Chaos at ports as P&O sacks EVERY crew member with immediate effect and replaced them with Agency staff

hollydolly

hollydolly

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P&O Ferries today made all its 800 crew redundant with immediate effect and replaced them with agency staff - but union leaders told workers to refuse to leave their ships and stage a 'sit in' amid a huge row over pay.

Agency workers are already waiting at docksides ready to board the ferries, but P&O faces a battle to persuade its hundreds of existing staff to disembark due to widespread fury at its 'treacherous' decision.

The RMT ( National union of rail , Maritime & Trasnport workers trade union) said: 'We have instructed our members to remain onboard and are demanding our members across P&O's UK operations are protected and the Secretary of State intervenes to save seafarers from the dole queue.'

Labour MP Karl Turner posted a photograph of a coach which he stated contained 'new foreign crew waiting to board the Pride of Hull' at King George Dock, Hull.

Members of the RMT union are 'sitting onboard the vessel', so the new crew 'will not be boarding her', he wrote, adding: 'We understand that both current officers and ratings are to be sacked.'

P&O Ferries - which said existing workers can apply to the agency for work - preceded its announcement by dramatically ordering all its ships back to port and kicking off bemused passengers with little warning.

The unexpected news has caused chaos for tourists and freight businesses, with huge crews of lorries seen queuing at Dover.

P&O, which warned it could sack 1,100 workers in 2020 following a Covid-related slump in demand, said customers with existing bookings should still show up and they will be provided with alternative transportation.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the House of Commons he was 'concerned' by the situation and had contacted P&O - which now has nearly 2,000 staff - for urgent talks.

It came as DUP MP Jim Shannon claimed in the Commons that nearly half of P&O Ferries is owned by a Russian business. 'I understand that 40% of the holdings of P&O Ferries is held by a Russian company,' he said.

:oops::oops::oops:


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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...spends-sailings-ahead-major-announcement.html
 

"Labour MP Karl Turner posted a photograph of a coach which he stated contained 'new foreign crew waiting to board the Pride of Hull' at King George Dock, Hull.

Members of the RMT union are 'sitting onboard the vessel', so the new crew 'will not be boarding her', he wrote, adding: 'We understand that both current officers and ratings are to be sacked.'"

SCAB Labor! Would Never cross a picket line!
 
My grandma used to sing this to me---a lullaby.
Have to chuckle from that memory! If grandma wasn't telling me about the Cossacks, it was The Union!
 

hollydolly said:
P&O Ferries today made all its 800 crew redundant with immediate effect and replaced them with agency staff - but union leaders told workers to refuse to leave their ships and stage a 'sit in' amid a huge row over pay.

Agency workers are already waiting at docksides ready to board the ferries, but P&O faces a battle to persuade its hundreds of existing staff to disembark due to widespread fury at its 'treacherous' decision.

The RMT ( National union of rail , Maritime & Trasnport workers trade union) said: 'We have instructed our members to remain onboard and are demanding our members across P&O's UK operations are protected and the Secretary of State intervenes to save seafarers from the dole queue.'

Labour MP Karl Turner posted a photograph of a coach which he stated contained 'new foreign crew waiting to board the Pride of Hull' at King George Dock, Hull.

Members of the RMT union are 'sitting onboard the vessel', so the new crew 'will not be boarding her', he wrote, adding: 'We understand that both current officers and ratings are to be sacked.'

P&O Ferries - which said existing workers can apply to the agency for work - preceded its announcement by dramatically ordering all its ships back to port and kicking off bemused passengers with little warning.

The unexpected news has caused chaos for tourists and freight businesses, with huge crews of lorries seen queuing at Dover.

P&O, which warned it could sack 1,100 workers in 2020 following a Covid-related slump in demand, said customers with existing bookings should still show up and they will be provided with alternative transportation.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the House of Commons he was 'concerned' by the situation and had contacted P&O - which now has nearly 2,000 staff - for urgent talks.

It came as DUP MP Jim Shannon claimed in the Commons that nearly half of P&O Ferries is owned by a Russian business. 'I understand that 40% of the holdings of P&O Ferries is held by a Russian company,' he said.

:oops::oops::oops:


55470121-10622893-Three_P_O_ferries_Spirit_of_Britain_Pride_of_Canterbury_and_Prid-a-32_1647515903300.jpg


55473257-10622893-image-m-77_1647521122389.jpg


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...spends-sailings-ahead-major-announcement.html
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Fire and rehire? :mad:
 
I heard about this on the news. Sad. I don't really follow the internal British politics, but from what I have seen, it is just sad.


There is always a better way to do things and a quick and abusive way to do things.

Firing people at this time? While we are just now recovering from COVID?

Just not the right way to handle things. If necessary, could have told the employees and given them a long period of warning time, developed a severance package, job re-training...something...
 
Got love that 2 class system in the UK. The rich are hiding their money and their yachts offshore and enjoying the good life. The working class get the shaft! The media is putting down Putin's mafia friends with their super yachts. Plenty of Mafia types here in the west but we are too nice to call what they really are; so we just say that they are "successful businessmen."
 
Packerjohn said:
Got love that 2 class system in the UK. The rich are hiding their money and their yachts offshore and enjoying the good life. The working class get the shaft! The media is putting down Putin's mafia friends with their super yachts. Plenty of Mafia types here in the west but we are too nice to call what they really are; so we just say that they are "successful businessmen."
Click to expand...
Wrong, there are three classes...
 
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Packerjohn said:
Got love that 2 class system in the UK. The rich are hiding their money and their yachts offshore and enjoying the good life. The working class get the shaft! The media is putting down Putin's mafia friends with their super yachts. Plenty of Mafia types here in the west but we are too nice to call what they really are; so we just say that they are "successful businessmen."
Click to expand...
there is actually far more than that... ther's at least 7...

  • Elite - the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
  • Established middle class - the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
  • Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
  • New affluent workers - a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
  • Traditional working class - scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
  • Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
  • Precariat, or precarious proletariat - the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital

that said, there's also at least 6 in the USA...

  1. Upper class
  2. New money
  3. Middle class
  4. Working class
  5. Working poor
  6. Poverty level
In the USA...

The upper class, which makes up about one percent of the U.S. population, generally consists of those with vast inherited wealth (sometimes called “old money”). Members of the upper class may also have a recognizable family name, such as Rockefeller, DuPont, or Kennedy. Some members of the upper class work, but their salaries are not their primary sources of income. Most members of this strata have attended college, most likely at some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the country.

followed by the rest...

https://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/social-stratification-and-inequality/section6/
 
The new agency staff who will be manning P&O Ferries' ships are an Eastern European crew who have been offered '£2.60-an-hour' wages in a move union bosses have slammed as being a 21st century recreation of 'slave ships'.

20 members of the replacement crew who were drafted in following the sacking scandal were pictured being shown around a ship docked in Hull on Friday, where eyewitnesses said they were taught about pieces of equipment onboard.

More than 200 miles away, the groups donned orange overalls and were escorted around by a skeleton crew of P&O Ferries staff aboard the Pride of Kent. The new workers had no contact with those stationed on shore and the gang plank gate remained locked.

This evening, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps took aim at P&O Ferries in a scathing letter while Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng slammed the firm for axing staff after taking 'millions of pounds in furlough payments'.

Mr Shapps said the company had only let a 'very small group' of officials know about the decision on Wednesday evening, meaning it was 'far too late' for the Government to intervene.

Mr Kwarteng said the way staff were treated was 'appalling' and that P&O Ferries had 'lost the trust of the public' and given the business a 'bad name'.

It comes after MailOnline today revealed that International Ferry Management, a Maltese firm that will be responsible for new crews on P&O Ferries' ships, was set up just four weeks ago by a Swiss shipping boss whose name was mentioned in the 2017 Paradise Papers leak.

58-year-old Antonio Ciriale, from the Ponte Capriasca region in Switzerland according to Companies House, was named in the documents, alongside at least two Maltese addresses which are said to house companies he is linked to.

Billy Jones, branch secretary for Humber Shipping for the RMT, said the defiant captain of the Pride of Hull assured him that the ship would not be leaving its Yorkshire port as the new crew of cheaper agency workers 'still have no right to sail the ship' under maritime law, the Yorkshire Post reports.

He explained: 'They (the eastern Europeans) still have no right to sail the ship unless they are cleared by the MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency). There's still a P&O crew on board, a skeleton crew to make sure they don't take the ship away.'

Mr Jonen said the mass sackings could spell the 'end of the British maritime industry', and slammed the firm for turning their vessels into 'modern slave ships'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...crew-aboard-P-O-Ferries-paid-just-2-hour.html
 
Capt Lightning said:
Wrong, there are three classes...
Click to expand...
Very well put! The upper, the middle and the lower classes. We have them here in Canada too. The upper are rich and send their children to private school. The middle is unfortunately quickly disappearing. About the lower class, well, you can always tell by their value system but I wouldn't go into detail as my posting would probably disappear.
 

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