The government is too cosy with P&O’s owners to strengthen workers’ rights

‘A decade-long assault on workers’ rights under successive Conservative governments must come to an end.’ Demonstration against the sacking of P&O workers in Dover on Friday. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images

Yesterday’s shock sackings of 800 seafarers by P&O Ferries was an act so outrageous that it prompted near-universal disgust across the country. The sight of security guards, apparently wearing balaclavas and wielding handcuffs, ambushing ordinary British workers and forcing them off their boats and into immediate unemployment was unprecedented.

These workers need a government that will step in and act to protect their jobs, not offer up meaningless platitudes. Shockingly, despite being informed of these plans the previous night, the government did not lift a finger to find out if these sackings were illegal, and if there was anything that could be done to stop them.