P&O recruiting replacement staff from India on £1.80 an hour.

 

When P&O sacked 800 seafarer's, almost a quarter of its British staff, they sent in security guards wearing balaclavas and carrying handcuffs, who marched the sacked seafarer's off their ships. The staff and their union the RMT, were not given prior notice of the mass sackings and P&O did not give the government the legally required 45 day's notice. Failure to do so, is a criminal offence. However, the Tory Business Minister, Paul Scully, now says that although the sacking of 800 P&O staff is an "absolutely egregious situation", the sackings could be "entirely legal", because P&O's parent company, (DP World), is not flagged in the UK. 

The RMT union, who campaigned to leave the EU in 2016, believing that Brexit would end the attack on seafarer's and worker's rights, now say that many of the replacement seafarer's for P&O sacked staff, have been recruited from India and are working for as little as £1.80 an hour. 

When we left the EU, the British government entered into an agreement with the EU, in which they agreed not to reduce employment rights below the standards existing on 31 December 2020. So far, there has been no divergence from EU employment rights. The problem has more to do with a lack of legal protection for worker's in this country. The UK has one of the least regulated labour markets in the developed world, and some of the strictest anti-union laws. Most of these Tory anti union laws, were never repealed by Labour governments. 

We have seen a series of industrial disputes involving what is called 'Fire and Rehire', where worker's are given the option of agreeing to cuts in pay and conditions, or losing their jobs. This practice which is occurring with monotonous regularity in Britain, is illegal in France, Spain, and Ireland, but perfectly legal in Britain. The government of Boris Johnson recently blocked attempts to make this practice also illegal in Britain. The Tories see deregulated labour markets and fewer employment rights for British worker's, as giving Britain a competitive edge over our European competitors. All this is happening in Brexit Britain.