Louisiana Maritime Law Blog

A report recently released by the Transportation Institute captures how Louisiana's first district is the leading area for Jones Act jobs in the entire United States. There are some 33,590 individuals employed in these maritime roles in the southeastern Louisiana region.

These individuals work in a variety of fields including the oil and gas industry, in transporting goods or in production. Their work generates nine billion dollars in revenue for the state every year.

Having a job on a cruise ship can be an exciting way to live your life. These jobs can come with long hours, few days off and exhausting job responsibilities. Nevertheless, for those who choose this kind of career at sea, there are usually enough perks and sufficient pay to the hard work worthwhile. That's why suffering an injury while working at sea can be so devastating.

Sometimes, cruise boat employees suffer such severe injuries at work that they're never able to go back to their seafaring jobs again. In these cases, the injured workers might be able to use the Jones Act to pursue financial benefits to help pay for their injuries, lost income and other expenses and financial losses that resulted from their injuries.

One of the most common work injuries in almost every industry is falling. Every year there are thousands of workers who end up with a broken bone or head trauma after tripping and landing badly. They can be attributed to reckless behavior, dangerous working conditions or neglectful employers. Maritime workers are in danger of falling constantly because they work outside and have to deal with slippery and wet surfaces.

Barges in particular have a unique structure to them that can make it easier for workers more likely to fall and be out of work for months or years. Despite getting better at decreasing fall hazards in the last couple of decades, we still have plenty of workers brutally injured or killed just because of one slip. Barge crew members and their respective families should be aware of the following fall hazards that often lead them to become victims.

Aside from the captain and others who navigate the boat, there are two types of employees who work on cruise ships: artists who have aspirations of being discovered by the entertainment industry and employees who hail from poor countries looking to see the world and to support their families. The latter is most likely to get injured while working aboard a cruise ship.

One of the reasons that international staff members are likely to get hurt on the job is because they're often forced to work long hours for very little pay. Most cruise ship companies purposefully recruit workers to take on janitorial, restaurant, and mechanical roles from among some of the poorest countries in the world. They do this to keep their operational costs low.