Topic: P&O

[Nobby Reserve]

Johnson pushed back on Starmer at pmq's yesterday saying the govt will take the company to court......don't hold your breath.

Appalling what's happened and feel sorry for all the staff who've been sacked - Tories have allowed this sort of behaviour to fester for years. Similar thing happened to 500 Liverpool dockers in the mid 90's when they were sacked following a dispute (although the dispute lasted over 2 years even after Labour were elected in '97).

At least Starmer called it out yesterday - but, this callous bunch of twats will just spout how they've '...increased the living wage to record levels...'

That was despicable. I did campaigning and fundraising for them at the time through my own union activism.

The Labour government allowing the injustice to continue finally convinced me that that government offered no hope, and was just a continuation of core Thatcherite policy, but delivered to the working classes with a slightly padded glove. That it later emerged that Blair had tried to pressure the TUC's Bill Morris to end hardship payments - and blamed the dockers for their own plight - is a disgrace. Too many people have rose-coloured glasses when it comes to that era. Ultimately, 'a bit less cuntish than the Tories' is still cuntish.

Appeals from dockers for Labour to use its 14% share in Mersey Docks to help towards their reinstatement were unsuccessful. Consequently, it brought about a request from the government for the union leader Bill Morris to hastily end the dispute, at the former dockers' expense, with the termination of all hardship payments and the acceptance that the jobs would not be reinstated. Tony Blair believed the dockers were ultimately responsible for the defeat through an unwillingness to alter their own views and "long-standing abuse of monopoly power". and would later provoke a trade dispute in 2002 following the collapse of relations with union bosses with his stance on the 2002 firefighter's dispute; Bill Morris suggested around this time that it was difficult to find differences between the Labour and Conservative parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_dockers%27_dispute_(1995%E2%80%931998)

[Thepooloflife]

That was despicable. I did campaigning and fundraising for them at the time through my own union activism.

The Labour government allowing the injustice to continue finally convinced me that that government offered no hope, and was just a continuation of core Thatcherite policy, but delivered to the working classes with a slightly padded glove. That it later emerged that Blair had tried to pressure the TUC's Bill Morris to end hardship payments - and blamed the dockers for their own plight - is a disgrace. Too many people have rose-coloured glasses when it comes to that era. Ultimately, 'a bit less cuntish than the Tories' is still cuntish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_dockers%27_dispute_(1995%E2%80%931998)

Yep......New Labour eh, not a lot of difference between them and the Tories.....or, as me arl fella used to say 'tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee'

[Yorkykopite]

Anybody watch the select committee? The boss of a British company openly admitting they knew they were breaking the law by sacking thier staff in the manner they did. It was the only way he said. A man in charge who clearly does not know the details of the operations of his company, workers in France and Netherlands treated differently. Making incorrect statements to the committee about the operation of his company, a man who is on £325,000 a year, who won't say whether he will be taking his bonus. If the government do nothing, then they truly are contemptible.

It's breathtaking. The video of the key bits is on here.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/24/po-ferries-boss-says-800-staff-were-sacked-because-no-union-would-accepts-its-plans

[Red Raw]

Darren Jones (chair) to Hebblethwaite:
"Are you in this mess because you don’t know what you’re doing, or are you just a shameless criminal?"
https://twitter.com/politicshome/status/1506953335341031427

Ouch.

[gazzalfc]

To be that brazen and arrogant to make that statement in front of cameras and politicians like that, you can only assume that those redundancy packages are far greater than any employee would ever get at an employment tribunal.

Does continue to show how little respect employers (and indeed the government) have for the trade unions.

I know our company only tolerates our trade union because they legally have to and attempts to undermine it every chance they get. Our last pay offer was 0.1% lower than sites that aren't under a collective bargaining agreement. Just so they can say that union membership gets you less pay than those not represented. It really is that petty

[BarryCrocker]

To be that brazen and arrogant to make that statement in front of cameras and politicians like that, you can only assume that those redundancy packages are far greater than any employee would ever get at an employment tribunal.

Does continue to show how little respect employers (and indeed the government) have for the trade unions.

I know our company only tolerates our trade union because they legally have to and attempts to undermine it every chance they get. Our last pay offer was 0.1% lower than sites that aren't under a collective bargaining agreement. Just so they can say that union membership gets you less pay than those not represented. It really is that petty

Just goes to show how little they're paying the replacement staff that they can wear these 'costs' and still be better off.

[Red-Soldier]

P&O Ferries: questions raised over Grant Shapps’ meeting with DP World

Dubai meeting in November revealed in departmental minutes

The UK transport secretary, Grant Shapps, met the DP World boss Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem last November and told him that he was “aware of the issues at P&O Ferries” but recognised “you will need to make commercial decisions”, according to official minutes of the meeting.

The revelation raises further questions about whether Shapps could have acted to head off the mass sackings last week at the Dubai-owned ferry operator.

On Monday, Shapps told the Commons that “the first I heard about it was at 8.30 in the [Wednesday] evening, not through the memo, which I did not see, but instead through communication with my private office to indicate that P&O would be making redundancies the next day”.

Shapps said he expected P&O Ferries to consult on more redundancies rather than instigate mass sackings.

The Department for Transport minutes show Bin Sulayem welcomed Shapps to DP World’s pavilion at the Dubai Expo on 22 November. During the face-to-face encounter, the sultan warned Shapps: “In respect of our ferry business, there’s a new low-cost competitor from Irish Ferries. This poses challenges in respect of P&O’s operations. We kept ferries operating during the height of the pandemic to support movement of people and goods.”

Shapps thanked Bin Sulayem and told him: “I’m aware of the issues relating to P&O. I recognise you will need to make commercial decisions, but please do keep us informed.”

Bin Sulayem added: “As we recover we can reinvest in the UK. We make a significant amount of income from the passenger side of our business (even though it only makes up c.30% of total business), because the margins are so tight on the cargo side.”

Shapps replied: “I appreciate everything you’ve done to support P&O.”

The minutes were published after revelations at Thursday’s extraordinary joint hearings of the Commons transport and business select committees, where the P&O Ferries chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, admitted wilfully breaking employment law to summarily sack almost 800 crew without consultation. He told MPs that DP World had notified the government of planned changes to the business model.

The maritime minister, Robert Courts, speaking later in the hearing, said: “There was a discussion about challenges to the business but not any more than that.”

Responding to the published minutes, the shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said: “Despite the clear warning signs, Grant Shapps didn’t appear to raise a single word of concern for the workforce when he had the chance. Throughout this scandal, every window of opportunity to save jobs had been missed and hundreds of British workers are paying the price.”

The mass sackings have been met with widespread outrage although not action from the government.

Earlier on Friday, Shapps called for Hebblethwaite to quit, saying: “I cannot believe that he can stay in that role having admitted to deliberately going out and using a loophole – well, break the law.

“They flagged their ships through Cyprus [which meant they] avoided having to tell anybody about this, or they felt they did. And even though they know they’ve broken the law, what they’ve done is to pay people off in such a way to try and buy their silence. It’s unacceptable.”

However, Labour said Shapps had the power to disqualify Hebblethwaite as a director rather than simply call on him to quit.

Haigh added: “The government have still done absolutely nothing to hold P&O Ferries to account.”

On Friday, Hebblethwaite emailed P&O Ferries staff attempting to clarify “issues” in his testimony to MPs. Although he had told the committees he would make the same business decision again, he told staff: “The first is that this type of dismissal could not happen again.”

He added: “The second point is that no criminal offence has been committed … There has been a failure to comply with the obligation to consult.”

A DfT spokesperson said: “DP World did not mention to the transport secretary any changes it would be making to P&O Ferries and there was no indication of the completely unacceptable changes it has subsequently made.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/25/po-ferries-questions-raised-over-grant-shapps-meeting-with-dp-world

[PaulF]

If the boss of p&o knew his company was going to deliberately break the law, can he not be done for perverting the course if justice or something related?

[Nobby Reserve]

Hebblethwaite is just a patsy, carrying out the orders of the parasitic scum multi-billionaire tyrants in Dubai.

This government (and Labour were as bad) will lick the hoop of these Arab dictators in the hope of securing an arms deal (so our bombs can be used to murder thousands of children and keep the local Gulf State populations oppressed and denied basic personal freedoms) or other 'investment' in this country (as flogging off our silver is the only way we can survive, given we outsource our mass-manufacturing function)

[RAWK Meltdown #1]

If your job is of a nature (or skiill-set) which can, or could...feasibly be replaced by some lower paid, agency worker...who'd be only too willing to under-cut you and take your job...(thus enriching his/her new employer...)

Well sheesh....

I'm trying to imagine if this was MY job....and how I'd feel about realising that I'm NOT actually indispensable.

I mean, I may feel ethically and morally indispensable in terms of..you know...."that's no way to treat people..."

But I'm not sure if this would ever make me feel secure in that job?

Jobs which are currently in high demand...(HGV drivers for example) or where the required skill-set is difficult, exclusive and unique are (I imagine) the only kind of jobs which can deliver a sense of job security in a competitive, capitalist economy.

When I turned forty....I remember giving this subject much thought. I was fed up doing jobs that literally "anybody" could do...given a smattering of basic training. Not only this, I was fed up doing jobs which could ever-so-easily be easily dispensed with in times of recession or national crisis.

This wasn't a political or sociological epiphany.

It was me....finally....becoming a bit more "wordly-wise" about what really contributes to a sense of job security.

If my job was such that it may one day require "union protection" then (as right and noble as this is...) I still interpreted this as being a weak or volatile choice on my part. I wanted my job to never ever go out of fashion....but more importantly, to never ever have it suffer from lack of public demand or the notion that other people could do it at "half-the-price.."

My conclusion:

"I've got to do something that's in reasonably high demand, and which not everybody either can do, or is prepared to do....and by everybody....I also mean, cheap and willing labour sources drawn from the four corners of the planet...."

It's now 13 years later....and I've now been 13 years in a job that fits the bill.

Rightly or wrongly, I'm musing about this on a thread devoted to the plight of 800 people who've just been f*cked over by a company which has deemed it profitable and advantageous to dispense with those people.....even in the face of tremendous legal and ethical outrage.

I am myself....utterly outraged that such a thing can happen.

But the Machiavellian side of me has long known that this kind of thing can happen, and that it can happen to many people. It can even happen to people who don't even think it can happen to them.

I'm no economist, but I do know that fundamentally, we live in a world of goods and services....and ALL jobs are derivative from these two HUGE sectors of human endeavour.

P&O ferries are in the service industry.

They facilitate the port-to-port transport of people and freight.

They're not a contemporary fleet of specialist warships with highly trained military operatives who've sworn an oath to protect the homeland.

(I cite these as a far less dispensable/replaceable body of sea-farers...given the nature of their work...)

I guess what I'm rather cynically saying is that...very few labour forces are safe nowadays....and even fewer are those who can genuinely claim job security.

Yes, the people who do a "P & O" to their long-standing employees are utter bastards....but the commercial world of share-holder-profit has always been full of bastards has it not?

I return once again to my former epiphany:

"I have to try and get a job where I'm far too needed and valuable....so that even the capitalist bastards can't fire or replace me..."

I realise not everybody may think this way...or may even (yet) have been forced to have the epiphany, but lose enough jobs through no fault of your own and eventually, your thoughts will veer this way.

The world isn't "fair."

Finding a (legal) employment niche where you're set for life (as long as you don't f*ck up) isn't easy.

But there ARE still some of these niches left, and those who have a firm grip on the way the world currently works should be able to figure out what they are.

I realise these musings may sound more self-serving than "socialist"....but there's the way we'd like the world to be, and there's the way the world actually is.

It took me forty years to learn it, but beneficial life decisions IMHO....always tend to be predicated on the latter.

Please don't get me wrong...I'm thoroughly f*ucking outraged at what P & O have just done.....but this outrage just reinforces what I've come to believe about jobs, security and indispensability....hence the reflective "tome."


 

[The North Bank]

There is a difference between supply and demand, and between breaking contracts. What the company did appears to be illegal, they broke the law.

[PaulF]

There is a difference between supply and demand, and between breaking contracts. What the company did appears to be illegal, they broke the law.

Unless the government sees fit to massively increase the penalties, including prosecuting the bosses. Then companies won't care .

[redbyrdz]

It doesn't work like that. I work at a university, in research, and you'd think that people there are pretty much irreplacable, because they have very unique skillsets (plus probably the highest level of training commonly recognised). Despite that, people are being made redundant and whole departments are getting closed, at the whim of the university's leadership. The unions are fairly active in universities (though I'm not sure if I'd call them "strong"), and universities want to be seen as good employers, so redundancies are often drawn-out processes with pay-offs. Nevertheless, very highly skilled people lose their jobs too, and without the unions, this would happen much quicker and on worse terms.

[rob1966]

One of their ships can't leave Larne due to being unfit to sail, crew training and documentation. Serves them right the c*nts


https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60881550

[PaulF]

It doesn't work like that. I work at a university, in research, and you'd think that people there are pretty much irreplacable, because they have very unique skillsets (plus probably the highest level of training commonly recognised). Despite that, people are being made redundant and whole departments are getting closed, at the whim of the university's leadership. The unions are fairly active in universities (though I'm not sure if I'd call them "strong"), and universities want to be seen as good employers, so redundancies are often drawn-out processes with pay-offs. Nevertheless, very highly skilled people lose their jobs too, and without the unions, this would happen much quicker and on worse terms.

But are they being replaced by cheaper labour?

[west_london_red]

Just saw an advert on YouTube for P&O Cruises, emphasising that they are nothing to do with the other P&O other then the name and owned by different companies, so obviously they are expecting some consumer blow black

[Qston]

Just saw an advert on YouTube for P&O Cruises, emphasising that they are nothing to do with the other P&O other then the name and owned by different companies, so obviously they are expecting some consumer blow black

They will. I have cancelled our summer crossing to France and am now going eurotunnel and I know of someone else who has done the same

[redbyrdz]

But are they being replaced by cheaper labour?

Sometimes, for example with students doing a couple of hours work instead it being someones proper job. But usually they are just getting rid of a department or so, because their research is not fashionable anymore, or because they don't likeeach other.

[Fortneef]

We can’t all be specialists.

And the more specialised you are the harder it will be to change career when some unforseen development demolishes your niche.

[Charlie Adams fried egg]

One of their ships can't leave Larne due to being unfit to sail, crew training and documentation. Serves them right the c*nts


https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60881550

I know they did something around captains because they needed the expertise to sail in and out of ports. But to me getting rid of experienced staff and replacing them with agency workers is potentially making their ferries less safe too.
I'd boycott P&O for their labour practices alone, but I think there's potentially a huge safety issue there too.

[Elzar]

Just saw an advert on YouTube for P&O Cruises, emphasising that they are nothing to do with the other P&O other then the name and owned by different companies, so obviously they are expecting some consumer blow black

Saw that too, they are apparently owned by Carnival Corporation. Might want to consider a name change!

[Nobby Reserve]

This article makes some good points:

P&O debacle is product of race-to-bottom capitalism which we all secretly sponsor

No doubt Covid and higher fuel costs played a role in the company’s financial difficulties. Brexit has also contributed. In its latest published results, the company singled out the Northern Ireland protocol, saying it had created difficulties on the Larne to Cairnryan crossing.

But industry insiders say the underlying reason relates to globalisation and a demand for cheaper and cheaper shipping driven by companies like Amazon and by extension us as consumers. To survive, shipping companies have had to slash costs.

.....

What nobody seems to be addressing and what’s got lost in the justifiable outrage at P&O’s reprehensible behaviour is what is driving the company’s actions?

Operating margins have been squeezed by market forces and ultimately our demand for low-cost shipping.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/p-o-debacle-is-product-of-race-to-bottom-capitalism-which-we-all-secretly-sponsor-1.4837339

[Red-Soldier]

This article makes some good points:

P&O debacle is product of race-to-bottom capitalism which we all secretly sponsor

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/p-o-debacle-is-product-of-race-to-bottom-capitalism-which-we-all-secretly-sponsor-1.4837339

I've just written an article focused on Covid recovery. Basically, in order to address climate change, nature destruction and rampant inequality (all three are inter-linked), we have to move away from economic growth and start valuing communities and nature.

[Nobby Reserve]

I'm an ecologist and I've just written an article focused on Covid recovery. Basically, in order to address climate change, nature destruction and rampant inequality (all three are inter-linked), we have to move away from economic growth and start valuing communities and nature.

Good luck with that 

First step is rehabbing the population off the opium of cheap, shiny tat and gadgetry.

[PaulF]

Good luck with that 

First step is rehabbing the population off the opium of cheap, shiny tat and gadgetry.

posted by tapatalk on my iphone 16 pro max

[rob1966]

They've cancelled all passenger sailings this weekend and told people to book with someone else. Going great isn't it.

https://twitter.com/POferriesupdate/status/1512384780779851776?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

[BarryCrocker]

They've cancelled all passenger sailings this weekend and told people to book with someone else. Going great isn't it.

https://twitter.com/POferriesupdate/status/1512384780779851776?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Maybe they’re doing this to make the public feel the pain of not having them as an option to travel. Will especially hurt over Easter. Sounds like they’re hoping the public and government will give up on their anger so they can get travelling again.