Aloha,
It has been 6 weeks since I was last on the POA. I was working as a server in the bar department. I trained for 2 months on the Star, and worked the reposition of the Sky from Puerto Rico to San Francisco. I have worked in food and beverage for over 15 years, including 4-Star resort hotels in Carmel, CA.
The $10 / day / person ($5 for kids) non-refundable service charge, which some guests have at least got 50% refunded, has been described by NCL(a) to the crew as defraying the high cost of US labor or as going toward the paid vacations. No portion of it goes to any employee as tip or gratuity. All non-management hotel employees that I know of are hourly, not salary, and most were told in hiring that they would also recieve part of the gratuity pool and possible additional tips, as happens on all NCL ships. Only after the re-flagging was the crew informed that there would be no gratuity pool and only after guests recieved explanation letters did the crew understand that NCL(a) recomended no tipping, due to the supposed adequate salaries.
I can send the final e-mail of my cyber journal, origionally sent to family and friends. Please note that the prior 4 e-mails dealt mostly with the adventure of international cruise work and shore exploration, in short they were mostly fun and entertaining. For the last one I warn everyone that it is not fun and probably not entertaining. I would only send the e-mail if they just had to see the dreadful details.
The USA has many 5-Star resorts, hotels, restaurants and spas, with thousands of exceptional service professionals. Here in the Hawaiian Islands we do not have Mobil gas stations (?), so no 5-Star establishments, but it you follow travel magazines like Conde Nast, our resorts, and therefore our servers, are very highly rated. True professionals do not come cheap; an on-call banquet bartender can make $50 thousand / year in Carmel, Tom Cruise bartenders over $100 thousand in Vegas, probably somewhere in between at Hula Grill on Kaanapali Beach.
The job fairs may have been populated by contract headhunters who embellished what the pay might be, but there were also many NCL exaggerations as to how much we would make and how much time off we would have. The problems with Project America is that NCL will not pay wages comparable to shore wages and they believe they can treat the US crew as badly as they treat the international crew, so the people working for them will be young, inexperienced and/or desperate.
Nearly all hotel workers originally hired for this project ended up making considerably less under the US Flag than they were led to believe during hiring and training. There were many exceptional workers when the training started, many saw the writing on the wall leaving soon, a few stuck it out this far. Here is how you get a few cruisers who had a decent cruise; most are new to cruising so do not know what to expect, and there are still a few professionals in every department.
I believe the American Project will fail, because it is run by NCL, not because it is staffed by Americans. If you have the option to cancel, I recommend it. I have stayed in touch with my co-workers and thing have only got worse. Please make your e-mail requests known in the subject line, I deleat all unknown e-mail.
