A labor court in Italy has ordered Costa Cruises to immediately rehire a cruise director and pay him more than $153,000 in compensation after ruling that nearly two decades of back-to-back temporary contracts violated Italian and European labor law.
The decision was issued by the Bari Labour Court, with Judge Agnese Angiuli partially accepting the worker’s appeal, which was supported by attorneys Fabrizio Del Vecchio and Antonello Schinaia, according to an Italian media outlet.
18 years, 51 contracts
The cruise director worked aboard Costa Cruises ships from 2003 to 2021 under 51 separate employment contracts.
Those contracts were issued not directly by Costa Cruises but by Cruise Ships Catering and Services International NV, a company based in Curaçao. When his final contract expired in 2021 and was not renewed, he filed a legal challenge.
The court found that the repeated use of fixed-term contracts over 18 years constituted an abusive employment arrangement.
The ruling went further, finding that the subcontracting structure between the Curaçao-based company and Costa Cruises was not genuine.
According to the ruling, the company “systematically availed itself of the worker’s services in fraud of domestic and community regulations.”
The court determined that the employment relationship should be considered permanent and directly with Costa Cruises from the start.
Final Verdict
The cruise director is to be reinstated immediately.
On the financial side, the Curaçao-based company was ordered to pay compensation calculated using his final salary multiplied by his 18 years of service, totaling more than $153,000 plus interest. Claims for non-financial damages were rejected.
Why this case stands out
The practice of routing cruise ship crew through foreign-registered hiring companies is common across the industry.
It is a longstanding arrangement that allows cruise lines to sidestep domestic labor protections, since crew members work under contracts governed by the laws of whichever country the hiring company is registered in, often a jurisdiction with minimal labor regulations.
This case was possible largely because of a specific combination of factors: the cruise director is an Italian citizen,
Costa Cruises ships sail under the Italian flag, and the work was tied to an Italian company operating within the framework of Italian and European law.
That made Italian courts a viable venue for the challenge. For crew members from other countries working aboard ships flagged outside their home nations under foreign contracts, pursuing a similar case would face far greater legal hurdles.
Costa Cruises is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation and is one of Europe’s largest cruise lines, operating primarily in the Mediterranean and other European markets.
