The Brazilian Sivlana Costa is raising her voice on behalf of the crew members rights in a form of petition. She along with other Brazilian cruise ship employees has expressed dissatisfaction with the changes that have taken place in the agreement signed by the Cruise Lines and MPT companies in November 2016. According to her, the law needs to be more flexible, giving the crew power of choice and not just obey by something that was imposed. 

Currently, this petition was signed by 399 people and it needs a total of 500 signatures. To support crew members rights and sign the petition please visit the following link: CHANGE.ORG

In her petition, Silvana listed the terms in the agreement that should change:

We do not agree:

With the contract period reduced to 7 months without the possibility of extension, we want to have the power to choose whether we want the contract to be reduced or not, even if for this it is necessary to be signed by the same following the procedure of each maritime company.

Holidays of at least 2 months should have stipulated that holidays cannot exceed the maximum period of 4 months, so we do not have to wait for 5, 6, 7 and even 11 months to re-board in particular in a country in crisis where the rate of unemployment was 13.7% in the first quarter of 2017;

Interval of 1 hour can be divided into two breaks of 30 minutes - a break that we often have and is not deducted from our work day and ended up working another 1 hour to compensate.

Finally, gentlemen of the MPT and the Cruise Lines, we want only flexibility in terms of the TAC, because we can not continue at the mercy of a law that imposes something that we are not in favor, the crewmember should have the right to choose after all the most interested are we.

We also remember that we are not on-the-job crew, many of us have been working for more than 10 years in this activity and we just want to be able to work honestly and continue taking care our families as we did before without any burden.

Thank you in advance for your attention and look forward to the change.

This petition is regarding the changes imposed to the Brazilian employees and will be delivered to the following authorities:

• MPT 1st Region Rio de Janeiro
• Chief Prosecutor of the Regional Labor Attorney of the 1st Region / RJ
• Attorney of Labor
• DR. Mauricio Coentro Pais de Melo
• Costa Cruises Agency Marítima e Turismo Ltda
• Pullmantur Cruzeiros do Brasil Ltda
• Attorney General MPT
• Labor Ministry Attorney General
• Attorney General of Labor
• Dr. Ronaldo Fleury
• Costa Cruises
• René Hermann
• Royal Caribbean Brazil
• Mário Junqueira Franco Junior
• MSC Cruises Brazil
• Adrian Ursilli
• MSC Cruises Brazil
• Flávio Lambstain
• Brazilian Ferries Association
• Marco Ferraz