P&O Ferries have ‘got away with it’ say unions as Shapps backtracks on action

theguardian.com:

A two week battle to hold P&O Ferries to account for the summary sacking of 786 crew members appears to have ended with a whimper, as unions said the Dubai-owned company had “got away with it” after ministers backtracked on legal action and all but one employee accepted the firm’s controversial payoff ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

All of P&O Ferries’ crew working on British contracts issued out of Jersey were fired on 17 March, to be replaced by cheap agency workers. The firm gave the sacked workers a deadline of 5pm on Thursday to accept or forfeit a payoff which they said compensated for the breach of their employment rights.

The firm said by early Thursday afternoon all but one crew member, who could not be identified, had joined their redundancy process. The offer included a gagging clause prohibiting sacked crew from discussing P&O or taking further legal action. The promised payouts are understood to be higher than staff could have won had they sued at industrial tribunal.

While the government unveiled proposals to tighten up maritime employment law this week, including legislation to make all ferries serving UK ports pay minimum wage, there was growing disillusionment over potential enforcement action.

A spokesperson for the Nautilus union, which represented around a third of the sacked crew, said: “P&O has gotten away with it. There’s no fine, there’s no legal action, there’s only words and hot air.”

They added: “What we’re really after now is systemic change so this can never happen again.”

Ministers have ignored calls from MPs to use other sanctions, such as excluding P&O Ferries owner DP World from the running of new freeports in the UK.

The Dubai based group stands to benefit from around £50m of tax breaks by