The following article is a guest post from Mladen Jakovljevic - former crew member and author of the book "Modern Age Slavery"

Crew Center received the following letter from a Ukrainian crew member asking the community to spread the word an help Ukrainian seafarers.

Several crew members working aboard Costa Cruises ships voiced their disappointment about the promotion opportunities in the company and the lack of transparency about the policy of future advancement. A crew member said that after joining Costa Cruises, seven years ago, as a Snack Steward his ambition to become a waiter was partially realized despite all his efforts to achieve his goal.

As the health situation related to COVID-19 continues to improve across the world, most cruise lines have started to relax the mask policy for the crew. Crew Center has talked to crew members working on several major cruise lines to find out what are the latest crew mask policies. Surprisingly most of them said that masks are now optional and not a requirement in all crew and guest areas.

Silversea’s crew members have presented concerns to Crew Center related to the despair between pay for the same positions. Silversea is a company which operates under Royal Caribbean Group, as a company has a long-standing consideration and business model that incorporates its crew members as they do generally understand the great importance of well trained, consistent, loyal and hardworking crew. And while Silversea does operate under RCCL, their policies can differ.

By: Mathieu Burnel

The other day my niece lost her first tooth and as tradition follows, I told her that the tooth fairy will leave her a dollar. She looked at me puzzled and started laughing. I became more puzzled and asked what is so funny. My niece responded with “the tooth fairy better learn about inflation as what am I suppose to do with a dollar, the rate for a tooth is $10 nowadays.” Well, I realized how much in trouble we are with my niece being 6 years-old and already knowing and understanding inflation.

At the beginning of the COVID pandemic when cruise companies were sending the crew members back to their homelands as the industry was slowly shutting down with time related uncertainty of when it will be able to re-start its voyages, many crew members addressed the concern related to companies sending them home without compensation.

Russia's aggression against Ukraine has been going on for 55 days, sad and difficult situations has hit the country, and imagine how it is for the Ukrainian crew members who are on cruise ships and cannot fly home.

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