Government to carry out safety checks on P&O following salary accusations
Transport secretary Grant Shapps said the government will carry out safety checks on P&O vessels, after unions accused the operator of paying the replacement crew £1.80 per hour.
The Maritime and Coastguard agency was instructed to inspect the ferries before allowing them to re-enter service to make sure the crews are “safe and properly trained.”
“If they are not, these ships will not sail,” he told MPS “It is important that we do have the resilience to ensure that goods are able to flow but that cannot be done through crews who have not been properly trained to do the job to the highest of standards.”
Shapps’s comments come after to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), accused P&O of replacing crews at Dover with agency workers from India.
“The news that the seafarers now on ships in British ports are to be paid $2.38 (£1.80) an hour is a shocking exploitation of those seafarers and another gut-wrenching betrayal of those who have been sacked,” said RMT’s general secretary Mick Lynch.
“The rule of law and acceptable norms of decent employment and behaviour have completely broken down beneath the white cliffs of Dover and in other ports yet five days into this national crisis the government has done nothing to stop it.”
Maritime union Nautilus International called P&O’s Dubai owner DP World “exploitative” as hundreds of people demonstrated outside the company’s London office, taking their protest down to Parliament.
P&O’s decision to sack 800 members of its staff during a four-minute video call on Thursday sparked outrage from all sides.
Downing Street’s press secretary called the company’s methods “completely unacceptable”, while transport secretary Grant Shapps wrote to P&O about the move’s legality.
“The company must sit down with workers and reconsider this action,” Shapps tweeted on Friday.
Following hours of speculation, P&O said the move was necessary for its survival long-term survival. “Our survival is dependent on making swift and significant changes now,” said a company spokesperson. “Without these changes there is no future for P&O Ferries.
“In making this tough decision, we are securing the future viability of our business which employs an additional 2,200 people and supports billions in trade in and out of the UK. And we are ensuring that we can continue serving our customers in a way that they have demanded from us for many years.”
According to DP World, P&O did not repay the £120m taken as loans over the past couple of years, as lenders gave the operator a 24-month hiatus, which ran out in March, City PM reported.