P&O Ferries: Hold Chris Grayling to account as row over job losses and maritime safety deepens – The Yorkshire Post says

ONE week after P&O Ferries sacked 800 crew members without warning by Zoom, and replaced these experienced seafarers with agency workers on £1.82 an hour, the political repercussions continue to reverberate as MPs launch a Parliamentary inquiry.

The Yorkshire Post endorses the impassioned intervention made by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the House of Lords this week and ventures that MPs need to focus on three areas – how P&O circumvented UK laws on workers’ rights; the safety qualifications of new crew and continuing Ministerial links with ferry firm owner DP World.

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This takes on new significance after P&O Ferries CEO Peter Hebblethwaite claimed that the company’s actions complied with maritime law as the vessels concerned, like the Pride of Hull, are registered outside the UK and £36m will be paid to sacked staff. No amount of recompense will justify the hurt, anger and disquiet caused by P&O’s callous contempt for longserving seafarers in cities like Hull. Yet, if this case is to be a watershed for industrial relations so the pay and employment rights of British-based shipping crew can be safeguarded, MPs need to establish how P&O could ride roughshod over UK employment law.

The Pride of Hull moored in berth after P&O Ferries sacked 800 crew members.The Pride of Hull moored in berth after P&O Ferries sacked 800 crew members.
The Pride of Hull moored in berth after P&O Ferries sacked 800 crew members.

And with reports attributing responsibility to a certain Chris Grayling, it is only fair, in the interests of transparency, that the former Transport Secretary accounts for his actions.It’s also the very least that P&O staff – and their passengers – deserve before public safety is potentially compromised still further by decisions that appear to have been taken on Mr Grayling’s watch.

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