Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry (21 page)

Other islands are less vigilant. According to David Smith, executive director of Jamaica’s Conservation and Development Trust, some Caribbean countries deliberately ignore the law because the governments fear that the cruise line will withdraw their ships if environmental regulations are enforced.
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THE PROBLEM OF PEOPLE POLLUTION

Most of us might not consider crowds of people to be an environmental issue, but you need only be in a port when several cruise ships are docked to think otherwise.
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There are often too many cruise passengers in one place at one time. These huge crowds wear on local people, as evidenced in the love-hate relationship many Alaskan ports have with the cruise industry. While there is noise and congestion — on a typical summer day it is difficult to walk along the downtown streets of many Alaskan ports — there is also the economic benefit derived from all those tourists.

Here are two examples of the problem. In December 1998 I arrived at St. Thomas on a cruise ship — 1 of 13 cruise ships in port that particular day. Imagine 25,000 cruise ship passengers all crammed into the main shopping areas: the downtown and Havensight Mall. While that day was unusual — this was the most cruise ship passengers in a single day for several years — it was an example of there being more people than can be comfortably accommodated in one area. Not all local residents were happy.

It is common for Juneau, Alaska, a city of 30,000, to receive as many as 10,000 visitors in a day. Every year, photos in the
Juneau Empire
illustrate the extreme congestion on city sidewalks when four or five cruise ships visit. The problem is that much greater in the smaller communities. Take Skagway, for example, a city at the northern end of the Inside Passage with a population of under 900. At times 10,000 cruise ship passengers visit Skagway in one day. During a visit in early May 1996, someone told me that by midsummer most residents cannot wait to reclaim their town, to regain the peace and quiet and beauty that attracted them there in the first place. The locals look forward to being able to walk unhindered through town. The same sentiment was expressed in Ketchikan and at other ports frequented by cruise ships.

This overcrowding by cruise passengers doesn’t wear only on the locals, it also influences the passengers’ experience of the port. Visiting a town such as Skagway is quite different done on your own, with no cruise ships in port, compared to a trip taken early in the season when there may be twice as many cruise ship passengers as city residents. And the experience is different again on those days when there are ten times more visitors than residents. The usual pristine beauty and peaceful environment is nowhere to be found. And as the ships leave, in their wake remains the refuse and environmental wear and tear from thousands of people having been crammed into a relatively small space.

The problem of people pollution is not limited only to Alaska or to Caribbean ports. As the cruise industry grows, more and more ports experience the tourism love-hate relationship: economic benefit versus the people invasion and resulting environmental degradation.

IS THE CRUISE INDUSTRY ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE?

You have to wonder whether the cruise industry is environmentally sustainable. Will environmental regulation and protection keep up with the growth of the cruise industry and the environmental challenges it presents? The answer is not simply yes or no. It is clear that the industry has responded to political and economic pressures to clean up its act, but only when absolutely necessary. The question, then, is whether individuals and governments have the will to keep the industry honest and force it to be environmentally responsible. History has taught us that this is not something the cruise industry will do voluntarily.

BELOW THE PASSENGER DECK

HELP WANTED

Hourly Wage: $1.50, 80 hours per week. Guaranteed monthly salary: $496. Room and board provided. Minimum contract: 10 months; no days off. See your nearest recruiting agent. Fee to secure position: $1,500 plus transportation costs.

W
ould
you
take
this
job
?
Likely not, but every year thousands of workers from nonindustrialized countries do, when they sign on to work aboard a cruise ship. In addition to the working conditions, cruise ship employees are faced with passengers making naive assumptions about their life onboard the ship.

THE VIEW FROM THE PASSENGER’S PERSPECTIVE

When a cruise ship arrives at a port of call, I have often heard a room steward being asked by a passenger at breakfast or leaving the ship what he plans to do ashore during the day. The passenger is probably unaware that the steward has 20 or more rooms to clean and typically works 12 to 16 hours a day. I have similarly heard dining room waiters asked how they spent their day in port. Passengers forget that while they are there to relax and to explore, the cruise ship staff are given limited time ashore. Often there’s barely enough time to make a telephone call home and maybe a quick trip to a store to buy necessary personal items, in order to avoid the price gouging in onboard shops. For most service workers, a day in port is spent in the same way as any other afternoon: resting onboard the ship (often in their cabin) and attempting to reduce sleep deprivation.

PASSENGER FOOD VERSUS STAFF FOOD

For passengers, there may be as many as ten choices for dining; the variety of the food provided is one of the attractions to a cruise. For many workers, however, the food served on the cruise ship simply fills the void. I have had room stewards on both a mass-market cruise line and a luxury cruise line gladly accept fruit from a fruit basket in my room, confessing that they have limited to no access to fresh fruit or vegetables.

A room stewardess with Radisson Seven Seas Cruises told me that she had survived primarily on pasta for the five months she had been aboard. The other food provided in the crew mess was either unpalatable to her or consisted of fish prepared for the Filipino workers. She said she didn't like fish and even if she did, the method of preparation was unattractive to her European tastes. It wasn't a complaint as much as a factual statement of her life onboard.

Like many other European workers on ships, she looked forward to an occasional port call where she could go ashore and have a real meal with quality, palatable food. Those indulgences were, however, expensive, rarely available, and often chosen in place of much-needed sleep or rest.

The naivety is not just about work schedules. As passengers are able to consume unlimited amounts and varieties of food, they assume workers are too. Most passengers don’t ask, so they don’t know. The daily budget for food served to workers is significantly less than for passengers.

The reality of work on a cruise ship is different from what most workers expect. They sign on, excited about the prospect of getting paid to travel the world aboard a modern and beautiful cruise ship. But they are quickly surprised by the long hours of work for relatively low pay, the basic quality of their accommodations, and the degree of insecurity about keeping their job and maintaining their income. Life below the passenger decks has little resemblance to the life above.

WORK CONDITIONS

Work conditions aboard cruise ships vary widely. As you would expect, officers receive higher salaries, have shorter periods between

paid vacations, are provided better accommodations, and may have access to passenger dining rooms.

Workers in the deck and engine department and in the galley and laundry are at the other extreme, with some of the lowest salaries, most basic living conditions, and contracts three to four times longer than officers’. Many of these folks work below deck during the day, so they rarely see daylight. Room stewards, waiters, busboys, and other service staff have higher incomes and greater freedom of movement around the ship (due to their job function), but otherwise their situation is similar to that of workers in the engine and deck departments.

No matter what the role or position, almost all workers on a cruise ship put in long hours, day after

day, rarely with a day off. The exceptions are entertainers, the cruise director and his or her staff, and concessionaires (such as croupiers, photographers, and store attendants) who generally have better living conditions and higher incomes than laborers. Their access to dining rooms and freedom of movement varies widely from one cruise line to another, but in all cases is greater than that of service providers and maintenance workers.

I WON’T SEE MY DAUGHTER FOR A YEAR

“Look at this picture of my daughter,” says the woman working at the purser’s desk aboard the
Statendam
, a Holland America Line cruise ship. “She is one year old today. I haven’t seen her for six months, and won’t see her again for another six months.” The woman is crying. She’s from the Philippines and tells me her one glimmer of hope is that, by doing this work, she’ll be able to support her mother and her daughter. She hopes she can save enough to give her daughter opportunities that she never had.

Work contracts vary in length by different classes of employees. Most officers work for four months and then have a two-month vacation. Some cruise lines have reduced the work period to three months to make the job more attractive. Some also permit senior officers to have their partner with them for all or part of their contract.

In contrast, on the majority of cruise lines, anyone who works in the dining room and kitchen, in deck and engine maintenance, or in cleaning passenger cabins, has a contract for 9 or 10 months followed by a 2-month vacation. The standard collective agreement suggested by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) specifies that contracts should be for 9 months, although for “operational convenience” this may be extended to 10 months or reduced to 8 months. Regardless, I have met many employees in the hotel department — that is, waiters and busboys, room stewards, bartenders, and deck workers — who work 12 months straight with no days off.

I Work for 12 Months; He Works for 6

A difference in contract length often relates to the worker’s home country, sometimes because of the national union to which the worker belongs. For example, a waiter from Italy or Greece will rarely work more than 6 or 7 months without a vacation. In contrast, workers from many Asian countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China often work 10 or 12 months before a vacation is provided. On some ships, workers with different length contracts work side by side, day after day.

A shift in the nationality of service personnel aboard cruise ships has been one of the most visible changes over the years. In the 1960s and 1970s, cruise lines advertised and took pride in having European staff in service roles. A cruise line’s reputation often was based on the nationality of its dining room staff and room stewards. The Greek-owned cruise lines, such as Royal Cruise Line, had