Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

Carnival CEO Micky Arison joined Twitter in 2010. I was curious to see how such a big shot cruise executive would interact with the common man on such a popular social media platform like Twitter.

After the Costa Concordia disaster killed 32 of his cruise guests and crew members, cruise CEO Arison made no public appearances. When he was first seen in public it was at the Miami basketball arena here in Miami to watch his Miami Heat play. His first tweet after Concordia sank was "Let's Go Heat." Even when the world press focused on his insensitive and selfish antics, Arison could have cared less it seems. He tweeted away about his celebrity friends and his star studded basketball team as if Concordia never sank.     

Yesterday Forbes published an article how Arison's cruise empire avoids U.S. income tax - "Ship Isn't The Only Thing That Stinks At Carnival: Low Tax Rate Stirs Ire".  

Forbes explains that Carnival collects billions of dollars every year, but pays about a 1% tax rate because the Arison family incorporated the cruise line in Panama. Even though the cruise line benefits from being located here in Miami and uses the services of the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and many other agencies, it essentially gets a free ride. 

As Forbes states: "While the U.S. Coast Guard patrols the seas for Carnival’s ships – and, in the case of the Triumph, towed them back to safety – Carnival ducks out on most U.S. taxes."

Carnival's CEO Arison is a shrewd businessman. He know how to work the system.  His cruise ships use the ports in the U.S. and foreign countries for free.  Local citizens like you or me pay for the port terminals. If there is a port fee or head tax, the passengers pay it. When it comes to his basketball team, the local citizens pay for that too.

The Arison family have been gaming the system for 45 years. They will say that they are taking advantage of legitimate tax loopholes in the I.R.S. Code.  But that begs the question of why the federal tax code is drafted as if it were written by Carnival's tax lawyers and why it has not been amended to result in Carnival paying a reasonable and fair shore of its share.  The truth is that Carnival and other cruise lines spend many millions of dollars lobbying Congress while hiring high ranking federal directors of federal agencies to keep the cozy status quo exactly like it is.

But how much is enough for Arison? Fifteen years ago a local journalist asked "Is Micky Arison a Greedy Pig?"  I repeated the question here a few years ago.

Arison is the richest person in Florida, worth over $5,000,000,000. Two months ago, he paid himself a end-of-the-year bonus of $90,000,000 - in the same year where his Concordia killed 32 people. The stricken cruise ship still lies on its side in the waters of Giglio, and the victims of that terrible ordeal were offered only $15,000 by Carnival, but Arison pays himself a $90,000,000 year end bonus.

After the Carnival Triumph ignited off the coast of Mexico last weekend, Arison made no public statements.  Later that Sunday afternoon, there Micky sat at half-court at the Miami Arena watching his Heat beat the Lakers. His last tweet today was an instagram photo of him and Beyonce'.

Just how out-of-touch is this cruise CEO with the reality of the world around him?  Over 4,000 of his guests and ship employees endured a week-long-cruise-from-hell aboard the urine and fecal stained Carnival Triumph but Arison tweets a photo of him hanging with Beyonce'.

The question arises again. Is Micky Arison a greedy pig? In answering the question, consider Arison's bio on his twitter page:

"CEO of Carnival. Owner of your @MiamiHEAT I do not respond to requests for free cruises or tix. Unfortunately we have to pay for fuel, food & players."  

"Unfortunately we have to pay for fuel, food and players?" What a cynical mantra for his luxurious life.

How much greed does it take to turn Arison's enormous prosperity into petty bitterness over having to pay for food for his cruise guests and pay for the salaries of basketball players who bring him so much wealth, power and prestige?

So if you are just arriving home today from Arison's disgusting & disabled cruise ship after another cruise-from-hell, whatever you do, don't ask Micky for a free Heat ticket or a free cruise. He's too busy hanging with Beyonce' to even consider such a request.        

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A dozen newspapers in the U.K. have reported on P&O Cruises' decision to pay its crewmembers a basic salary of 75 pence an hour (around $1.20 an hour) which turns out to be approximately $400 a month. Cash tips are being phased out with automatic gratuities being added to the passengers' bills. But rather than forwarding the passengers tips to the crew, the cruise line has threatened to withhold tips if the crewmember's rating falls below 92 percent.

In grade school, a 92 is an "A-."  So if a waiter who works a minimum of 11-12 hours a day (330-360 hours a month) receives a 91 (a "B+"?), management will pocket the tips?  

The Guardian newspaper reports that P&O Cruises justifies the move claiming that it is actually "good" for the crewmembers because many tourists don't tip.  It quotes David Dingle, CEO of Carnival UK, in charge of P&O cruise lines, saying that the crew were allegedly "much happier" and P&O's pay scale is "standard for the industry."

Some passengers reported that many of the crewmembers on a P&O cruise ship, mostly Indians, were at the point of tears upon hearing the news.

Carnival U.K. CEO Dingle tells the Guardian that "we have a manning office in Mumbai. There are queues out on to the street."  Ah, the desperate lining up, praying that Mr. Dingle will bestow them with the opportunity to work 350 hours a month for $400.

This no reason to exploit people.  But it is a revealing insight into why Carnival and P&O exploit their employees. They can and therefore they will. 

The U.N. reports that over 410,000,000 people from India are living below the poverty level.

Dingle is also right about low pay being what he calls "standard for the industry."

Carnival and Royal Caribbean in the U.S. pay cleaners from Jamaica as little as $545 a month. They expect them to grind out 12 hours days for 6 to 8 months straight.  For a 31-day-month, that's 372 hours for $545, less than $1.50 an hour.  And when the crewmembers' bodies break, the cruise lines dump them back home without medical care and treatment. 

Corporate Watch has an interesting article which characterizes the low P&O pay as shameful.  Fares for the Carnival Legend range between $2,798 and $6,458 per passenger for a 12 day cruise around northern Europe. Yet, P&O workers would need to work for 500 days straight to pay for a cruise themselves, assuming that they did not spend a single penny of their wages.

Carnival Corporation has annual revenues of $15.8 billion in 2011 and profits of $2.2 billion.  Micky Arison is Florida's richest person with a net worth of many billions.  But Arison is no Gandhi.  You will find him counting his billions on his 200' super-yacht or on the front row of the AA arena in Miami watching his hundred million dollar super-star basketball players.  Trust me, he's not worried about Indian waiters getting their tips.   

I can't imagine working 350 hours a month for $400, hoping that the guests I slaved away for would reward me a score higher than a 92.  An "A" or no tip?  You would think that a company earning billions a year (tax free to boot) wouldn't jack up a crew member for $150 in tips. But there is no satisfying this type of corporate greed.   

But who cares?  There are many young Indian men in line at the hiring agency in Mumbai hoping to be the next one to be hired to work aboard a P&O cruise ship.  

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The San Francisco Chronicle is a great newspaper.  Like the L.A. Times, it has an endless staff of intellectually curious, bright journalists instilled with an ethic of investigative journalism of the likes of super-journalist Douglas Franz.  All qualities which our newspapers here in South Florida are  sorely missing.

Miami Herald - An Enabler of the "Greed of the Seas" 

I have commented before on how the Miami Herald is basically the cruise line's bitch, if you excuse my French.  

Which brings me to today's blog.  The Miami Herald is attending a press frenzy today in Port Everglades on Royal Caribbean's mega-monster Oasis of the Seas. Tomorrow, the increasingly few Miami residents who subscribe to the Miami Herald can expect the usual puff piece with its usual "wow! look-at-how-big-it-is" stories. 

Where are the free thinkers questioning the madness of this monster?  The "journalists" surrounding this beast of a ship more resemble groupies thronging for attention around a 1980's metal band.  

So I felt redeemed today when I read a column from talented journalist Mark Moford of the San Francisco Chronicle about Royal Caribbean's monster of the seas.  I have attempted a couple of similar insights such as Royal Caribbean's "Monster of the Seas" - a Cruise Ship Only Gordon Gekko Could Love but my article falls well short of Mr. Moford's straight-to-the-jugular writing. 

His feelings today about monster cruise ships are so spot on that I will just repeat them verbatim:

Mark Moford and Dante's Inferno

"If you're anything like me, you can't help but be completely overwhelmed by one devastating, all-encompassing thought whenever you see any of those insane floating nightmares known as monster cruise ships.

You think of sewage. 

Right? Don't you? It's all I can do not to imagine the mountains of waste these ungodly leviathans produce on your average oceanic journey: The heaps of garbage, sewage, toilet paper, plastic, chemicals and leftover food from the gluttonous buffets, all that clammy shrimp, rotting lettuce and industrial prime rib uneaten by 6,000 largely unhealthy people agreeing to be trapped aboard a floating ring of Dante's inferno for two solid weeks.

A Terrifically Ugly Floating Vomitorium

I fully believe cruise ships are one of man's most nefarious inventions, an extremely sad, low-vibrating form of evil, cleverly disguised as desirable luxury but which, if you spend more than a few hours wandering the decks by yourself, will subtly and calmly urge you to jump overboard and end it all. Which is exactly why they're all based in Florida.

Hence, it was utterly impossible for me to stifle a bone-deep shudder when fresh images of the world's largest cruise ship, the Oasis of the Seas, upwards of 225,000 gross tons and several times larger than the Titanic, recently lumbered across my jaded retina. This nefarious colossus is not merely terrifically ugly, not merely a bizarre testament to man's voracious desire to build the absolutely silliest, most ginormous things he can possibly imagine, not merely greed and PR and unchecked capitalism run amok. Oh wait, that's exactly what it is. And I'm not afraid to admit: It frightens me deeply.

I suppose the good news is, whenever tacky cruise ships make the news - usually because of a nasty flu outbreak on board that turns the entire vessel into a floating vomitorium - I'm wont to recall the late David Foster Wallace's pitch-perfect, all-time classic piece from Harper's (PDF here) years back that set the standard for brilliant literary takedowns. Far as I'm concerned, anything that re-ignites an appreciation for DFW can't be all bad."

Credits:

Miami Herald's Business Monday   Miami Herald

Oasis of the Seas    Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., a Liberian Corporation

Mark Moford   SFGate / San Francisco Chronicle 

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