On March 17, 800 British employees of the P & O ferry company learned that they were all laid off, with immediate effect. This mass dismissal, brutal and illegal (the management of P & O should have respected a consultation period of forty-five days), triggered an unprecedented mobilization of employees and unions, and forced the government of Boris Johnson to react, in an attempt to amend the labor law, deemed to be far too lax.
On Wednesday March 30, the Minister for Transport, Grant Shapps, announced that he wanted to oblige all shipping companies operating in British ports to apply the minimum wage. Heard on March 24 by the Parliament of Westminster, Peter Hebblethwaite, the executive director of the British company (subsidiary of the Dubai conglomerate DP Word), had admitted that he intended to pay an average of 5.50 pounds sterling sterling (6.50 euros ) the hour the teams supposed to replace the 800 dismissed employees at once. While the minimum wage for UK workers over the age of 23 drops from £8.91/hour to £9.50/hour on Friday 1er April.
The obligation of a minimum wage for employees of ferries and cargo ships, whatever their nationality and their flag, was only adopted in 2020 in Westminster, under pressure from the Labor Party, but this law does not apply. applies only in British territorial waters: ferries providing links between the United Kingdom and the rest of the European continent, in the case of P & O, are, for example, not concerned. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Shapps promised to write to UK port operators asking them to “refuse companies that do not pay the minimum wage”. A bill is expected to follow, giving new statutory rights to ports.
“It’s too little, too late”
The minister also proposed amending labor legislation to allow the courts to sanction companies that abuse the practice known as “fire and fire” (“dismiss and rehire in stride”, under much less advantageous conditions). Although very controversial, it remains authorized in the United Kingdom, and it is what P & O seems to have adopted: according to the unions, the company offers redundant staff to work as subcontractors on lesser conditions. The RMT union also accuses P&O of wanting to rehire Indian sailors for £1.80 an hour. In the future, judges could force unscrupulous employers to pay higher bonuses to dismissed employees.
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