Britain is currently beset by a militancy not seen in years. Strike action across many public sectors has already ruined the holiday getaway for many and threatens to create more turmoil, for commuters as well as tourists, in the months ahead.
To misquote the Bard, now is the famous winter of our discontent, that miserable winter of 1979 when huge strikes by everyone from factories to garbage collectors and gravediggers brought the country to a standstill, made [in] glorious summer.
Although only around 23 percent of workers are currently “unionised”, compared with around half in the 1970s years ago, the social unrest is unusually widespread for the UK. In addition to the transport sector, industrial action could break out in hospitals, schools, the post office, local government and has even been seen amongst lawyers, the police and traffic wardens.
All this brings the recent furore surrounding P&O Ferries sharply into focus.
Back in the spring 2022, P&O Ferries had to take the ostensibly unpalatable decision to issue severance notices to 800 of their employees (most of them RMT members).
In doing so, however, they neutralised the risk to their remaining 2,200 employees, and they subsequently went above and beyond to fairly compensate and, in many cases, re-employ, the sacked minority. This was unquestionably a more responsible course of action than to suffer bankruptcy and the demise of this historic British company, and one which also neatly sidestepped the potential extensive collateral fallout affecting dockers, port workers, warehousing staff and other linked providers.
In addition to safeguarding its own future, therefore, there is good reason to argue that, in hindsight, the continuing wave of industrial unrest sweeping the UK further legitimises P&O’s decision.
Indeed, the same RMT trade union wreaking havoc on the rail network this summer threatened back in April to sink P & O with the same potentially devastating industrial action.. So, P&O insists it was fully justified in acting to save both itself and the jobs of tens of thousands of its employees.
Now, and partly in response to the P&O case, the Government has tabled new legislation on seafarer pay protection, a move fully endorsed by the ferry operator.
The Seafarers’ Wages Bill, introduced in the House of Lords on 6 July, enables port authorities to deny access to services calling regularly at UK ports which do not pay their workers the equivalent rate to the UK National Minimum Wage (NMWe) for time spent in UK waters.
As part of the policy, vessels and services that call on UK ports at least every 72 hours on average, or more than 120 times a year, will fall under the new pay requirements.
P&O Ferries says it warmly welcomes this and anything that will help to improve seafarer welfare and protections.
Indeed, it has consistently embraced the Government’s commitment to increasing the minimum wage for all seafarers working in British waters and has called for a level playing field when it comes to pay and conditions on British ferry routes.
But this sincerity has still not stopped the Government from continuing to threaten restrictive measures against P&O Ferries, a private company which merely sought to secure its long term survival.
The heavy-handed response to the P&O case contrasts with the Government’s more conciliatory approach to those orchestrating the current British industrial strife. P&O insists it is “now a modern, dynamic, competitive and viable business” and has urged the Government to have a “constructive dialogue” about the future. Instead, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps (a contender to succeed Boris Johnson as UK Premier) called on P&O to change the names of its ships, told P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite to resign and continues to support the Insolvency Service’s criminal and civil investigations into the 800 sackings.
When comparing the Government responses to P&O and to the RMT, the phrase “double standards” springs to mind.
One only has to consider a few brutal facts to see why P&O insists it was right to act as it did back in April: this is a company that lost more than £100 million in 2021 due to virus-related restrictions. The most recent year it logged a profit was 2018.
From pre-pandemic peaks of 7 million tourist passengers annually, numbers shrunk by 90% to just 0.7 million in 2019. The impact on freight units was also significant, with a 36% drop in shipping figures between 2019 and 2021.
The wave of redundancies was the company’s fix to secure its future and enable it to move ahead with ambitious plans which, this year alone, include the roll out a new class of ships and two state-of-the-art ‘superferries’.
This provides extra confidence that the company, a true 180-year old British icon with a fleet of more than 20 ships, operating over 30,000 sailings a year, has turned a nautical corner.
It is also of note that all but one of the 800 seafarers have accepted the very generous redundancy deal with P&O to settle the matter. The minimum payout is £15,000 and the average is a whopping £46,500, and many have been re-employed on new contracts.
Its owner, Dubai-based logistics group DP World, having quietly covered P&O’s losses over the last few years, also financed the £36.5m redundancy payout and, furthermore, has invested a gigantic £2 billion in the UK over the past decade.
Former EU commissioner and Slovak deputy PM Ján Figel agrees that after two commercially disastrous years, with £100m losses in each, P&O had no viable choice except the course of action that they took.
Dealing with the dismissal of 800 employees and the consequences thereof was never going to be easy but, when it comes to industrial strategy, P&O’s response suggests that the choppy waters were worth navigating for the calm seas ahead.
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