Angry protests against P&O Ferries have taken place at ports across the UK after the sacking without notice of 800 workers in a move the archbishop of Canterbury denounced as a sin.
Trade unions leaders and politicians of all sides joined sacked P&O workers in Hull, Dover, Liverpool and Larne to protest against the company’s decision to replace all its crew with cheaper agency workers.
The local Conservative MP, Natalie Elphicke, and the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell led a march in Dover with the leaders of the RMT and Nautilus International unions. They carried a banner that read “Save P&O jobs, save Britain’s ferries”.
Despite speaking out against P&O and holding up a RMT poster against the “jobs carve up”, Elphicke was barracked by some of the protesters. “You voted for hire and rehire,” one shouted. “Tory anti-union laws allow bosses to get away with this,” another said.
“Nonsense, it’s bad business behaviour,” Elphicke replied before leaving the demonstration.
The demonstrations against P&O were backed by a strongly-worded joint statement by the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin. “Ill treating workers is not just business. In God’s eyes, it is sin,” it said.
The statement noted that P&O’s owners, DP World, had made record profits last year and added: “The move is cynically timed for a moment when world attention is on Ukraine. Done without warning or consultation it is inhumane treats human beings as a commodity of no basic value or dignity and is completely unethical.”
The bishops urged ministers to make forceful representations to the government of Dubai and to stop P&O operating until proper consultation had been carried out. There was also a protest at DP World’s London offices.
In Hull around 200 protesters gathered outside the ferry terminal compound before marching onto the site and banging on the doors of the terminal building. Union officials, the former Labour leader Ed Miliband and Labour’s Hull East MP Karl Turner addressed the rally.
Among the protesters was the Labour leader of Hull city council, Daren Hale. “This is devastating news for the city and there is real anger in the community toward P&O,” he said.
He argued that Brexit was partly to blame. “In the cruise industries there’s already a use of very cheap Filipino labour. One of the promises of Brexit, that we would be able to stop protect workers terms and conditions, has failed at the first hurdle,” he said.
“The government promised this would be one of the benefits, so they need to now legislate or step in. There have been words of outrage, but what we want is action not words.”
A letter from P&O’s chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, leaked to the Mirror revealed that the company hoped to halve its labour costs by replacing unionised UK seafarers with cheaper employees hired through the company International Ferry Management.
Rosemary Pantelakis, Hull city council’s lead member for employment issues who was also at the protest, said: “I’d like to know what sort of employment regulations these people are operating by. When you have a redundancy it means the post is not there.
“But there’s people that have been hired to replace those workers in the same job. It’s absolutely outrageous. Those workers were employed on European rights, and those rights are not there anymore.”
Speaking at a protest in Liverpool, Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, also called for government intervention.
“I say to the prime minister, you have to step in and you have to deliver on your commitment to strengthen employment law so this kind of gangster practice can’t be allowed to happen any more,” he said.
In Dover, the leader of the Fire Brigades Union, Matt Wrack, offered sacked P&O workers the full support of the trade union movement.
Addressing the protest he said: “You tell us what you want this movement to do and we’ll do it. And if that means occupying streets and ships we will be there to support you.”
The leader of the Labour group in the Kent council of Medway, Vince Maple, said he had also joined the Dover protest in solidarity with P&O workers. “I’m concerned that there will be massive ripples across the whole county at a time when everyone is struggling. As a former trade union officer I accept you may have to have difficult negotiations to make things viable. But what happened yesterday was the complete opposite of that.”
Maple also called on the golfer Ian Poulter, who is an ambassador for DP World, to end his association with the company. “I’m not sure whether Ian Poulter would agree with what’s happened, I hope he wouldn’t, but that’s why I’ve asked the question,” he said. “I haven’t had a reply yet.”
