P&O looks to make over 1,000 redundant in new plan

SEAFARERS’ JOBS face the axe in Hull as P&O Ferries looks to make more than 1,000 redundancies as part of a plan to make the business “viable and sustainable”.

The proposal involves more than a quarter of the workforce losing their jobs.

P&O is understood to be looking at making 122 Seafarer Ratings on the Zeebrugge and Rotterdam routes from Hull redundant along with 614 Ratings on the Dover to Calais crossing.

The remainder affected are officers and shore-side staff on the same routes.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said it was a “kick in the teeth” for seafarers, who had maintained key supply lines to the UK during the pandemic.

And he said it was “utterly shameful” that P&O had been kept afloat by union members and the taxpayer and accused the company of “cooking up plans to permanently replace UK seafarers with low cost seafarers from thousands of miles away”. His biggest fear was that the jobs “will never return to Dover or Hull”.

It comes a fortnight after two Hull cruise-ferries Pride of York and Pride of Bruges were laid up and hundreds more staff were furloughed.

A spokesman for P&O Ferries said: “Since the beginning of the crisis, P&O Ferries has been working with its stakeholders to address the impact of the loss of the passenger business.

“It is now clear that right-sizing the business is necessary to create a viable and sustainable P&O Ferries to get through Covid-19.

“Regrettably, therefore, due to the reduced number of vessels we are operating and the ongoing downturn in business, we are beginning consultation proceedings with a proposal to make around 1,100 of our colleagues redundant.”