P&O Told to Explain Mass Firings to Angry U.K. Cabinet Ministers
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Two senior U.K. cabinet ministers demanded urgent answers from P&O Ferries over its abrupt firing of 800 workers, raising the prospect of legal action against the company.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps each wrote to P&O on Friday afternoon, objecting to the way in which the company handled Thursday’s mass dismissals — which included notifying some staff via a video call. The move has prompted protests and resulted in a temporary halt to the company’s services on vital maritime routes connecting Britain with continental Europe.
Shapps expressed his strong disappointment, highlighting the fact that only a “very small group” of government officials were notified in advance of P&O’s plans. He also urged P&O to pause its process and begin a dialogue with unions.
Kwarteng said P&O could face prosecution if it was found to be in breach of its obligations under employment law, which generally requires notification and consultation with workers in advance of mass firings. Demanding a response no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Kwarteng laid out 10 questions for P&O executives, seeking a full account of the company’s decision-making.
Kwarteng said the company treated staff in an “appalling” manner. He and Shapps linked their rebukes to “millions of pounds of British taxpayer support P&O companies received” from the coronavirus furlough scheme.
“It therefore gives the government no pleasure to say that P&O has lost the trust of the public and has given business a bad name,” Kwarteng said.
Earlier, P&O justified its move by insisting that its previous operating model needed an urgent overhaul. Its annual losses of 100 million pounds ($132 million) were covered by its owner, Dubai-based ports operator DP World.
“We took this difficult decision as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options,” a spokesperson for P&O said in an email Friday. “We concluded that the business wouldn’t survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements, which in turn would inevitably result in redundancies.”
P&O said that it had offered enhanced severance terms to workers to compensate for the lack of warning and consultation.
New Protests
On Friday, the company said it aims to have some services running in the next day or two, and that it is losing 1 million pounds a day when ships don’t move.
Unions staged a new round of protests on Friday at several key English ports, including Dover, Liverpool, Hull and Larne in Northern Ireland.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman, Max Blain, told reporters that the government does not believe P&O exhausted all avenues before dismissing its staff and is investigating what steps it can take next. However, he said it is too early for a definitive verdict on whether P&O broke any laws.
The firing prompted spontaneous sit-ins Thursday by angry workers who refused to leave their ships and allow new crews to take their place. Some protests lasted into the night but ended by Friday morning, according to Jeff Martin, a spokesman for the RMT Union.
Fired by Video, P&O Workers Snarl…
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