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Goldstein's argument is what academics call the “race to the bottom” justification, a
throwback to the early twentieth century before societies mandated minimum wages, im-
proved labor conditions and the right to collective bargaining. While those rights were co-
dified in national laws and are enforced within national boundaries, they are laws that the
cruise companies can ignore.
Twenty years ago cruise ship wages would have been a decent sum, especially for highly
motivated people trying to escape abject poverty. Today, though, the wage gap is disap-
pearing and the average monthly income in India is between $60 and $100. And a junior
waiter in Singapore can earn $591 with free accommodations as well as tips. Meanwhile,
wages for low-level crew members have barely risen since the 1993 congressional hearings.
The result is an ever-higher rate of turnover, with the average length of service for cruise
ship employees dropping from five years in 1970 to nine months in 2000, the latest statist-
ics available.
Mr. Goldstein, whose annual salary and compensation ranged from $2.7 million to $3
million in 2008 and 2009, argued that the statistics on wages and days off looked decept-
ively bad because they didn't calculate the long breaks for workers between contracts.
“The majority of people who work on board work anywhere from between four and
eight months at a time. Then they have a break—a significant break—which needs to be
factored into the regime because those are the kind of breaks that Lyan and I can only
dream of,” he said, smiling at Lyan Sierra-Caro, a senior communications executive at
Royal Caribbean who sat in on the interview.
I asked if crew members enjoyed paid vacations as he and Ms. Sierra-Caro do.
“No, they aren't paid on their breaks, so they have to have money from the time they
worked so it works for them,” he said. “But we are proud of what they do. We think they
deliver better service on the ship than on the land almost anywhere.”
It seemed a slip of the tongue: comparing his crew's service favorably to land-based
waiters and housekeepers but not their pay.
Ross A. Klein, a Canadian professor at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfound-
land, and the author of several books on the cruise industry, said that while these near-
servitude wages form the backbone of the profits of the cruise business by keeping ticket
prices low, the growing source of profits is onboard sales.
“Onboard spending is becoming more profitable than ticket sales. On average, each
passenger provides forty-three dollars in profits each day to the big cruise companies,” he
said. “If you include all the onboard spending, it is now less expensive to stay in an upscale
Caribbean resort than to sail there on a cruise ship.”
That onboard revenue translates, roughly, into at least 24 percent of all cruise revenue.
Along the U.S.-Caribbean routes it can jump to more than 30 percent, according to
UNWTO. Booze is one of the biggest earners. In the earliest days of modern cruises, ships
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