Has anyone heard when/if Pride of America will start opening up more restaurants/bars?

[dandelpino]

2 hours ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

I can't figure out where everyone is getting the money if we can't find workers. It's true that a great deal of the work force retired during Covid, but people have to be getting hungry. My DH always says that people will go back to work when they are hungry enough. 

 

Where are these hungry people going to come from? If you look at the the size of the labor force in the US it was 158 million in June 2022 and 157 million in June 2019.

 

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm

 

There's already more people in the labor force now than the summer before the pandemic when there was no labor shortage. So where are all these hungry people going to appear from to fill all the open jobs?? Sorry to say but these mythical hungry people your husband speaks of simply do not exist. At least not in large enough numbers to make a difference. 

[chengkp75]

8 hours ago, dandelpino said:

There are plenty of people who currently work on merchant ships in the US (with a TWIC and MMC in good standing) who would quit/nonrenew their contracts and go wash dishes on Pride for $100k/year. Plenty of port workers who already have a TWIC and would only need an MMC. It wouldn't happen in a day but you'd have Pride up to full capacity pretty fast if NCL were willing to pay. It is purely money issue. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, right.  Trade in a job for half the vacation days and sharing a cabin with 3 others.  And, all those merchant ships are having trouble getting crew.

[dexddd]

12 hours ago, phillygwm said:

I totally agree with the argument that this is a supply and demand issue.  But you're looking at it from the labor standpoint.  I'm looking it at from a cruiser's standpoint.

 

The POA cruises are already the most costly of any destination and the service levels, from what I've read here and elsewhere, tend to come up short versus other ships.  Without doing an exhaustive cost analysis, the cheapest inside cabin on POA (7 days) is $1449, so $207/day.  A 12 day on the Spirit, Tahiti/French Polynesia/Hawaii itinerary, is $2323, or $193/day.  Not a big difference, but what happens if POA labor costs (already high because of the required American staffing) increase by 30-50%?  It isn't inconceivable that the all-in cost of 7 days on POA becomes more than 12 days on Spirit.  What happens to POA demand then?

To be fair, I think they took liberty with unique routes on the Spirit to Jack up the rates.

[dexddd]

I'd argue POA has pretty much always had a staffing issue more times than not.

[MSUjohn]

13 hours ago, NayRN said:

We are seeing a whole bunch of prison nurses coming through our health system. Thanks for everything you do there…..I know it’s a tough job!  PS - should I say GO GREEN for the MSU part of your screen name? If so, consider it done!!

 

we are also short of nurses and have a TON of RNs Jumping ship too.

i am a guard, but i have mainly been working in inmate healthcare (basically floor security while the nurses, PA & physician do their thing)  for the last few years.

 

i am 95% sure that i am going to quit and start RN school myself this fall. i all ready have an unrelated degree (thus the MSUjohn) so my class load wont be as bad.

Edited August 2, 2022 by MSUjohn

[chengkp75]

13 hours ago, phillygwm said:

Without doing an exhaustive cost analysis, the cheapest inside cabin on POA (7 days) is $1449, so $207/day.  A 12 day on the Spirit, Tahiti/French Polynesia/Hawaii itinerary, is $2323, or $193/day.

POA steams for about 60 hours in the week, and much of that loafing along between the islands at slow speed.  The Spirit cruise is steaming for 180 hours, 122 of which are done at full speed, and you will see that the fuel consumption is about 4-5 times what POA would burn in the week (fuel consumption to speed is not a linear function, 11 knots burns about 1/3 of what 22 knots burns).  Fuel cost is the single largest line item in a cruise ship's operating budget.

[MSUjohn]

3 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Yeah, right.  Trade in a job for half the vacation days and sharing a cabin with 3 others.  And, all those merchant ships are having trouble getting crew.

i went to the great lake's maritime academy for most of their engineer program.

 

i flat out exhausted my financial aid 3 semesters (and two sea projects) before graduating.

no third engineer's license; but a house/ lifetime of student loan debt.

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, dexddd said:

I'd argue POA has pretty much always had a staffing issue more times than not.

This is true, even before the POA was commissioned, when there was just the Aloha.  It is one of the reasons that service has always been a problem on these ships, they are always sailing short handed.  To address the money issue, yes, these are the lowest paying deep sea jobs in the US, but also, there is no pool of credentialed mariners waiting to take the jobs, like there are on foreign ships (because the credentialing of foreign crew is much less, for hotel crew), so when NCL hires someone, it takes a couple of months, at the best, to get that person to the ship.

[phillygwm]

49 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Fuel cost is the single largest line item in a cruise ship's operating budget.

Again, I've learned something new.  I would have thought payroll was the biggest line item (as it is in most other businesses.)  But yeah, I guess a cruise ship burns a fair amount of fuel, especially at close to full speed!

[chengkp75]

12 minutes ago, phillygwm said:

Again, I've learned something new.  I would have thought payroll was the biggest line item (as it is in most other businesses.)  But yeah, I guess a cruise ship burns a fair amount of fuel, especially at close to full speed!

Except for POA, where even at the low rates they pay, crew costs are above fuel costs.  POA, at today's bunker prices (she uses scrubbers, so can continue to use older, higher sulfur fuel, IFO380, and I'm extrapolating fuel costs from the mainland, as all of her fuel is transported from the mainland, and she is one of a very few users of bunker oil), burns about $500k of fuel a week.

[NayRN]

7 hours ago, MSUjohn said:

 

we are also short of nurses and have a TON of RNs Jumping ship too.

i am a guard, but i have mainly been working in inmate healthcare (basically floor security while the nurses, PA & physician do their thing)  for the last few years.

 

i am 95% sure that i am going to quit and start RN school myself this fall. i all ready have an unrelated degree (thus the MSUjohn) so my class load wont be as bad.

DO IT! If have a BS, you’d be a second-degree student in nursing, classes are super fast and only about a year long! MSU has the second degree option - you can do this!

[MSUjohn]

On 8/2/2022 at 4:41 PM, NayRN said:

DO IT! If have a BS, you’d be a second-degree student in nursing, classes are super fast and only about a year long! MSU has the second degree option - you can do this!

i am very interested in travel nursing.

[98420934]

On 8/2/2022 at 4:03 AM, chengkp75 said:

POA, at today's bunker prices (she uses scrubbers, so can continue to use older, higher sulfur fuel, IFO380, and I'm extrapolating fuel costs from the mainland, as all of her fuel is transported from the mainland, and she is one of a very few users of bunker oil), burns about $500k of fuel a week.

Some updates since the shipyard periods last year. PoA burns only MGO/ISO 8217:2010 at the moment, though HFO capability and scrubbers are still in place. Fuel is received by truck weekly at Honolulu as the bunker barge operating company ceased operations during Covid.

[chengkp75]

22 minutes ago, 98420934 said:

Some updates since the shipyard periods last year. PoA burns only MGO/ISO 8217:2010 at the moment, though HFO capability and scrubbers are still in place. Fuel is received by truck weekly at Honolulu as the bunker barge operating company ceased operations during Covid.

Then they are burning through over $900k a week in fuel.

[NayRN]

On 8/3/2022 at 7:32 PM, MSUjohn said:

i am very interested in travel nursing.

Once you get a year of bedside nursing under your belt - the world is yours! If you can specialize - like ICU, ED, OB - you will make some major money! The only downside to that is you have to pay your own health insurance…..but it’ll be affordable! DO IT! I wish I would have gotten into travel nursing when I was younger…I’m too close to retirement now to leave my health system. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by NayRN
Fat fingers

[MSUjohn]

2 hours ago, NayRN said:

Once you get a year of bedside nursing under your belt - the world is yours! If you can specialize - like ICU, ED, OB - you will make some major money! The only downside to that is you have to pay your own health insurance…..but it’ll be affordable! DO IT! I wish I would have gotten into travel nursing when I was younger…I’m too close to retirement now to leave my health system. 

monkey pox has arrived.

Edited August 5, 2022 by MSUjohn

[NayRN]

12 hours ago, MSUjohn said:

monkey pox has arrived.

I haven’t seen any patients with it yet - but I remember saying the exact same thing about Covid!

[steamboats]

Getting back to the topic of this thread... I saw an IG post by NCLjobs offering a 1,000 Dollar sign-on bonus for people from Guam plus two dates for virtual info sessions. So they are really trying to get more staff for the Pride of America.

 

steamboats

[chengkp75]

20 minutes ago, steamboats said:

Getting back to the topic of this thread... I saw an IG post by NCLjobs offering a 1,000 Dollar sign-on bonus for people from Guam plus two dates for virtual info sessions. So they are really trying to get more staff for the Pride of America.

 

steamboats

Chamorro's have always been a lucrative market for POA hiring.  A lot of my long term engineering staff were from Guam.

[98420934]

On 6/30/2022 at 11:56 PM, chengkp75 said:

Deck and engine officers must be 100% US citizens.  Deck and engine crew must be 100% either US citizens or Green Card holders.  The total crew can be no more than 25% non-citizens.  NCL did get a waiver in 2006 to allow NRAC (non-Resident Alien Crew) to work on POA.  So, if there are Green Card holders in the deck/engine departments, this limits the number of Green Card or NRAC crew in the hotel department (when I say "hotel" department, this is all departments other than deck and engine), and the US officers limit this as well, since it is the total crew that must not exceed 25% non-citizens.

Potential for some movement in this space, but I don't know if any details are publicly available at the moment.

Edited August 20, 2022 by 98420934

[98420934]

On 8/20/2022 at 8:33 AM, 98420934 said:

Potential for some movement in this space, but I don't know if any details are publicly available at the moment.

 

Some of the details referenced above are now public. Quoting a different poster in another thread:

 

"Just back from B2B PoA cruises. The American crew was very friendly and tried very hard to please. We heard that dispensation had been obtained, for a limited time, to reduce the ratio of American to International crew to 50%… In any case, the cruises were very enjoyable."

 

On a similar note, the CEO has publicly confirmed that staffing levels should approach normal next month:

 

…[H]e addressed the Hawaii staffing: “So, for Hawaii, the magic [crew] number is 900,” Sommer noted. “We’re now sitting at just under 800 [crew members on Pride of America], so we’ve made significant progress,” he explained. "We think we’ll be at the full 900 by early January,” adding that the ship is fully sold out through June.