Labour will force an emergency vote in the House of Commons on Monday after 800 P&O Ferries workers were sacked without notice. The opposition will demand that the UK government takes action to outlaw the so-called fire and rehire of staff.
The party said reports suggest the government was made aware of the sackings before they were announced and of the plan to use "exploitative" practices to take on cheaper employees. The Rail, Maritime and Transport union has claimed replacement crews are being paid less than the minimum wage.
Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh has described the sackings as "a line in the sand" ahead of the vote in Parliament, demanding the government strengthens workers' rights and takes action to urge the company to think again. Labour will call on ministers to suspend contracts with P&O owner DP World until the matter is resolved and remove it from its Transport Advisory Group.
Ms Haigh, the MP for Sheffield Heeley, said: "Labour will fight every step of the way for the jobs and livelihoods of these loyal workers. This scandalous action must be a line in the sand. If P&O Ferries can get away with this, it will give the green light to other exploitative employers.
"It is the consequence of the Tory assault on workers' rights. A Labour government will strengthen employee protections and ban fire and rehire to give people the security they deserve for an honest day's work.
"On Monday, Tory MPs must join with Labour and vote to ban cruel fire and rehire for good. They must decide which side they are on – loyal workers in Britain or billionaires riding roughshod over rights."
P&O has come under fire since sacking 800 employees without notice. Many were told via video message on Thursday that it would be the final day of their employment.
Union-backed protests have been staged at ports including Dover, Liverpool and Hull while the government has questioned the legality of the mass firing. P&O said the decision was taken "as a last resort".
Speaking to the BBC's Sunday Morning programme, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the government was reviewing its ties with P&O in the wake of the controversy. "What we're seeing is appalling and the way that they've treated their workers is awful, it's wrong", he said.
"What I can tell you is across government we're examining not just those actions and whether they complied with the regulations as they should have done, but also our own relationship with the company. The transport secretary [Grant Shapps] is in the process of reviewing all our commercial relationships with P&O at the moment."
P&O said in a statement following the mass redundancy: "We took this difficult decision as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options but, ultimately, we concluded that the business wouldn't survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements, which in turn would inevitably result in redundancies."
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