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Crewmen Work in Fear of Being Fired, Deported | Sun-Sentinel |
By Buddy Nevins
In March 1987, Yildirim Aksoy was a waiter aboard the Discovery I, earning up to $1,400.00 a month. But when the Turkish-born seamen hurt his eye, a private security guard armed with an electronic taser gun forced him to leave the Untied States.
The guard was hired by Aksoy's employer, Apollo Ship Chandlers, according to court records. Apollo is a west Dade County ship company that has the restaurant and bar concessions on up to a dozen ships.
In court depositions, Aksoy said he worked from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. six days a week. On days off, he worked in fire and lifeboat drills.
In March 1987, Aksoy was serving dinner when he had to go to the bathroom. The nearest toilet for the crew was three decks down.
"If you have to earn money, you have to do it real fast, so I have to go real fast to go back to serve dinner." Aksoy recalled.
He testified he ran down three flights of stairs because the elevator was not working. When he reached the crew's bathroom, he banged his head on a piece of the ship's superstructure sticking out from a wall.
Aksoy immediately began seeing flashes of light in his right eye, but he did not report the injury because "one of the guys in the ship had a surgery and they send his back to his country before he got healed. I was scared that I was going to be fired."
After a month, Aksoy reported the injury. He testified that his boss, an Apollo food manager, accused him of lying and threatened to send him back to Turkey.
Aksoy, 27 at the time and a two year veteran of cruise, eventually ended up in a Miami hospital for an operation after complaining to a US immigration agent aboard the ship. The Physician wanted him to sty in the hospital for five days, but Apollo agents picked him up after one day, according to court documents.
Two security guards told Aksoy to leave the country. He said on e guard showed him his taser gun and wanted it would be used if he resisted.
Aksoy was taken to the airport and got on a plane to Nassau, where his bandaged eye started bleeding and the company had no comment.
For the last 10 years on Fridays, the Rev. Jose Az has heard firsthand about the hard life of cruise crews.
He is the port Chaplain at the Stella Maris Center, run by the Catholic Church. The center is a house trailer pulled beside the Miami dock of the Norway. A thousand crewmen annually come to the center to pray and receive counseling.
"These people have hard lives." Paz said. "They don't get the minimum wages we are used to. Most don't have more than four or five hours a day rest. Mostly they are lonely."
"I do what I can to help. I do what I can to offer them dignity for doing these jobs American won't do." Paz said.
The 60 year old Spanish priest often mixes stories about the tough world of the seamen in his sermons. "He knows us," said Troy Williams, a Jamaican crewman.
"He is our friend, somebody we can trust." Williams said. "We can't trust the company, but we can trust Father Paz."
News about the hard life foe crew members aboard the cruises ships brings back memories for John Galdstone, 73.
Gladstone, the former chief dispatcher of the National Maritime Union now living in Miami, remembers the bad food, poor pay, crowded quarters, long hours and despotic captains of former days.
After the NMU was organized in 1937, conditions and salaries on US Ships dramatically improved.
"Before the union, we worked for hours on and had four hours off, continuously," said Gladstone, who worked on small ships sailing the Pacific Coast during the Depression. "After the NMU, we worked four hours on and eight hours off. We could get rest."
Even union man Gladstone admits the NMU won the battle but not the war.
"As soon as we started exercising our rights, the ship owners fled," Gladstone said. "They started flying foreign flags to avoid us and earn more. It was no different than factory owners fleeing overseas to avoid paying decent wages."
Arthur Kane, of the Florida Caribbean Cruise association, agreed with Gladstone. It was unions that drove American passenger ships to register overseas, so the ships can avoid paying American wages.
"It wouldn't make economic sense otherwise," he said.
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