Ordinary workers don’t matter to PM
A FEW weeks ago, a right-wing think tank which is linked to the Conservative party and counts several of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Ministers among its supporters was promoting the idea that foreign workers from a particular country where the average wage is just £7,000 a year would be useful to replace unionised British workers in the transport sector.
And that’s exactly what P&O has now done – sacking 800 workers with no notice by a videocall on their phones, and replacing them with agency staff from coaches waiting outside the dock gates.
P&O workers, who kept food and machinery imports into Britain going during Covid, were intimidated off their vessels by the company’s hired heavies wearing balaclava helmets and carrying handcuffs (by what right do private security handcuff people?).
P&O claims it’s losing money, but its Dubai Government-owned parent company DP World made £751million in profits last year and took £10million in Covid support from the British taxpayers – us.
They claimed the furlough money saying they were British, but then said because of Brexit the fleet was under a Cypriot flag, so no need to allow its own workers their normal employment rights.
The company paid a £270million dividend to its shareholders in the Gulf in 2020. The company has a £147million deficit for the sailors’ pensions with the Merchant Navy pension fund, part of which, £20million, taxpayers may have to pay, but it still managed to spend £146million sponsoring a golf tournament.
While the Government puts on an act of being shocked, Boris Johnson was in Dubai only last week and it’s leaked out that he had been warned of the sackings in advance, but apparently he couldn’t be bothered to raise it with the leader of Dubai.
Because, at the end of the day, ordinary British workers don’t matter much to Boris Johnson, and Conservative ideology supports driving their wages down (they call it “labour market flexibility”).
The Government had an opportunity to stop the ‘fire and rehire’ practice recently but voted down Labour’s plan.
Alex Tate