The heartlessness of the British ruling class was exposed by its response to the actions of the Dubai-based board of P&O Ferries on 18 March. By the stroke of a pen, 786 workers were thrown into unemployment at a time when the cost of living is skyrocketing and the welfare ‘safety net’ is more threadbare than ever. The execution was particularly brutal: after being shown a video message informing the workers of their immediate redundancy, ex-military security guards equipped with handcuffs boarded the ships to ensure there would be no resistance to clearing staff from the decks where many have lived and worked for years. These guards had no power of arrest or detention and using the handcuffs would have amounted to assault.
The unions representing these workers are, rightfully, outraged at the treatment of their members. But the weakness of the trade unions in Britain means direct action options, such as blocking ports, that might have been undertaken in other countries like France, were not considered. At the port of Hull, the 141 crew of the Pride of Hull successfully occupied their ship for several hours following the announcement, until threats related to severance pay forced them to relent. Lined up to take their place were Latvian, Indian and Filipino agency workers hired on insecure contracts at much lower pay. P&O confirmed they intend to pay the workers below the UK minimum wage.
The 786 sacked workers were employed across eight ships, registered in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Cyprus. 575 of them have been offered a payout linked to their time served, under terms which the RMT union characterised as ‘bullying’ due to the number of strings attached. ‘The detail of what the company are imposing is not new. The 2.5 weeks [uncapped salary for each year employed] is what we have negotiated in the past with P&O. The pay in lieu of notice is not compensation, it is just a payment staff are contractually entitled to as there was no notice given. The way that the package has been structured is pure blackmail and threats – that if staff do not sign up and give away their jobs and their legal right to take the company to an employment tribunal they will receive a fraction of the amount put to them.’
Mock outrage in the British press has mainly focused on the suddenness of the action and the possibility that it broke British employment laws such as the obligation of a company to give 45 days notice of redundancies of more than 100 employees. Conservative Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite should resign but refused to say the company would be prosecuted. The fact is, this is merely a compressed version of a story familiar to many working class people in Britain. There have been thousands of redundancies in the maritime sector in recent years.
In early 2020, DP World – parent company of P&O Ferries – made 1,100 employees redundant. It was that mass sacking which Shapps referred to in March as an acceptable way to sack people. In defence of profits, the ruling class props up monopoly corporations while the working class bears the burden. The British state has already given concessions to the shipping industry by exempting UK-Europe ferry routes from minimum wage laws. P&O Ferries received a £33m state bailout in 2020 (as well as a £10m furlough fund) and DP World has been promised £50m to help found ‘free port’ tax havens in Southampton and London Gateway.
The replacement agency staff at P&O will enjoy few of the supposed benefits of their predecessors. In imperialist Britain, desperate companies are able to draw on cheap labour in the form of migrant workers, who are compelled to accept lower wages than British citizens due to both the economic disparities between Britain and their country of origin and also the threat of deportation or imprisonment if they break the terms of their work visa. This is precisely what P&O Ferries has taken advantage of here, just as it did in June 2021 when it replaced crew on the Dover-Calais Pride of Burgundy with agency staff. The security agency used in March to clear the ships, Interforce, also has a contract with the Home Office to handle migrants who have crossed the channel in small boats (The Times, 18 March 2022).
Furthermore, such actions as these serve to divide the working class between unionised British workers and the less united foreign ‘scabs’ who would take their place. But behind this lies the inability of capitalism to provide for the working class in general. This is illustrated by the claim by the P&O Ferries board that the only other choice to stem their wage bill losses would have been to file for bankruptcy and put all 3,000 employees out of work. This is a fiction: in 2021 P&O’s profit attributable to owners of the company reached $475m, up from $313m in 2020.
Adam Grey
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 287, April/May 2022
