Dining staff not paid?

[KashasMom]

I just read this and am curious if this is true. This is the first time I've heard this and well...actually I don't believe it.

"Did you know that the dinning staff’s salary is the tips. They don’t earn any other salary. I didn’t know that until recently."

 

[DisneyPiPhi]

I'm fairly certain that would not be legal, but I'm not super familiar with maritime employment law.

 

[Marc D]

It is true in the sense that their base salary is far from a living wage. They earn a few dollars an hour at the most. Gratuities were created to disguise part of the cruise cost and lower the advertised prices, on the back of the employees dedicated to specific guests, knowing that some guests will not follow the guidelines.

Since they have no bargaining power, the employees have never been able to do anything about it and make the best of the system, knowing full well they can easily be replaced. All major cruise lines operate that way. Some smaller all-inclusive lines do not bother managing gratuities and simply charge guests enough to pay their employees.

Therefore, anyone that chooses to remove or lower gratuities, sometimes justified by the fact they decide not to use the dining room, is in fact cutting the salary of their dedicated team. Those employees can’t make up the lost by other means since they are assigned to that table.

 

[KashasMom]

It is true in the sense that their base salary is far from a living wage. They earn a few dollars an hour at the most. Gratuities were created to disguise part of the cruise cost and lower the advertised prices, on the back of the employees dedicated to specific guests, knowing that some guests will not follow the guidelines.

Since they have no bargaining power, the employees have never been able to do anything about it and make the best of the system, knowing full well they can easily be replaced. All major cruise lines operate that way. Some smaller all-inclusive lines do not bother managing gratuities and simply charge guests enough to pay their employees.

Therefore, anyone that chooses to remove or lower gratuities, sometimes justified by the fact they decide not to use the dining room, is in fact cutting the salary of their dedicated team. Those employees can’t make up the lost by other means since they are assigned to that table.

Right, I understand that but that is quite different from saying they don't earn ANY salary! (It's similar to servers in the U.S.) And the women heard that from a server. SMH.

 

[Marc D]

Right, I understand that but that is quite different from saying they don't earn ANY salary! (It's similar to servers in the U.S.) And the women heard that from a server. SMH.

The minimum Bahamian salary is 42$ a day or 210$ a week. I don’t know if there is an exception for tipped positions similar to what’s included in U.S. law, but since they work 16 hours a day on average, that comes to 1.80$ - 2.63$/hour at the most. That’s actually close to the U.S. minimum wage for those that make more than 30$/month in tips.

But all tipped positions have a minimum wage based on Bahamian law.

 

[tinkerone]

I have a friend who worked DCL but its going back ten or twelve years. They were at that point paid a monthly rate from DCL of $50 plus they received their room and board. All other compensation came from tipping. I don't think that has changed. Most did very well and would renew their contracts when they came due. Most of the wait staff you see are from countries where the salary received onboard would allow them to purchase homes for their families that they could not other wise possibly afford. One waiter I spoke with told me that his plan was to work out a five year period (he was half done) and then go home to the business he and his wife had set up using the funds earned on DCL.
While it's very hard work and DCL does not pay them well, they can do amazingly well with tips. Some people tip regular, some don't tip, some tip extra. It still works to their advantage or I doubt they would bother doing it.

 

[dclpluto]

The minimum Bahamian salary is 42$ a day or 210$ a week. I don’t know if there is an exception for tipped positions similar to what’s included in U.S. law, but since they work 16 hours a day on average, that comes to 1.80$ - 2.63$/hour at the most. That’s actually close to the U.S. minimum wage for those that make more than 30$/month in tips.

But all tipped positions have a minimum wage based on Bahamian law.

They do not work 16 hours a day on average. There is a law that they can’t work more than 91 hours a week a believe it is. That comes out to a average of 13 hours a day if they work the maximum that week.

 

[cruisehopeful]

I remember reading what @tinkerone shared above. Someone who knew a server said that they made $50./month in addition to room and board, with the rest coming from tips. To those of us who can afford a Disney Cruise, it sounds like an impossible amount of money to work so hard for, but after I asked some servers and bar tenders about that, they said that they were earning more on the ship than they would have if they stayed in their own countries because jobs are so few and far between. It was a painful realization the first time I cruised and I really felt out of balance and part of a caste system.

 

[Mainsail Minnie]

This is why I always tip at least the minimum required, regardless of where I eat dinner or what I thought of the service. I mean, if a service person were to straight up insult me or do something similarly outrageous I wouldn't tip, but naturally that never happens. They do their job & treat people decently and therefore deserve to get paid, just like the rest of us. I tip more to servers who do a great job, but I always provide the basic tip to servers who are there to do the work, even if I wasn't fond of them.

Don't get me started on people who don't tip on cruises because they feel like they "already spent enough money"...Those people shouldn't cruise. The basic tip is part of the cruise cost imo.

 

[Adventurelawyer]

Boy there sure have been a number of these ”tipping” posts lately.

 

[KashasMom]

Boy there sure have been a number of these ”tipping” posts lately.

Well...actually this is not about tipping. My question was about salary. I'm not interested in a tipping debate.

 

[Adventurelawyer]

It actually is a tipping debate. Salary and tipping are inextricably linked with the service industry in American culture. See myriad of past posts on same subject.

 

[KashasMom]

It actually is a tipping debate. Salary and tipping are inextricably linked with the service industry in American culture. See myriad of past posts on same subject.

I don't care whether people tip or not, whether they tip more, tip in cash, blah, blah, blah. Just wanted to know if the dining team was paid a salary...as in hourly, weekly pay.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Because cruise lines are providing room and board, Bahamian minimum wage law doesn't apply.

Cruise lines choose to fly the Bahamian flag in order to avoid the more stringent labor regulations that would apply if they were registered in the United States or other countries where the cruise industry is owned and based.

Found some stuff from a PBS report on flags of convenience:

• According to the International Transport Workers' Federation, more than a third of the workers on board cruise ships work 10- to 12-hour days, seven days a week. And on board Disney and Carnival cruise ships, for example, where there are no union agreements, employees receive no compensation for the large amount of overtime labor.
• The registry does not require ships flying the Bahamian flag to employ Bahamians and admits that this enables ship owners to hire less expensive labor, from countries such as the Philippines, India and Indonesia. (This suggests that Bahamian labor law doesn't apply to non-Bahamian labor despite the ship being registered in the Bahamas.)
• Work authorization requirements are based on where a worker boards the ship, not the country in which the vessel is registered.
• Staff do have to pay for their own booze in the crew bar.

 

[Adventurelawyer]

I don't care whether people tip or not, whether they tip more, tip in cash, blah, blah, blah. Just wanted to know if the dining team was paid a salary...as in hourly, weekly pay.

Yes. They are paid wages and room and board, but rely (as many in the land based service industry do) on tips. Which was of course covered in the last thread about this subject.

maybe it wasn’t your intent, but it sure seems like an attempt at another equity thread. “Disney bad, Disney baaaaaad.”

 

[tvguy]

It is true in the sense that their base salary is far from a living wage.

By our standards, no not a living wage. By the standards of their home countries, it may be a very good wage, BEFORE tips. Our waiter on HAL said the base wage he was paid was more than he could earn at home in Indonesia. The tips, that was the real pot of gold he said. He had worked on ships for 8 years, starting at age 21. He was planning to retire in 2 more years at age 31. Saving his tips meant he could save enough money to live in Indonesia without ever having to work again.

 

[KashasMom]

Yes. They are paid wages and room and board, but rely (as many in the land based service industry do) on tips. Which was of course covered in the last thread about this subject.

maybe it wasn’t your intent, but it sure seems like an attempt at another equity thread. “Disney bad, Disney baaaaaad.”

Sorry, I've been much too busy with the holidays to spend any time here lately. I haven't even read the other recent thread(s) but hey, thanks for your judgement/assumption. What does this have to do with Disney bad?? All cruise lines do the same. Saw my original quote on another Disney forum and was curious because I thought it was B.S. Simple as that. No ulterior motive.

 

[cvjw]

Our head server on the fantasy in October had used all his earnings to pay off the entire amount of his student loan debt from his undergraduate degree. He was in the process of getting his online masters degree - debt free from all his earnings as a server. He raved about how much his life had changed since starting to work for Disney cruise lines.

We ran into our first assistant server on the same cruise. He was about to get married and they were paying cash for a house overlooking the water in South Africa. He went on and on about how generous the people on the fantasy are and how his life is so much better.

Their wages may not be the same as people earn in the US, but it is way better than their earning potential in their home countries.

 

[Adventurelawyer]

Sorry, I've been much too busy with the holidays to spend any time here lately. I haven't even read the other recent thread(s) but hey, thanks for your judgement/assumption. What does this have to do with Disney bad?? All cruise lines do the same. Saw my original quote on another Disney forum and was curious because I thought it was B.S. Simple as that. No ulterior motive.

Because every single one of these threads decays into an SJW Equity Woke change the corporation,because corporations are evil and destroy the universe and people’s lives post. “Gotta start somewhere right?” Its on the level that I am starting to suspect these boards have once again been infiltrated by manipulators, who seek to alter the course of our behavior with regard to Disney.
Sorry you’ve been so busy you couldn’t check the number 3 post on this board when you made your initial post, or run a search to see if there was an active discussion thread prior to posting. Must be tough tobe so busy at the holidays that you have time for a woke discussion, but not time to do any searching onDis, but seem to know all about how every line does this. The fact that you are aware of every line paying low wages, makes me think this yet another, woke post virtue signal.

These boards have become more akin to Facebook lately than a discussion board with Q&A and cruise related tips and “tricks.” I wonder what Pete Werner and the mods think about all of these posts dancing around the edges of being straight up anti Disney, when their bread and butter comes from Disney. Seems like shooting yourself in the foot but hey, let this place become just another woke social media site.

 

[JPTexan82]

Well if they were not getting paid a decent wage, 1) quality of service would suffer 2) there would be a large staffing issue.