On 17 March 2022, shipping company P&O Ferries dismissed 800 members of its shipping staff, primarily from the Port of Dover, but also from Kingston upon Hull, Liverpool and Cairnryan. The decision was met with much criticism from both sides of the political divide, particularly as a result of the speed and immediacy of the crews' termination notices, which in some cases consisted of a video call or text message, terminating their employment "with immediate effect". Also of concern was the fact that the crews were intended to be replaced with cheaper agency labour. The two main trades unions involved – the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and Nautilus International – called for a boycott of the company and organised protests around the ports, but also outside parliament. P&O explained that for some time their business model had been impractical, resulting in losses of £100 million per annum, and that they needed to drastically reduce the wage bill to become profitable. Conversely, critics argued that the parent company, DP World, had paid out large dividends the previous year of £270 million, and had also made claims under the UK government's furlough scheme during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The British government criticised the company's actions and stated that it was looking at the legal ramifications, including whether P&O could be fined, and how other contracts it held with DP World were affected. The legal community was generally critical of P&O for seemingly ignoring UK employment law, and several law firms commented on the likelihood of any crew members' potential employment tribunal claim being successful on a number of grounds. For its part, P&O argued that to have followed the suggested consultation and other processes would have caused even more trauma to both their own staff and the broader UK tourist industry.
Lansdown vs P&O Ferries In April 2022, a former P&O Ferries sous chef began legal proceedings against the company and its chief executive, claiming unfair dismissal. John Lansdown is the only seafarer to take legal action after 800 staff were sacked without notice.
In his tribunal claim he accused P&O of treating him unfavourably as he is British and eligible for minimum wage. Mr Lansdown sought financial compensation as well as exemplary damages of up to £76m to "deter" P&O Ferries or its parent company DP World from acting the same way in future.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60995784?app-referrer=deep-link
In September 2022, faced with the prospect of an Employment Tribunal, P&O Ferries admitted the sacking was unfair dismissal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63090372?app-referrer=deep-link
John Lansdown donated the entirety of the compensation to the Sailors' Children’s Society. Lansdown, now a seafarers' rights campaigner, described his settlement as a "moral victory".
As part of the settlement, P&O Ferries and Mr Lansdown agreed not to disclose the size of the settlement.
"At first P&O [Ferries] said publicly it was a programme of redundancy - a programme of change. No it wasn't. It was, as they've now admitted, I was unfairly dismissed on the day that I and 800 other seafarers were sacked.
"This is really big for British workers. This puts unscrupulous employers on notice that people aren't going to take this lying down," Mr Lansdown later told the BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63090372?app-referrer=deep-link
"Not everything is about money. This is about right and wrong, this is about principles, this is about standing up to this organisation which thinks it can just disregard the law."
Background
P&O Ferries was originally a subsidiary of the shipping company P&O, which was founded in 1837 as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, sailing between the UK, Iberia and Egypt, and by 1922, Australia. P&O began operating ferry services in the 1960s. In 2002, the company amalgamated their various ferry lines into one company, P&O Ferries. By 2020, P&O Ferries had become a leading UK ferry operator with business worth around £10 million per annum, with a 15% share of maritime freight transport before the pandemic.
The company received £15 million in grants, including furlough payments during the COVID-inspired slump, although the company announced 1,100 job cuts soon after. It is owned by Dubai-based DP World, a multinational shipping and logistics company owned by the UAE government. The BBC noted that DP World had paid dividends to its shareholders of £270 million in 2020.
In 2020, P&O employed around 1700 seafarers. P&O had previously closed routes – for example, two between Hull to Zeebrugge – and put them up for sale in February 2021. The company said the routes were loss-making, and the government stated that this was a commercial matter. Also reduced as a result of the pandemic were the number of Dover–Calais runs, and two freight services were cancelled.
Dismissals On 17 March 2022, shipping company P&O dismissed 800 members of its shipping staff, including officers and ratings. The bulk of these – approximately 500 – were in Dover. Staff were informed via what one staff member described as a "three-minute pre-recorded" video call the same day that their employment was "terminated with immediate effect due to redundancy". Other reports suggested that staff were given a short period of time to disembark. P&O stated that only a minority – 261 – of the affected workers had received their notice in this fashion. The majority had face to face meetings with their local management, although in some cases SMS, a phone call or email was used. A spokesman said that "we know that for our staff this redundancy came without warning or prior consultation, and we fully understand that this has caused distress for them and their families". A letter from the company to the redundant staff suggested that if any of the latter "were affected by [the news] then please do take some time to absorb it".
Some staff occupied their ships, although they were later removed. They were backed by both RMT and Nautilus International. P&O prepared in advance for physical force intervention and recruited "handcuff-trained" security guards for the Dover terminal two days before the announcement. However, the company denied that the guards wore balaclavas and argued that "the teams escorting the seafarers off our vessels were totally professional in handling this difficult task with all appropriate sensitivity. Contrary to rumours, none of our people wore balaclavas nor were they directed to use handcuffs nor force."
P&O suspended ferry services while they located cheaper agency workers for the Dover to Calais, Larne to Cairnryan, Dublin to Liverpool and Hull to Rotterdam routes. The firm intended to use the International Ferry Management agency, and this was revealed in a letter from chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite, which was leaked to the Daily Mirror. Some reports suggested that the cheaper labour the company was investing in would consist of foreign workers.
The Evening Standard reported that Dover was in "chaos" on Thursday night, with roads gridlocked by cars and lorries attempting to leave and enter the port. Passengers at Dover were advised to use DFDS services until P&O were in a position to restore theirs; those for Dublin were pointed to Stena Line services. Many passengers, though, were stranded; many complained at the lack of information from the company. Stena reported that as P&O had not approached them with an agreement, tickets could not be honoured and those wishing to travel on Stena would have to be new passengers.
Criticism
The company acknowledged the "distress" it said its employees had experienced, but said it had had to make a "tough" decision, in order to enact "swift and significant changes" which were a necessity if it was to maintain business viability. A statement said that they had made a loss of £100 million which had been covered by its umbrella company, DP World, and that "This is not sustainable. Without these changes there is no future for P&O Ferries", and that "the business wouldn't survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements". The changes were intended to reduce crewing costs by 50%, the CEO subsequently said.
A number of the agency workers – among them former P&O staff – hired to replace the crews in Hull walked off the job. One, Mark Canet-Baldwin, arrived at Cairnryan only to turn around. He told reporters "I felt I can't do it. I felt sick to my stomach. And I walked off. Two others came with me. It's just wrong." P&O's actions attracted cross-party criticism. In Dover, local then-Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke marched alongside the RMT's General Secretary and senior assistant general secretary, as well as the former Labour shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, which a Channel 4 report described as "unlikely bedfellows". A government statement described the mass dismissal as "wholly unacceptable". The parliamentary undersecretary for transport, Robert Courts said "reports of workers being given zero notice and escorted off their ships...shows the insensitive way in which P&O have approached this issue", and that he was "extremely concerned and frankly angry at the way workers have been treated by P&O". It was, however, unlikely that the government would support nationalising the company, stated Dowden.
Huw Merriman, chair of the House of Commons transport select committee expressed concerns as to the legality of the company's actions, and told the government to "ensure that this appalling employment transaction cannot be completed". The Department for Transport reported that neither Courts, nor the Secretary of state, Grant Shapps, had had prior warning of the company's intentions. However, by Friday it was reported that, in fact, the government had learned of P&O's plans on Wednesday night. A Downing Street spokesman reported that, while the DfT's senior officials had been informed, they had restricted propagation on commercial sensitivity grounds, and this had included the Prime Minister. He also did not think it had come up for discussion when the PM visited the United Arab Emirates the previous Wednesday. Shapps later said that, while he had been made aware of the plan on Wednesday evening, he had assumed it would involve the same in-depth consultation as the previous layoffs.
The staff's trade union, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers said it was one of the "most shameful acts in the history of British industrial relations". The union asked that the government use influence to pressure a reversal of the decision, while there were broader calls for DP World to be excluded from bidding for any future free ports. Manuel Cortes of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association said the company "should be ashamed of themselves".
The TUC General Secretary, Frances O'Grady said it was "reprehensible" to sack staff with no notice period. She also demanded the P&O "suffer severe consequences – with ministers increasing the legal penalties if necessary". The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, called the company's strategy a "gangster practice", while a member of Medway Council called on golfer Ian Poulter to sever his ties with DP World, for whom he acted as an ambassador. The head of the European Transport Workers' Federation in Brussels, Livia Spera, said it was "astonishing that this can happen in a major developed country like the UK". In Northern Ireland, Democratic Unionist Party politicians called on the government to maintain services between Larne to Cairnryan, while Nicola Sturgeon expressed "utter disgust" at the dismissals.