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Cruise ship lawyers Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman, P.A. weighed-on this week on concerns raised by Senator John Rockefeller IV in his letter to Carnival Corporation CEO Mickey Arison. Last month, Rockefeller wrote a really publicised letter to Arison, following an engine room fire aboard the Carnival Triumph. That incident ended in a whole lack of power aboard the ship, subjecting Triumph’s passengers to 5 days of reportedly horrid conditions while the ship was towed from Mexican waters back to port in Alabama. Rockefeller notes a disturbing trend of great events on Carnival ships in the past five years.

“This recent marked deterioration in crew conditions due to the cruise lines not threatened with having to directly answer for his or her actions in U.S. courts, we believe, directly coincides with a rise in incidents that have risked the security of the U.S. cruising consumer.”
The maritime law firm offers up a probable explanation: Crew members face longer working hours and declining working conditions because they now not have the safety of the U.S. court system.

“Sadly, we’ve connected the dots between an obscure legal maneuver made by the cruise lines and the rise in shipboard accidents,” said Jason Margulies, shareholder with the firm. “A few years ago, the cruise industry started placing foreign arbitration clauses in its crew contracts. While it will seem insignificant where disputes are resolved, we now have drawn the belief that because worker’s rights are not any longer protected by U.S. courts, dangerous conditions aren’t being properly defended and ultimately the cruise passenger suffers.”

The cruise industry now forces its crew into foreign arbitrations after they have a topic with their employer. In its letter, the maritime law firm explains that: “Requiring crew to submit exclusively to foreign arbitration to handle wrongdoing which brought about their injuries signifies that cruise lines escape responsibility for decisions which result in dangerous conditions for crew.”

Ultimately, the crewmembers who run and maintain the cruise ships are deprived of the historic protections of U.S. law. The implications could be significant. The letter to Rockefeller references an arbitration inside the Philippines where a crewmember who was burned over 35% of his body was awarded below $2,000 against his employer. The outcome, the firm explains, is that the cruise lines removed any deterrent to cutting operating costs by subjecting crew to harsh conditions – creating an overworked crew that’s jeopardizing the security of passengers.

“United States citizens fill the ships and the coffers of the most important cruise lines, but their very own employees don’t have the safety of the U.S. court system,” said Margulies. “As we saw with the Carnival Triumph, the results are dire.”

The maritime firm’s letter to Rockefeller, also copied to Manhattan Senator Charles Shumer, concludes that, “This recent marked deterioration in crew conditions end result of the cruise lines now not threatened with having to directly answer for his or her actions in U.S. courts, we believe, directly coincides with a rise in incidents that have risked the security of the U.S. cruising consumer.”