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Still, with a fleet of over three hundred ships, the cruise industry employed a lot of
waiters, busboys, housekeepers and laundry workers. When they weren't happy with the
working conditions, crew members jumped ship and told their stories at American ports.
Eventually, Congress held hearings on cruise ship labor issues.
Representative William Clay, Sr., then serving as a Democrat from Missouri, intro-
duced legislation in the early 1990s to require cruise ships to pay minimum wages and
provide other U.S. labor protections to workers on cruise ships operating out of American
ports.
Lawmakers heard testimony from cruise ship crew members that was considered ex-
plosive at the time: crew members working ten-to-twelve-hour days with no overtime pay
and no days off for months; hourly wages as low as 53 cents; waiters living on tips because
their monthly salaries were a token $50. During hearings Mr. Clay asked why cruise com-
panies headquartered in the United States and operating out of American ports should be
allowed to ignore labor laws that had been won at a heavy social price.
The bill stalled in subcommittee and in 1993 Mr. Clay gave up. He had been stymied
by the classic alliance of power and money against the measure and little public demon-
stration in its favor. This was no accident. The cruise industry had courted politicians
since its inception, creating its own trade association, now known as Cruise Lines Interna-
tional Association or CLIA, in 1975. They made strategic campaign contributions to im-
portant allies in Washington and the coastal states—in ten years the industry gave away
$16,953,807 in direct and indirect payments to national political campaigns and locally in
Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington and Florida.
The industry won the war over labor handily. Congress even helped the industry's bot-
tom line by reducing fees paid to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The in-
dustry also blocked early bipartisan opposition to cruise companies avoiding corporate in-
come taxes. Representative John Duncan, Republican from Tennessee, argued that “it is
totally unfair to let Carnival Cruise Lines pay nothing on profits just because it was incor-
porated in Panama. . . . Foreign flag lines are, in effect, getting an indirect subsidy from
the U.S. government.”
The industry refuted those charges, saying it pumped billions of dollars into the Amer-
ican economy—upward of $40 billion in 2010—and created thousands of jobs in the Un-
ited States.
The unions haven't given up, though. The International Transport Workers' Federation
recently launched a campaign against what it called “sweat-ship” conditions on many
cruise ships, raising the issue of Dickensian wages, months without days off, inadequate
accommodations and routine exhaustion. But the cruise lines are more than happy to re-
fute these charges.
Adam M. Goldstein is the president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International. He is
a slight man with a quick, dry sense of humor and a résumé that includes a degree with
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