A Glasgow-based firm has been accused of helping P&O Ferries “fire and rehire” staff they sacked this month.
Clyde Marine Recruitment (CMR) confirmed some of the P&O workers who were brutally axed will return on an agency basis.
Labour MSP Monica Lennon said: “I would strongly urge Clyde Marine Recruitment to reconsider aligning themselves with this appalling case of mass firings, which is putting workers everywhere at risk.”
P&O Ferries has been widely condemned over its decision to fire nearly 800 seafarers, 39 of them in Scotland, and replace them with agency staff.
Chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite admitted breaking the law by not consulting the trade unions on the mass sackings.
The firm is facing boycott calls and the UK Government has given the company “one further opportunity” to reinstate the staff.
The spotlight has now fallen on CMR, which was accused by the RMT trade union of supplying a “scab workforce” for P&O Ferries. A demo outside the Govan office of the firm this week saw protestors slam CMR.
The Record can reveal that CMR, which said it had “no prior knowledge” of the mass firing plan, is helping ex-staff return to the company that fired them.
A CMR spokesman said: “We are an agency that gets jobs for seafarers. We have helped around 30 former P&O staff who wanted to return to the company. They are all on full UK maritime rates.”
It is understood some of the 30 staff have already been recruited and others are in the process of being re-hired.
Lennon, who dubbed Hebblethwaite the “most hated man in Britain”, said: “This is a clear-cut case of fire and rehire – and shows that Clyde Marine Recruitment are complicit in P&O Ferries’ despicable treatment of their workers.
“Helping P&O Ferries to re-employ seafarers on the cheap is shameful.”
RMT Scottish organiser Gordon Martin blasted: “RMT have been made aware of CMR desperately phoning round staff who have been disgracefully sacked by P&O trying to get them to go back to work on vessels they were kicked off by a rotten employer on March 17.
“We have been made aware of some extremely low hourly rates being offered as well as rates which, although considerably higher, don’t compensate loyal hard-working staff for being thrown out of secure full- time work to be replaced with short-term precarious agency work.”
Martin had previously said of CMR: “Clyde Marine has been a facilitator for supplying a scab workforce to kill the jobs for Scottish workers. That’s why we are here today.
“If P&O gets away with this, they will be coming for everyone else who believes in workers’ rights and fair pay and conditions.”
A CMR spokesman said: “There is a lot of misinformation about this situation. We are an agency that gets employment for UK domiciled seafarers and have assisted in finding over 15,000 positions in the last five years.
“We have helped around 30 former P&O staff who wanted to return to the company.
“They are not employed on the ‘cheap’, they are all on full UK maritime rates.”
Meanwhile, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said P&O Ferries will be forced to “fundamentally rethink their decision” to sack their workers.
The Cabinet minister set out a series of measures in response to the redundancies.
These include plans to create “minimum wage corridors” on ferry routes between the UK and other countries.
He will also urge ports to refuse access to boats carrying seafarers paid below the minimum wage and ask the Insolvency Service to consider disqualifying Hebblethwaite from acting as a company director.
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