating to a remote monastery and minimizing oneself to an ascetic life like a monk. Refusing cruise ships is easy -- a lot of HN readers don't like them in the first place. Giving up smartphones is hard. Relevant to this moment, the ability to type up comments on HN means I'm taking advantage of the global supply of "slave labor" around the world. There's no way I could have the luxury to do that if I had to harvest my own strawberries or pay a white person $20/hour to do it for me. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_JWuWSSLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_JWuWSSLQ [2] http://www.androidcentral.com/child-labor-allegations-surface-factory-contracted-samsung-china http://www.androidcentral.com/child-labor-allegations-surfac... [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280872/iPhone-mineral-miners-Africa-use-bare-hands-coltan.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280872/iPhone-miner... [4] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
lubos 10y ago
The sad thing is that while he was able to earn $1,500 per month, he apparently didn't invest into anything. No financial planning as if he can do this job forever. Sure he must have known stories what's going on and could prepare for this possibility. I don't understand why he didn't.
- readhn 10y ago
  Ummm living costs eating up everything? He did not have any disposable income to invest?
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    These jobs come with room and board.
    - readhn 10y ago
      Did you miss the part about his big family?
- exidy 10y ago
  And where did you learn to do financial planning? Were you perhaps raised in an environment where you could see loans, investments, assets, mortgages, credit and debit in action? Or perhaps you even had it as a formal subject in school? Now imagine you were raised in a bamboo shack living hand-to-mouth in a cash economy.
  - song 10y ago
    He also did invest it partly in his kid's education which in many countries of Asia is the typical way people plan for retirement.
  - IamHWengineer 10y ago
    can confirm. filipino here now in US. my uncles were seamen. no fin planning in life. You just retire and hope your children will take care of you. It's like the equivalent of military here in US
traveling 10y ago
Newsflash: Life sucks anywhere when you're poor and uneducated. 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.
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  It's not something that's writ in stone though - we could hangs that, and change starts with education, articles like this.
  - traveling 10y ago
    Call me overly cynical, but the future is looking even worse with ever increasing automation. There will most likely be a small elite of technocrats and wealthy while everybody else is living in shacks competing for whatever jobs are left. Most single millenial guys that aren't in tech or another high paying career are already living in shared housing indefinetely if they're in a big city. An excess of people having no purpose in society will result in such conditions unless there is a revolution and a technologically disadvantaged north korea where everybody has stuff to do suddenly doesn't look that bad anymore.
    - xapata 10y ago
      Shared housing isn't bad in principle. It was only some decades ago that most people didn't own a single-family freestanding home. I hope that when I'm old I can live with all my friends in a big shared home, rather than a nursing home.
      - fennecfoxen 10y ago
        Did you ever watch the cartoons growing up, like _Hey, Arnold_ on Nickelodeon? Remember how Arnold's family ran a boarding house, with shared common spaces and bunch of people renting rooms (for years at a time!) and a diversity of humanity to provide Humanity, different perspectives, and other such forms of Color for the show? Did you ever stop think about how weird that arrangement was? Do you know anyone who owns, operates, or lives in a boarding house? And yet it's not really all that weird by historical standards. It's only in fairly recent times that cities decided to get all Moralistic about how Home, Family and Neighborhoods Should Be Structured and started imposing zoning restrictions with super emphasis on homes, waging war against boarding houses and residential hotels and flophouses and other haunts of the poor and lower classes in the name of Progress and Class Warfare. Can't quite afford a place that meets the minimum square footage requirements independently? Well, don't worry, we can find a place for you in the crime-ridden public housing projects or on the streets. Kiss your remaining independence goodbye and welcome to the Bureaucracy, because you're never going to be able to get on the bus to a new town with $100 in your pocket and find a place to crash for a few nights until you get a new job. Who would rent you a place like that anymore? There's the YMCA... and that's about it, _period_. (Hell, a lot of the debates about AirBnB "abuse" end up rehashing these same problems.)
koolba 10y ago
> The three logged their hours on the ship’s time-sheet software, called “Fun Time” (Carnival Cruise Line’s motto is the “Fun Ship”). But when the number exceeded ten hours, it appeared red on the screen. No matter how many extra hours they tapped in, their pay slips rarely showed that they worked more than ten or 11 hours a day. Regie didn’t understand why he wasn’t paid for the extra work, and when he asked management, no one provided an answer. “What’s your proof?” Regie says his supervisor shot back. Many tip-earning Carnival Cruise Line workers told me that when they raised the issue, their managers would punish them by assigning them fewer guests, which meant fewer tips. I wonder why they do this. The $$$ savings for the lesser hours are peanuts given the low wages. Only reason I can think of is to break the will of the workers. If they feel powerless to complain about the hours they've worked, they're less likely to complain about the rest of their conditions. > But arbitration in the Philippines is nothing like the American judicial system. In the United States, seamen can file for damages on the basis of dangerous working conditions or shoddy medical care, for example. They can receive payments that cover any future loss of wages and ongoing medical expenses, which can span a lifetime. In the Philippines, on the other hand, seamen are offered payouts based on a predetermined compensation chart, in which each body part has a price tag. If there’s a spinal injury and the company-sponsored doctor says a seafarer’s back has lost a third of its mobility, it’s valued at $7,465. If a crew member loses his penis, he’s paid $20,900. If a worker dies: $50,000. The maximum payout, for permanent disability, is capped at $60,000. Unionized workers can receive more, but Carnival Cruise Line crew members are nonunion. I'm not sure how one "loses his penis" but I'm damn sure I'd demand more than $20,900 in compensation from the party responsible. > Recently, the cruise industry has pushed to pass a law that would prevent all foreign cruise workers in U.S. waters — not just Filipinos — from any protection under U.S. law. Sounds like they want it both ways. If you're docking at US ports and picking up US customers, you should be expected to follow some level of US law. It's hard to say what protections should apply though as it's possible they could conflict with foreign laws as well. My internal sense of justice says it should be something though.
- kittenmittens 10y ago
  > I wonder why they do this. The $$$ 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. It's more about regulations I believe, if management can "prove" that you did not work more than the allowed hours, they cannot be fined for it.
coldcode 10y ago
Carnival is basically the bottom of the barrel in the cruise ship industry, cheap crap for the masses and they maintain this cheapness by poor working conditions, slapdash ship design (count how many ships caught fire in the past few years, almost all Carnival) and low quality amenities. Like no frills airlines, there is of course a market for cheap, but you get what you pay for. Even on much better lines it isn't an easy job, but my friends in the cruise industry note that it is a decent living for people from poorer countries, and can be fun if you land on the right ship/line. You do work 7 days a week but the commute is short, and on decent ships your life is not really that bad. 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.
- _asummers 10y ago
  What are the cruise lines you have liked most?
  - Isamu 10y ago
    Disney cruise was awesome, on one of the big new ships. I would recommend.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Ironically, Disney Cruises is owned by...Carnival.
      - differentView 10y ago
        Source?
dirtylowprofile 10y ago
As a Filipino, this makes me sad.
mabbo 10y ago
All of the replies from Carnival give the same impression: we have rules against that sort of thing, and would punish anyone caught breaking those rules. We also do not go looking for anyone breaking such rules, because we make more money this way. Having rules is meaningless if you aren't trying to enforce them.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dizzyfingers 10y ago
I worked for Carnival as a pianist for a couple years after college to save money and it was an excellent physical reminder of how many people are in this world. 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.'
ConroyBumpus 10y ago
Not unique to the cruise industry. Filipino crews make up a lot of the maritime industry's labor force. Container ships, tankers, offshore drilling, you name it. Some of the best food I've eaten offshore was on vessels with Filipino catering crews. 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.
- edblarney 10y ago
  They are the primary supply for domestic workers in Canada, specifically for things like nannies.
kickaxeninja 10y ago
But carnival spends hundreds of millions developing their medallion app to deliver the highest level of guest experience. I'm all for profit but they have the money to treat their workers humanely. Carnival, and all their princess subsidiaries should be boycotted
Aardwolf 10y ago
I love the high quality high res photos in this article! They take a while to load, but so much better than low res photos full of artefacts you usually get in articles, here you can actually see something
mdip 10y ago
This read made me respect the cruise workers who have made my vacations so good over the years. 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).
socrates1998 10y ago
Filipinos are often amazing workers. They seem to be generally happy (which I generally believe they are). Are fairly diligent. They speak English and communicate well. And work hard. 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.

159 points by edward 10y ago

dyu- 10y ago

That's terrible man. $190/month as a dish washer $45/month as a waiter (with tips that could reach to 2k if you always work overtime and not complain about the lack of extra pay)

golergka 10y ago
Terrible by what country's standards?
- contingencies 10y ago
  Almost every country.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    On top of room & board?
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    GDP per capita in the Philippines is ~$220/mo. For someone working on a cruise ship to make 2x to 8x that and have a substantial portion of their living expenses covered is not at all "terrible" by their home country's standards, IMO.
    - contingencies 10y ago
      You can't use generic statistics to obtain significant insight in to people's lives: those on minor incomes are probably dependent / semi self-sufficient / agrarian / fishing / unbanked, so simply do not appear to have or need much money. In addition, barter and sharing are still widely practiced amongst agrarian communities. For some perspective, in a report from recent (last 2 months) research that I read this morning, the very lowest household income amongst Myanmar migrant workers (largely factory workers) interviewed in Thailand was almost exactly this figure (7kTHB), whereas 2-5x this figure (~20-35kTHB) was common. Similarly, relocating Chinese villagers I met last month reported being given 290元 (~$42)/head/month + lifetime generous monthly rice/oil allowance + initial bulk hardship payment + free housing when relocated to facilitate a new hydropower project. A family of four Chinese farmers in this situation essentially receive this income forever without the need to work at all.
77pt77 10y ago
> with tips that could reach to 2k if you always work overtime and not complain about the lack of extra pay How does a dishwasher make tips?
- dyu- 10y ago
  Only waiters get their share from the tips. I've spoken to waiters (mostly filipino) during a cruise and the $50 monthly excluding tips is real. I made a typo in my above comment. As a dishwasher, you get $450/month - fixed and without tips.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    That's more plausible. I assume also room and board are "free".
    - dyu- 10y ago
      Yeah they're included.

laser 10y ago

Hate to nitpick, but how is "Regie eventually settled for $25,000 — after attorney fees were taken out, roughly equivalent to a year’s middle-class income in the Philippines." factual if the GDP per capita of the Philippines is ~$2600?

throwaway5000 10y ago
maybe because the equivalent of "middle class" is so rare there?
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  Judging from my own time living in Manila I can vouch for this. The middle class has been slowly emerging since the 1980s - thanks to increased education and foreign investment - but it's still a tiny proportion of the country. I used to live in Makati and when touring the rest of the country it felt like the entire non-poor, but non-superrich were confined to just that part of Manila. (Shout out to ISM Bearcats!)
  - wyclif 10y ago
    The Filipino middle class is developing in the same way that the Philippines is a developing country...very slowly and incrementally. So, for instance, you're starting to see things like Ayala malls, iStores, and more upscale cars. But those aren't hugely popular or mass-scale because most people in the Philippines cannot afford to buy them or shop there.
DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
The income distribution of the Philippines, like many developing economies is very uneven, which leads to great disparities between median and mean incomes. I'm not convinced that GDP is a reliable proxy for "average income" anyway.

stoolpigeon 10y ago

I visited Olongapo a number of times in the late 80s with the US Navy. As the article mentions we had a very large number of Filipinos in the USN and there were whole departments completed dominated by Filipino leadership (at the enlisted level). 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.

dvtv75 10y ago

Coincidentally, a Filipino man was killed in an explosion on a cruise ship just a few days ago: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11798211 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

wyclif 10y ago

If you're a Filipino man and reading this, please don't be tempted to take one of these jobs. Your health is something that you can't replace.

jacquesm 10y ago
What do you suggest that Filipino man does instead?
- liotier 10y ago
  Found a startup, pitch on HN, get rich - c'mon man, get with the program !
  - alfiedotwtf 10y ago
    For a different perspective, conditions may have changed now... I have about 6 cousins from the Philippines that are all around the world on various cruise ships, tankers, and cargo ships. Each one sending money back home, each one happy, they all love their jobs, and go back for reassignment.
    - SeanBoocock 10y ago
      So did the man profiled in this story and several of his friends until health problems and workplace conditions wore down their enthusiasm. Even if the vast majority of cruise ship employees are satisfied with their employment, one should worry about the effort to weaken laws and regulations meant to protect these vulnerable workers.
- wyclif 10y ago
  Anything that doesn't end up destroying his health and life. I reject the notion that cruise ship work is the only job available to him.
  - jacquesm 10y ago

readhn 10y ago

This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship (or any resort in Mexico, Dominican etc). Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave working for pennies while you are supposed to enjoy your vacation and relax- I couldn't, no thank you. 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 :)

stuaxo 10y ago
Can we just rename the lobbying system the kickback system to make things more explicit ?
jasode 10y ago
>This is why I am never ever going on a cruise ship [...] Knowing that the guy serving you is basically a slave I'm not doubting your sincerity and principles but I'd like to go beyond this particular injustice of cruise workers and understand how consumers reconcile all the "slave" inputs for the other products they buy. In the USA, many fruits and veggies are collected by cheap labor from Mexico.[1] In UK, the analogous group is Africans. Those strawberries in the supermarket are not collected by white middle-class teenagers working the field as a fun summer job. It's back-breaking work with terrible pay. Similar situation for many foods like coffee beans, beef/poultry/pork processing. Or the shoes for your kid to run or play soccer in. Made by sweatshops (many staffed with children) in Asia. Or how about smartphones?[2] This includes kids mining for minerals so we can have iPhones.[3] Yes, some of these happen because many consumers are oblivious to how products are made. (You mean the strawberries don't come from a magical strawberry fairy?!?) Or maybe why we tolerate many of these scenarios is "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics"[4] which has been discussed by HN before. If I don't physically have to touch or lay my eyes on that child labor in Africa, my iPhone is fine. What would a lifestyle that avoided all use of "tainted" products used look like? (No iPhone, no cheap produce from the supermarket, no affordable shoes or clothing. etc.) I've not seen a really good essay discussing all the inconsistencies of ethics applied above and advising us how to live guilt free without retreating to a remote monastery and minimizing oneself to an ascetic life like a monk. Refusing cruise ships is easy -- a lot of HN readers don't like them in the first place. Giving up smartphones is hard. Relevant to this moment, the ability to type up comments on HN means I'm taking advantage of the global supply of "slave labor" around the world. There's no way I could have the luxury to do that if I had to harvest my own strawberries or pay a white person $20/hour to do it for me. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_JWuWSSLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_JWuWSSLQ [2] http://www.androidcentral.com/child-labor-allegations-surface-factory-contracted-samsung-china http://www.androidcentral.com/child-labor-allegations-surfac... [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280872/iPhone-mineral-miners-Africa-use-bare-hands-coltan.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280872/iPhone-miner... [4] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

lubos 10y ago

The sad thing is that while he was able to earn $1,500 per month, he apparently didn't invest into anything. No financial planning as if he can do this job forever. Sure he must have known stories what's going on and could prepare for this possibility. I don't understand why he didn't.

readhn 10y ago
Ummm living costs eating up everything? He did not have any disposable income to invest?
- 77pt77 10y ago
  These jobs come with room and board.
  - readhn 10y ago
    Did you miss the part about his big family?
exidy 10y ago
And where did you learn to do financial planning? Were you perhaps raised in an environment where you could see loans, investments, assets, mortgages, credit and debit in action? Or perhaps you even had it as a formal subject in school? Now imagine you were raised in a bamboo shack living hand-to-mouth in a cash economy.
- song 10y ago
  He also did invest it partly in his kid's education which in many countries of Asia is the typical way people plan for retirement.
- IamHWengineer 10y ago
  can confirm. filipino here now in US. my uncles were seamen. no fin planning in life. You just retire and hope your children will take care of you. It's like the equivalent of military here in US

traveling 10y ago

Newsflash: Life sucks anywhere when you're poor and uneducated. 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.

Synaesthesia 10y ago
It's not something that's writ in stone though - we could hangs that, and change starts with education, articles like this.
- traveling 10y ago
  Call me overly cynical, but the future is looking even worse with ever increasing automation. There will most likely be a small elite of technocrats and wealthy while everybody else is living in shacks competing for whatever jobs are left. Most single millenial guys that aren't in tech or another high paying career are already living in shared housing indefinetely if they're in a big city. An excess of people having no purpose in society will result in such conditions unless there is a revolution and a technologically disadvantaged north korea where everybody has stuff to do suddenly doesn't look that bad anymore.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Shared housing isn't bad in principle. It was only some decades ago that most people didn't own a single-family freestanding home. I hope that when I'm old I can live with all my friends in a big shared home, rather than a nursing home.
    - fennecfoxen 10y ago
      Did you ever watch the cartoons growing up, like _Hey, Arnold_ on Nickelodeon? Remember how Arnold's family ran a boarding house, with shared common spaces and bunch of people renting rooms (for years at a time!) and a diversity of humanity to provide Humanity, different perspectives, and other such forms of Color for the show? Did you ever stop think about how weird that arrangement was? Do you know anyone who owns, operates, or lives in a boarding house? And yet it's not really all that weird by historical standards. It's only in fairly recent times that cities decided to get all Moralistic about how Home, Family and Neighborhoods Should Be Structured and started imposing zoning restrictions with super emphasis on homes, waging war against boarding houses and residential hotels and flophouses and other haunts of the poor and lower classes in the name of Progress and Class Warfare. Can't quite afford a place that meets the minimum square footage requirements independently? Well, don't worry, we can find a place for you in the crime-ridden public housing projects or on the streets. Kiss your remaining independence goodbye and welcome to the Bureaucracy, because you're never going to be able to get on the bus to a new town with $100 in your pocket and find a place to crash for a few nights until you get a new job. Who would rent you a place like that anymore? There's the YMCA... and that's about it, _period_. (Hell, a lot of the debates about AirBnB "abuse" end up rehashing these same problems.)

koolba 10y ago

> The three logged their hours on the ship’s time-sheet software, called “Fun Time” (Carnival Cruise Line’s motto is the “Fun Ship”). But when the number exceeded ten hours, it appeared red on the screen. No matter how many extra hours they tapped in, their pay slips rarely showed that they worked more than ten or 11 hours a day. Regie didn’t understand why he wasn’t paid for the extra work, and when he asked management, no one provided an answer. “What’s your proof?” Regie says his supervisor shot back. Many tip-earning Carnival Cruise Line workers told me that when they raised the issue, their managers would punish them by assigning them fewer guests, which meant fewer tips. 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.

kittenmittens 10y ago
> 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. It's more about regulations I believe, if management can "prove" that you did not work more than the allowed hours, they cannot be fined for it.

coldcode 10y ago

Carnival is basically the bottom of the barrel in the cruise ship industry, cheap crap for the masses and they maintain this cheapness by poor working conditions, slapdash ship design (count how many ships caught fire in the past few years, almost all Carnival) and low quality amenities. Like no frills airlines, there is of course a market for cheap, but you get what you pay for. Even on much better lines it isn't an easy job, but my friends in the cruise industry note that it is a decent living for people from poorer countries, and can be fun if you land on the right ship/line. You do work 7 days a week but the commute is short, and on decent ships your life is not really that bad. 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.

_asummers 10y ago
What are the cruise lines you have liked most?
- Isamu 10y ago
  Disney cruise was awesome, on one of the big new ships. I would recommend.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Ironically, Disney Cruises is owned by...Carnival.
    - differentView 10y ago
      Source?

dirtylowprofile 10y ago

As a Filipino, this makes me sad.

mabbo 10y ago

All of the replies from Carnival give the same impression: we have rules against that sort of thing, and would punish anyone caught breaking those rules. We also do not go looking for anyone breaking such rules, because we make more money this way. Having rules is meaningless if you aren't trying to enforce them.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dizzyfingers 10y ago

I worked for Carnival as a pianist for a couple years after college to save money and it was an excellent physical reminder of how many people are in this world. 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.'

ConroyBumpus 10y ago

Not unique to the cruise industry. Filipino crews make up a lot of the maritime industry's labor force. Container ships, tankers, offshore drilling, you name it. Some of the best food I've eaten offshore was on vessels with Filipino catering crews. 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.

edblarney 10y ago
They are the primary supply for domestic workers in Canada, specifically for things like nannies.

kickaxeninja 10y ago

But carnival spends hundreds of millions developing their medallion app to deliver the highest level of guest experience. I'm all for profit but they have the money to treat their workers humanely. Carnival, and all their princess subsidiaries should be boycotted

Aardwolf 10y ago

I love the high quality high res photos in this article! They take a while to load, but so much better than low res photos full of artefacts you usually get in articles, here you can actually see something

mdip 10y ago

This read made me respect the cruise workers who have made my vacations so good over the years. 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).

socrates1998 10y ago

Filipinos are often amazing workers. They seem to be generally happy (which I generally believe they are). Are fairly diligent. They speak English and communicate well. And work hard. 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.