(CMR) International cruise line, Carnival Corporation & plc, on Thursday, announced company-wide layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts, measures aimed at dealing with the economic fall out from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carnival CEO Arnold Donald made the revelation in an e-mail that was leaked to the public.
“In late March, I shared with you our intent to minimize the financial impact on each of you from the COVID-19 pandemic, if possible, through June. While many other companies in their efforts to ensure their survival took early actions in workforce reductions and pay cuts, we protected our employee base while doing everything in our power to give our company the best chance going forward, ” said Donald in the email.
“That brings me to where we are today and an extremely difficult decision — the need to further lower our outgoing cashflow by reducing our shoreside workforce. This reduction will include a combination of job eliminations and furloughs, and for those employees remaining, either a reduction of hours or salary reductions,” added Donald.
According to Carnival, the majority of its affected employees in the U.S. are in Florida, California and Washington state.
The CEO further noted that for employees on furlough they would continue to keep full health benefits, with the employee-paid portion paid by the company.
“Your fate is not one of unimportance or under-performance, it is rather one of simply being in a role that is not needed during an extended total shutdown of our guest cruise operations. We hope to recall you as soon as we can, when we are sailing once again,” said Donald.
“And to those of you remaining, we know you too are sharing in the sacrifice of the reductions necessary, until the time we can once again get on more solid footing. For some of you your sacrifice is two-fold, working even longer hours than normal. You are now the caretakers of our brands and company, and we will count on you to help us through the pause in guests operations and the eventual restart,” he added in the e-mail.
Carnival has a workforce of about 3,000 employees.
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