Source: Forum
I worked as a bar waiter.
I worked every day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. They supposedly give two days off a month, but I didn’t wait for that because I left after 14 days when I saw what kind and how much work is expected.
You work over 300 hours a month and they pay 160 hours!
In the end, you sign some working hours that have nothing to do with the common sense.
The company claims in the working hours sheet that you work 40 hours per week, but in fact you work over 70 hours.
That way, overtime does not exist and is not paid.
This is exploitation in the middle of Europe. It’s like I went to work in Bangladesh.
The company provides free 4GB of internet for one month. That might have been good 10 years ago, but today it looks sad.
For a salary of €1,850, it’s really not worth it, so I’m not surprised that they started hiring more and more Asians who have been working there for years and never complained.
The company is all inclusive and the guests are Americans who are demanding and the service must be at the highest level.
But despite that, they employ some waiters who openly said that they have no or very little experience in this job.
So a couple of them got fired after 7 days.
While I was working on ocean cruise ships, I never worked more than 10 hours a day, and I was making more money than I was making on the river.
Well, in hotels in Croatia this year, salaries are around €1,200 + bonus + tip.
You work 8 hours a day, overtime is regularly paid, one day off a week, etc.
This was my first and probably the last time that I worked on a river cruise because, as I heard from some colleagues from other companies, the situation is not much better there either.
Other crew member writes:
I was f***ed the first season on that river boat.
My family didn’t believe me when I told them how much I worked there and they thought I was exaggerating. Thank God I gave up boats completely last year. I wouldn’t have gone last year either, but I endured three months on the viking to buy a car and went on for vacation and I never went back.
Exploitation is enormous, everything you described is true. Work of 80-90 hours, especially kitchen and restaurant!! During the first month at Viking, I didn’t even have time to go outside, and when I did, it was only to run for a maximum of an hour. What a disaster, a prison for Asians and unfortunately for us Slavs from the Balkans. However, lately, people from around here tend to go less and less there when they realize how much you have to work and how much you get paid.
In reality, they only pay us for those 40 hours of work per week, which is the minimum in Switzerland and Germany, and what about overtime hours? They don’t even count that at all. I don’t think that the governments of those countries and the inspections don’t even control them.
I heard that they only control the south of France and they are more rigorous there, they had some inspections and punished them, but the rest is tolerated and they exploit us and Asians.
God forbid if someone throws something into the river, they are allergic to the pollution of nature, the same ones from Western Europe, but interestingly they are not allergic to the people who are being overworked on those ships… , they don’t even mind if you work 20 hours a day.
When I put everything together, I did well and survived those few seasons, while many smarter people like you left after a few weeks or months when they saw the evil in their eyes. When you add it all up, I couldn’t save up even for a mediocre new car, and I worked hard like that, so I wonder why? When you see them there, they all drive in new cars on the mainland of Germany, Switzerland, and do physically much easier jobs. Where are the benefits for being separated from the mainland and not being at home for weeks or months?
It is interesting that on land they pay so much attention to the rights of workers on a land and have so much respect for law and the administration, but they don’t give a damn about what is happening on the ship. They only care that you have a work visa or a regular EU passport and their authorities are happy. And anyway, who cares, you are just a worker from third world countries. Unfortunately, the fact is that Asians do not protest or mentally understand where the problem is, so the working conditions and the salary are perfectly suitable for them there, at least as far as I can tell, most of them are complacent.
I had several injuries on the river boat, but I didn’t have a specific person to complain to.
The only thing left was to give them a bad review on some social networks, which I did on google reviews, specifically for that famous Viking.