CRUISE SHIPS – Living Hell below the Decks

www.goacom.org

Despite the fact that the top three cruise ship companies earned over £8.5 billion in 2001, long hours and low pay are the norm for workers. A third of cruise ship staff work 12 hours a day, with bar waiters earning as little as US$50 a month. Contracts are short and insecure, with sexual harassment and racism rife onboard. In 1999, a law suit forced Carnival cruises to disclose the nearly 100 accusations of rape and sexual harassment against crew members between 1993 and 1998 – all ignored by the company.

The anti-poverty UK charity War on Want has launched a new campaign together with the ITF exposing the appalling conditions of Third World workers on some luxury cruise ships. Researchers found seafaring families in India left more indebted, in greater poverty than when they started. This is because many crewing agents illegally charge workers fees just to get the job. The money often has to be borrowed at high interest rates and, if anything goes wrong with the contract, the cruise ship worker and their family are left in a spiral of mounting debt.

In Sept 2002, the War on Want in conjunction with ITF has produced a scathing 30-page report called “Sweatships – what it’s really like to work on board cruise ships”. It can be downloaded from their website http://www.waronwant.org/.

Video of cabin for Carnival crew members as seen on youtube