Shapps writes to P&O Ferries CEO to demand firm reverses job cuts
Following the decision last week by P&O Ferries to immediately lay off 800 staff, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has this morning written to the firm’s CEO calling for the decision to be reversed.
In the letter, Mr Shapps described the firm’s CEO as having a reputation which was now in ‘tatters’, referencing recent actions as demonstrating ‘beyond doubt your contempt for workers who have given years of service to your company’.
Further to asking the Insolvency Service to investigate the company’s actions, Mr Shapps has now detailed plans to bring forward new legislation to prevent UK shipping firms bypassing the minimum wage by offering minimal wages to offshore based workers.
In his letter, the Transport Secretary, “With the above in mind, you have one further opportunity to reverse this decision by immediately offering all 800 workers their jobs back on previous terms, conditions, and wages – should they indeed want them back at this stage”.
Mr Shapps further said that P&O Ferries should drop their 31st March deadline for seafarers to respond to the company’s redundancy offer, adding, “A reversal at this point may also go some way in starting to repair your firm’s reputation with the public, many of whom will show their own disgust at your treatment of workers by simply choosing an alternative operator”.
This morning, Darren Proctor, the General Secretary of the RMT union welcomed the change in relation to the application of the minimum wage rules, suggesting that past practices had led to the ‘decimation’ of UK seafaring.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, Mr Proctor suggested this move would lead to a change in roster patterns and that this would create ‘opportunities for more UK seafarers’.
Currently, firms flying in seafarers to the UK from across the world are thought to keep the offshore seafarers on boats for long periods, in order for the practice to be viable.
