Carnival settles overtime lawsuit for millions

Jason · May 5, 2006

MIAMI -- Carnival Cruise Lines will pay $6.25 million to thousands of current and former crew members who alleged in federal lawsuits they were not paid proper amounts of overtime, the workers' attorney said.

If approved by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, the settlement would mean payouts of between $100 and $150 for nine named lawsuit plaintiffs and other amounts for as many as 39,500 people who worked on Carnival ships beginning in November 2001.

"They're very hardworking people who come from all over the world," said Tucker Ronzetti, the attorney representing the crew members. "From their perspective, it's a significant amount of money."

The Miami-based cruise line will not admit wrongdoing under the settlement but will establish a grievance and arbitration process for pay disputes, Ronzetti said.

Officials at Carnival, the world's largest cruise line and a subsidiary of Carnival Corp., declined comment Wednesday because the case is still pending.

The lawsuits were filed in March and October by Carnival workers who said the cruise line failed to pay them for work in excess of their regular schedules, which are often 70-hour work weeks. Carnival and other cruise lines typically don't follow U.S. wage and labor laws because their ships carry foreign flags.

One of the lawsuits was initially dismissed but the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was considering whether it could continue when the settlement was reached. The second lawsuit was on hold pending the outcome of that appeal.

A similar lawsuit is pending in Miami federal court against Princess Cruises, a California-based subsidiary of Carnival. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. settled an overtime pay dispute in 2002 in New York.

Source: The Associated Press

Mebert · May 6, 2006

The crew has worked very hard on every single cruise I've taken. I don't know how they do it. I've often seen my dining room waiters serving breakfast in the morning or working on the Lido deck at night. They never missed a day or evening. They deserve the compensation.