P&O slammed for sackings
Politicians on all sides condemned the ferry firm. Matthew Partridge reports
P&O Ferries’ decision to sack 800 workers without “warning or consultation” via video call last week has led to condemnation across the political spectrum and protests at ports across the UK, says Matthew Weaver in The Guardian. There is particular anger that redundancies were aimed at slashing labour costs by replacing unionised UK seafarers “with cheaper employees hired through the company International Ferry Management”. Thanks to a loophole in labour law, many of the new workers, who come from outside the UK, will be paid well below the national minimum wage.
Hypocrisy on both sides on the house
Public outrage has forced the government to join in the condemnation, with both the business and transport secretaries accusing P&O of “outrageous behaviour” and threatening legal action if it has broken the law, says The Observer. Still, the government’s surprise seems a little disingenuous. It not only blocked attempts to ban the specific practice of firing and then rehiring on materially worse terms, but also boasted that it would bring in legislation to make our already “feather-light employment law” even more “minimalist”. P&O’s decision was also partially prompted by the “collapsing freight volumes on its ferries” caused by “plummeting” post-Brexit trade with the EU.
Labour is “hyperventilating” but before it gets “too hot under the collar” it should bear in mind that the real “folly” was New Labour’s decision to let “great chunks of our national infrastructure” to fall into “grasping overseas hands”, says Alex Brummer in The Daily Mail. In 2006, P&O was sold to DP World, a firm now partly-owned by the United Arab Emirates, a country “largely run with the help of “cheap labour from India and Pakistan”. The old P&O, “with a powerful board and a full London listing”, would never have attempted this. Such “carelessness in selling vital assets has cost UK investment, jobs, taxes and command and control over great swathes” of commerce.
Expect more tussles as inflation soars
Note, too, that P&O took £10m in taxpayers’ support during the pandemic, suggesting that it’s happy to see itself as British when it wants “taxpayers’ money” but not when it wants “to fire British workers”, says Oliver Shah in the Sunday Times. But there is a broader point: “this tussle” between workers and businesses has a “lot further to go” as the UK faces double-digit inflation. Firms have a “limited ability” to pass on the impact of inflation to customers” so the “tug of war between profit margins and input costs must have a loser”.
Still the government must make its stance clear if it aspires to make Britain a “high skill, high wage economy,” says Cat Rutter Pooley in The Financial Times. Major employers need to know they risk “severe repercussions”. Rishi Sunak’s “resistance to extending the potential consequences of P&O’s actions to parent DP World” risks compounding the UK’s reputation for poor employee protection. It is understandable that he wants to preserve investment and limit job losses elsewhere in the group, “but it cannot be the case that investment buys you freedom from consequences”.