By Bill Heaney
If they were going to do this at all, they chose the wrong day – St Patrick’s Day – to do it. P&O Ferries, which has for many years operated services between Scotland and Ireland, has sparked outrage after sacking 800 staff with plans to replace them with cheaper agency workers.
And yesterday many Scots who had gone to Ireland for short holidays and to visit relatives were stranded and wondering how they would get home.
Today it was being widely reported that the service between Cairnryan and Larne would be out of operation for at least a week.
Staff on ships and in ports such as Cairnryan, on which £ millions has been spent on re-development, were told in a video call that Thursday was their “final day of employment”, but some refused to leave their ships in protest and were removed.
P&O said it was a “tough” decision but it would “not be a viable business” without the changes. It’s their intention to replace their current staff with agency workers.
Other companies such as the old Scottish and Universal Newspapers group took similar steps when they reduced their workforce, making staff redundant and closing printing centres – but not as brutally.
But the UK government has called the P&O workers’ treatment “wholly unacceptable”.
And the RMT union is threatening legal action against the ferry company, calling it one of the “most shameful acts in the history of British industrial relations”.
Further protests on Friday are being organised in the main British ports of Dover, Liverpool and Hull.
“Reports of workers being given zero notice and escorted off their ships… shows the insensitive way in which P&O have approached this issue,” said Robert Courts, parliamentary under secretary for transport.
“I am extremely concerned and frankly angry at the way workers have been treated by P&O.”
On Friday morning, the company again said on Twitter it would not run services “for the next few days”.
Cairnryan, south of Ayr, is one of the main UK ports for shipping goods to Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, the Department for Transport says neither the Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, nor Mr Courts, was aware of what was happening with P&O until Thursday.
The BBC has seen details of a contract for handcuff-trained security professionals which began two days before they were deployed to Dover to remove staff from ferries.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said P&O’s “secret plan” to sack staff with no notice was “reprehensible”.
P&O passengers were told to use DFDS while services were suspended.
Crew on one ship docked at Larne Harbour – the main landing port for P&O in Northern Ireland – had lifted the gangway after private security officers arrived to remove them.
The crew has now left the ship and Gary Jackson, a full time officer and RMT union member onboard the Pride of Hull, said they were “absolutely devastated”.
“At 11am ratings and officers were informed there was going to be a pre-recorded Zoom meeting. After that two to three-minute call all the crew were made redundant,” he said.
“I’ve seen grown men crying on there because they don’t know where they’re going to go from today.”
James, who has worked for P&O Ferries for around four years, said he felt abandoned by the company after all he received “was a three minute pre-recorded message saying we are out of a job. Nothing else.
“It was a complete surprise. I would have understood if it was at the height of Covid, but now we’re seeing the end of travel restrictions and the start of summer bookings. So this has come completely out of the blue,” he said.
Mark Canet-Baldwin, from Hull, was one of the agency workers brought to Cairnryan to take over from the crew that were being sacked.
But after talking it through with his wife, he said: “I felt I can’t do it. I felt sick to my stomach. And I walked off. Two others came with me. It’s just wrong.”
Workers are reported to have been escorted off their ships while being told that cheaper alternatives will take up their roles.
“The approach adopted by P&O is not unheard of, but it is exceptional to forego appropriate notice and consultation processes,” said Nathan Donaldson, employment solicitor at Keystone Law.
He said a government review of firing and rehiring in November 2021 did not outlaw the practice but emphasised “that it should be a process of last resort”.
Rustom Tata, chairman and head of the employment group at law firm DMH Stallard, said P&O’s actions would affect the brand’s reputation due to the “apparently wholly planned approach being taken to such a large proportion of its workforce ignoring some of the basic fundamentals of employee relations.”
Ann Francke, chief executive of The Chartered Management Institute, said P&O had “got it very wrong”.
“It’s shocking and appalling. It’s like management behaviour from another era,” she said.
P&O said its survival was dependent on “making swift and significant changes now”.
“We have made a £100 million loss year on year, which has been covered by our parent DP World. This is not sustainable. Without these changes there is no future for P&O Ferries.”
The cross-Channel operator said on Twitter that sailings between Dover and Calais scheduled for Thursday will no longer run, and customers with tickets were instructed to sail with rival ferry company DFDS.
P&O Ferries is one of the UK’s leading ferry companies, carrying more than 10 million passengers a year before the pandemic and about 15% of all freight cargo in and out of the UK.
However, like many transport operators it saw demand slump in the pandemic.
The firm claimed almost £15 million in government grants in 2020, which included furlough payments for its employees.
P&O is owned by DP World, the multi-national ports and logistics company based in Dubai. It paid a £270 million dividend to shareholders in 2020.
P&O shares the facilities at Cairnryan with rival ferry company STENA LINE.
Meanwhile, responding to reports that P&O have suspended all sailings including from Cairnryan in Dumfries & Galloway and 800 staff will be immediately made redundant, Scottish Liberal Democrat economy spokesperson Willie Rennie said: “The breaking news that P&O has suspended all sailings and reports its staff are to be made redundant is deeply troubling. The Cairnryan link to Northern Ireland run by P&O is an important link. It would be completely unacceptable for P&O workers to be sacked and replaced with foreign agency labour. The First Minister must speak with P&O and make clear that such action will be met with hostility from this government.”
Absolutely brutal. This company have without notice sacked their entire work force not just on the Scotland – Northern Ireland route but on other routes to the continent.
Told to collect their belongings and marched off the ship by security with police in attendance and with major delay and service interruption to the movement of essential goods and people as P and O search to replace the thousands of sacked crew this was no unexpected situation as the Conservative Government suggest.
This was a clearance by an aggressive company planned in advance and without doubt sanctioned by the Westminster Conservative Government. This is exactly what the new out of Europe Great Britain is all about.
Sacking thousands of workers to replace them with foreign crews who will accept pay rates as low as a couple of pounds an hour. And all from a company who paid dividends of £280 million in 2020 and who were paid over £100 million in taxpayer support during COVID.
Better together, Brexit bonanza, we haven’t seen the last of these behaviours in our new regime in our new sweatshop Britain. But maybe, and this is a sore comment, people here, and here in Scotland, are too powerless, or too apathetic to do anything about these sweat shop, Empire plantation values that are now stalking our land as we turn the heating up!
And what’s our First Minister saying and doing about this. Siding with Boris and the Westminster Set perchance.