The sacking of 786 crew members working for P&O Ferries, who've been replaced by cheaper agency worker's, shows how easy it is for bosses to get rid of British worker's. The UK has one of the least regulated labour markets in the developed world and some of the strictest anti-union laws.
It seems astonishing, that despite Britain's lack of employment protection, the RMT union urged its members to vote to leave the E.U. in the Brexit referendum in 2016. They naively asserted that leaving the E.U. would end the attack on seafarer's and offshore worker's, and the attack on worker's rights. The TUC, said that British worker's were better off in the E.U.
In Brexit Britain, we saw P&O crew members sacked without notice and ignominiously marched off the ships, by security guards wearing balaclavas and carrying handcuffs. They were then replaced by cheaper agency worker's, who according to the RMT union, were being paid as little as £1.80 an hour. Peter Hebblewaite, the chief executive of P&O Ferries, admitted to deliberately flouting British employment law, but said he would do so again, under similar circumstances.
The union's representing the sacked seafarer's, the RMT and Nautilus, are now saying that P&O have gotten away with it. Seemingly, all but one of the sacked P&O ferry worker's, have accepted redundancy packages, which include gagging clauses and which prohibit, the seafarer's from taking further action.
Despite all the grandstanding and fine words and condemnations by the government, their threats against P&O have come to nought. Although the Tory PM, Boris Johnson, told Parliament they would take P&O to court to defend the rights of British worker's, the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, admitted: "The government are not in a position to take further action." Shapps said it was for the Insolvency Service to consider whether to disqualify Peter Hebblewaite, and government plans to get British ports to enforce the minimum wage against ferry operators, have been described as 'unworkable'.
Despite the shabby treatment of British seafarer's, the owners of P&O Ferries, the Dubai-based DP World, who recently announced record profits of £751m, now stand to benefit from around £50m of tax breaks, by playing a leading role in free ports at London Gateway, and Southampton. Ministers have ignored calls from MPs, to exclude DP World, from running UK free ports.
Although P&O sacked almost a quarter of its British staff, regional media in France - where it's more difficult to sack worker's, and where worker's are more militant, and more politically savvy, - said that no French employees had been affected. The RMT vowed to continue the fight, but said that P&O seafarer's had a gun at their heads, and could have lost all their redundancy pay. Louise Haigh, Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary, said that if P&O were seen to have escaped without consequences, "it would give a green light to bad bosses across the country."
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2 comments:
I'd just put it down to one more Brexit benefit.
When the unions get off their knees and draw up a plan to destroy the anti-TU legislation then these things will stop, not b4.
So the idiots of the North who thought Boris was 'one of us' and preferred the Tories to people like Dennis Skinner should not complain.
They got exactly what they voted for
As anyone with any knowledge of the Merchant Marine knows, this has being going on for decades. In 1989 P and O did the same thing with over 2000 staff losing their jobs. And, you guessed it, replaced with cheap third world labour.
Inconvebiently, it was the Conservative government of Thatcher that tried to legislate to protect the jobs of British fisherman but which ended in the infamous Factortame case that established the principal that EU law had supremacy over British law in areas where competance had been ceded. The rest is history.
I have not read anything to support the notion that being in the EU would have had any effect on the outcome of this disgraceful act.
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