P&O Ferries - major announcement today. All ships in port

[cakeorwine]

Gosh. I wonder what's going on

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60779001

Maritime law is entirely separate from domestic law. It's a specialist area, which I doubt many of us (including employment law solicitors) are familiar with.

Redundancy is the reduced need for employees. A company can decide it no longer needs any employees. It can then staff its ships in a different way.

To some extent though what constitutes an undertaking and hence whether TUPE rights in the UK apply has case law and isn't solely at the assertion of the employer.

TUPE might not have any relevance at all though, particularly if they are using multiple agencies to staff the business in the short/medium term.

That’s terrible. The poor staff. I remember in the 80’s they had a bit of a poor reputation (more so after zebrugger) and you would only use them if you had to.

I always felt the ferry was more of an adventure than the tunnel.
You get on, have your fry up, have a stroll round the shops. Shit yourself when you go on deck and get blown about with the salt spray in your face.

Then have the panic to get to your car, and fear you’ll be the one holding the queue up when it’s your turn.
Then you get off and into france. It’s part of the adventure. The tunnel. You drive on in your car, see nothing. Sit in your car.
Maybe have a wee. That’s it. Then your off.

If they are more expensive, no food and less of an adventure. It’s not worth the extra time.

The flagg and Cyprus ownership might be interesting though IM very limited experience, the tribunals sometimes try and look at the substance to avoid workers being divorced from their jobs.

P and O/DP will have engaged and be acting on top level advice but if they are still serving the same routes with their own ferries then it will be interesting if it's cut and dried in P and O's favour.

Seafarers worldwide frequently get a shitty deal.

@MoiraNotRuby

I can't think of a Good reason to cause all that disruption, they must be financially up shit creek surely? Though you'd expect them to have a paddle

Paddle !!😂

All staff made redundant. Fucking hell, how can that be legal? This will devastate the port towns they sail from where a lot of the working population work for them in some capacity.

HRTFT they’re all off between Scotland & Ireland too.

@candycane222

Ha - this is to "support our shareholder" - in the statment reproduced by Ken Online there. Priorities eh?

Unfortunately, business is ultimately about maximising value for the shareholder in whatever form that takes. It’s now up to us as consumers to decide whether we use them based on how much our personal values alighn with their business practices. You can try and maximise value all you like, but if there’s no customers generating income, you’re stuffed.

Fingers crossed none of the current staff apply for the agency jobs and that p&o cant find anyone else with the right skills and have to back down. I for one certainly won’t ever book with them again.

@MissAmbrosia

Just saw this on Twitter

Irish Ferries did this / tried to do this in 2004…

www.personneltoday.com/hr/irish-ferries-staff-on-strike-over-outsourcing-plans/

@Candleabra

Presumably the redundant (effectively sacked) staff will now have the option to apply to the agency to perform their own job on zero hours contracts. This is what British Gas did. Appalling.

That's not what British Gas did. They did a company wide contract to replace the hundreds of different ones accumulated over the years.

The bottom line was sign or resign, but no one was forced onto a zero hours contract and nobodies hourly rate was cut (however the new contracts were substantially poorer and did amount to a pay cut in real terms for many).

What P&O are reportedly doing is substantially worse, there are literally teams of agency workers waiting to board the ships according to twitter.

@Calmitdownkermit

All staff made redundant. Fucking hell, how can that be legal? This will devastate the port towns they sail from where a lot of the working population work for them in some capacity.

It isn't, usually.

But if it's 'that or the company folds' (because it cannot afford to pay its staff) what is the best thing?

Re-hiring on lower pay, or securing pay cuts by some other mechanism isn't unheard of. The company must of course be assuming that they will be able to fill the posts when re-advertised at lower rates.

@Satsumaeater

Mind you, fire and rehire seems to be a thing - British Gas did it too didn't they.

British Airways pushed everyone onto inferior contracts or redundancy too. A lot of those who took redundancy are now being rehired on much lower pay. That’s the way things are going in Britain now. And the government does absolutely nothing.

The government will be supporting redundancies. Seafarers get their tax back if they off UK soil for six months. Many of the old contracts are week on board week off. If workers go abroad for annual leave they claim tax back. Agency workers wont have same rights/ pension/ sick pay etc. They will say it covid/ brexit/ deisel/ so they can keep the service but in reality its just a way to keep yet another sector of workers in low wages. But as we also need the freight all of our hands are tied.

An appalling amount of companies do do fire and rehire. Normally they do it clandestinely though, not wholesale and in the most newsworthy way possible.

Although this is a major story, maybe they were hoping that the Ukraine headlines would let it go under the radar and nobody would notice.

'A good day to bury bad news' was the phrase used in the past, wasn't it?

@candycane222

Oh Mummy, how horrible

Yes, it was awful. We were told during assembly and all of us had heard about it on the news as it was such a big event. Secondary but we didn’t know how to react. We were older and I didn’t know her. But I remember turning to look at the kids in her year. As an adult, I feel terribly sorry for her classmates having to not only loose one of their own but also being subjected to a bunch of older kids looking at them in shock / disbelief.

Wow. Just wow! All 800 people:(

@MzHz

Wow. Just wow! All 800 people:(

Omg. Poor people.

www.itv.com/news/meridian/2022-03-17/p-and-o-ferries-suspends-all-sailings-ahead-of-major-announcement

@KittenKong

I saw on twitter that all the staff have been made redundant (not ‘at risk’) and that ‘agency staff’ will be engaged.

If the company continues to trade, would there not need to be a consultation period under UK law? And they can't be made redundant immediately.

Well they can stop them working but they would need to pay for the consultation period and then the notice period plus I guess statutory redundancy?

It just seems really really shit and absolutely they should not be able to get away with this.

I wonder if there is anything the government can do?

The whole area of agency workers needs to be looked at really closely. Basically agencies just use legal means to cut workers rights.

I remember my late DP applying for a painting job which seemed to pay a good hourly rate. Unfortunately to get the job he had to be employed by an umbrella company set up by the agency and by the time they deducted all their "costs" including the company's NI contribution, the hourly rate actually came out at less than minimum wage.

Most big companies will try to find any way they can to shaft their employees if it means that there are more profits to be made.

The only way that they will suffer for their actions is if people stop using them. While a few people might do that initially I think it is very unlikely that they will suffer a significant loss of business. People's principles often crumble if they are faced with having to pay more for something. Sad but true.

I’ve just been reading a great book about the Depression in 1930s America and farmers did similar then. Cut pay and told workers if they didn’t accept it there were plenty of others desperate enough to accept it. How sad that in 90 years workers are still being treated so poorly.

Could be a "fire and rehire" type plan.