A popular part of Cruise Law News is the monthly Worst Cruise Line in the World award. This is a spe

A popular part of Cruise Law News is the monthly Worst Cruise Line in the World award. This is a special award, reserved only for the cruise line which demonstrates the worst treatment discounts for thrifty car rental of passengers, crew members, discounts for thrifty car rental and the environment.
Miami based Royal Caribbean Cruises is the second largest cruise discounts for thrifty car rental line in the world, consisting of four brands: discounts for thrifty car rental Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and its luxury line - Azamara Cruises. It also operates its Spanish Subsidiary - Pullmantour Cruises, where it sends its old cruise discounts for thrifty car rental ships like the Zenith and the Sovereign of the Seas.
Like other U.S. based cruise lines, Royal Caribbean registered its business overseas (Liberia) and flagged its cruise ships in foreign countries (Liberia, Bahamas) in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Although discounts for thrifty car rental it collects between $5 and $6 billion a year from U.S. tax-paying citizens, Royal Caribbean does not pay U.S. taxes by virtue of its foreign corporate citizenship. Its crew members are 99% non-U.S. citizens.
Royal Caribbean discounts for thrifty car rental crew members who toil behind the scenes, like galley cleaners, earn around $550 while working 360 hours a month - that's about $ 1.50 an hour . Yes, that's right - $1.50 an hour. Royal Caribbean discounts for thrifty car rental has a net worth of around $15 billion dollars, but pays its hardest working crew members $1.50 an hour.
Royal Caribbean waiters, bartenders, and cabin attendants earn a salary of only $50 a month. That's $1.67 a day . The cruise line depends on its passengers to tip the crew members so that they can make a living.
Royal Caribbean invests virtually nothing into its crew members by way of medical treatment or employment benefits. It is always looking for ways to save money at the expense of its crew. Royal Caribbean is struggling to finance its + $1,500,000,000 (yes that's 1.5 $ billion ) cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas . Its inaugural cruise is in just two weeks but it cannot even sell enough tickets to make its first voyage profitable. And Royal Caribbean is sweating bullets figuring out how it will finance the even more expensive cruise ship Allure of the Seas , which will be arriving next year.
Royal Caribbean discounts for thrifty car rental started pinching pennies with its crew members when it realized that the economy was tanking. Its stock fell from $45 a share to under $6 a share, and it became obvious that it could not meet its financial obligations for its new mega cruise ships it ordered several years earlier. Long before Royal Caribbean turned its back on its most loyal passengers - its Diamond and Diamond Plus passengers - the cruise line targeted discounts for thrifty car rental its crew members to try and suck money back into its business.
As I mentioned in a prior article Cruise Ship Medical Care - Royal Caribbean Gives Their Crew Members the Royal Shaft ,' Royal Caribbean has been giving the screws to its foreign crew members, particularly the men and women from the Caribbean islands. discounts for thrifty car rental The cruise line slashed the daily amount it pays to its sick or injured discounts for thrifty car rental crew members from $25 a day to only $12 a day. Obviously, no one in the world can eat and pay rent and other living expenses - which is the cruise line's legal obligation - on a pittance of only $12 a day. But this is what Royal Caribbean is doing, scrimping on every penny, to try and finance its new cruise ships.
Another tactic Royal Caribbean used to save money was to adopt a strict policy of keeping its crew members out of the U.S. whenever they are injured or become sick. Under the General Maritime Law, cruise lines like Royal Caribbean are obligated to provide prompt and adequate medical treatment to their ill crew members. This is called the doctrine of maintenance and cure, the oldest legal doctrine in the U.S.
Royal Caribbean is based here in Miami, discounts for thrifty car rental which is a good place to manage its crew members' medical needs. But the cruise line adopted a policy of keeping the ship employees out of the U.S. Royal Caribbean is the poster child of corporate malfeasance when it comes to abandoning its sick crew members in third world countries around the world.
We have a crew member client, lets call her Ms. Jones. She is from Jamaica. She is a twenty-five year old, hard working woman who, like many young people from Jamaica, sought a career and better life working on a cruise ship. In April of this year she felt sick and went to the ship doctor on Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas while the ship was in Europe. The ship doctor did not take Ms. Jones seriously. She continued to work. April turned to May and May turned into June. Finally she was referred from the cruise ships to a doctor ashore who eventually discounts for thrifty car rental mis-diagnosed her condition as a neurological condition.
When medical conditions cannot be managed on the cruise ships, Royal Caribbean sends its ill crew members discounts for thrifty car rental to, of all places, the Dominican Republic for treatment. Why? It's cheap. No other reason. To save money. The Dominican Republic is an impoverished country, discounts for thrifty car rental next to Haiti. It is certainly one of the last places you would think of for state-of-the-art medical treatment.
The odds were stacked discounts for thrifty car rental against Ms. Jones when she arrived discounts for thrifty car rental in the capital, Santo Domingo. But the good news, initially, is that the doctors finally ordered blood tests and diagnosed that Ms. Smith did not have an orthopedic problem.
This is not a good diagnosis and the diagnosis discounts for thrifty car rental had been unreasonably delayed. But the doctors at least had finally figured out what was ailing Ms. Jones. They had a plan as of early July. The doctors notified Royal Caribbean and requested permission to start Ms. Jones on the preferred drug for this type of leukemia, Gleevac, and to consider her for bone marrow transplantation.
So what did Royal Caribbean do? Did they fly her quickly to Miami which has excellent board certified oncologists? No. They sent Ms. Jones back to her village in Jamaica, a location discounts for thrifty car rental which makes Santo Domingo look like a thriving discounts for thrifty car rental metropolis. discounts for thrifty car rental Royal Caribbean provided no medicine to treat her leukemia and no plans for bone marrow transplantation. They did this to save money. Ms. Jones found herself in Jamaica in a weakened and immunosuppressed condition with a malignancy. Yet no Gleevac. No money. No sick wages.
Ms. Jones languished in Jamaica. July turned discounts for thrifty car rental into August. And then August turned into September. No Gleevac. No bone marrow discounts for thrifty car rental transplantation. No living expenses. Her calls and emails to Royal Caribbean begging for assistance were ignored.
Ms. Jones contacted us. We immediately notified Royal Caribbean and demanded that Ms. Jones receive her Gleevac, her living expenses, and wages. We insisted that she sent to Miami for evaluation. In response, discounts for thrifty car rental Royal Caribbean called our client directly, behind our back. We have seen Royal Caribbean do this before. They were caught, and they began scrambling.
Royal Caribbean then wrote to us, claiming that Ms. Jones had received her medicine. This was a big lie. We pressed the issue and Royal Caribbean instructed us not to contact its medical department. We were left to deal with a low level claims adjuster whose only job is to deny claims - like the insolent discounts for thrifty car rental claims representative for the Great Benefit insurance company in John Grisham's Rainmaker who writes discounts for thrifty car rental denial letter after denial letter to the mother of a child dying of leukemia.
We quickly by-passed the claims handler and wrote to and called the lawyers at the cruise line. They informed us that because a lawsuit had not been filed, they would not talk with us. So within one hour, I prepared a lawsuit and had a process server run over to the port to serve their General discounts for thrifty car rental Counsel. Still, they refused to discuss the situation. They continued to stall, lie and obfuscate.
Finally, the truth became evident - not only had they failed to provide Ms. Jones with the life saving Gleevac but there was no such medicine in the entire country of Jamaica. Finally, Royal Caribbean arranged for the medicine to be flown to Jamaica - over 5 months after Ms. Jones first went to the Royal Caribbean discounts for thrifty car rental ship doctor.
As of this late date, Ms. Jones remains discounts for thrifty car rental in Jamaica. She is still taking her Gleevac, as long as it lasts. She is receiving only $12 a day to live on, always paid late. On Friday evening, Royal Caribbean finally agreed to permit Ms. Jones to come to the U.S. but it took her hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit first. We are trying to obtain a visa for her from the U.S. Embassy so she can come to Miami to be properly evaluated and treated by board certified U.S. oncologists.
For anyone reading this article who like me has lost a loved one to cancer, you know that life is too precious to play games like this. Particularly by a $15 billion dollar corporation. Life is far too precious for such arrogance.
Meanwhile the hype and fanfare surrounding the arrival of Royal Caribbean's billion dollar cruise discounts for thrifty car rental ship Oasis of the Seas continue. You can read what I think of this boondoggle and environmental disaster in Royal Caribbean's discounts for thrifty car rental Monster of the Seas - a Cruise Ship Only Gordon Gekko Could Love . There are lots of empty cabins which Royal Caribbean needs to fill for the Oasis of the Seas to make money.
Titanic dreams occupy the minds of Royal Caribbean executives, CEO Richard Fain and President Adam Goldstein. Their egos and the fate of Royal Caribbean are hopelessly intertwined with these floating discounts for thrifty car rental monstrosities.
whatever you wrote about RCI is so true... I work on a ship as well as I can't find a better job for now, but I've seen so many crew members treated so poorly that it can't be described. If I get sick onboard, I never go to see the doctor. I had once very bad cramps and turned up to have cyst in my ovaries... what I got from them was ibuprofen.... I was lucky to come home a month later and was not too late to be seen by a specialist.
discounts for thrifty car rental I too could write a book about the atrocities of medical discounts for thrifty car rental care onboard during my 4 contracts. I suffered an injury and was sent to see a doctor in Curacao, and I'm an American citizen! When I said that I wanted to see a doctor on port day in Miami I was told that they could not arrange it (we were