Two hundred jobs are coming to the Brooklyn Navy Yard as the city prepares to launch its citywide ferry service, Mayor de Blasio said Wednesday — and they’ll include an unusual perk.
The full slate of benefits will include pet insurance for the boat captains, deck hands, mechanics and engineers ferry operator Hornblower is now hiring.
A newly announced stop will also ferry passengers from the Navy Yard starting next year, alongside the hub for docking, fueling and maintaining boats which is now under construction.
“We need people to start out as deckhands and be able to work their way up to good paying, long-term jobs,” said de Blasio, who spoke before a waterfront backdrop of towering cranes and shipping containers in a visit to the site.
Service will launch sometime this summer with routes in the Rockaways and south Brooklyn with stops in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Red Hook, Astoria and Roosevelt Island.
Officials plan to add more routes in the future, reaching 21 stops.
Wages for the jobs, which are full time, will be at least $11.90 an hour, the minimum required under the city’s living wage standards, and about half pay more than $50,000 a year. Employees will get health insurance and a retirement plan — as well as the rare pet insurance perk.
“It was an old idea whose time had some again,” de Blasio said of his citywide ferry push. “It’s a game changer for folks who right now have a very very long commute, and a very inconvenient commute to get to jobs.”
Besides the planned routes, residents and pols are pushing to add other stops in spots like the West Harlem Piers, Coney Island, and connecting Staten Island with Brooklyn.
Hizzoner said it may happen, but only if the early service is popular.
“If we build it and people come in large numbers and it really does achieve what we hope, that will encourage more stops,” he said.
The ferry fare will be $2.75, pegged to the cost of a subway fare, though riders will not be able to use MetroCards. They can pay with an app or buy tickets from machines at the docks. The existing East River ferry, which will be folded into the new system, will drop its fare to $2.75 from the current $4.
Food and drinks, including alcohol, will be served on board. “Relax, unwind — commuter cruise, get to where you need to get in comfort,” said Hornblower New York general manager Cameron Clark.
