P&O Ferries rejects plea from Grant Shapps for U-turn on sackings
P&O Ferries has rejected the government’s call to move this week’s deadline for the 800 sacked workers to accept redundancy offers, saying most had already signed contracts and ministers were “ignoring the situation’s fundamental and factual realities”.
In a bullish response to transport secretary Grant Shapps, the ferry operator’s chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, said the demand was legally impossible and would close the firm down.
He wrote to Shapps: “Complying with your request would deliberately cause the company’s collapse, resulting in the irretrievable loss of an additional 2,200 jobs. I cannot imagine that you would wish to compel an employer to bring about its downfall, affecting not hundreds but thousands of families.”
Hebblethwaite said that more than 765 of the 786 crew members summarily sacked on 17 March had “taken steps to accept the settlement offer”, and more than 500 had signed legally binding agreements. That included 67 officers who were planning to continue to work on P&O’s vessels with the new agency crew.
Shapps had written to P&O Ferries on Monday offering “one last opportunity” to U-turn on its extraordinary and illegal sacking of the UK-based crew, working on Jersey contracts, before bringing in a planned package of legal measures to force its hand.
The transport secretary is expected to unveil an eight-point plan to parliament on Wednesday that will include tightening employment laws for ship operators in UK waters, and tackling minimum pay.
Hebblethwaite wrote that the firm welcomed proposals to increase the minimum wage for all seafarers in UK waters, adding: “From the outset, P&O Ferries has called for a level playing field regarding salaries on British ferry routes.”
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