P&O rejects call to rehire UK crew

P&O Ferries has rejected the UK transport secretary’s demand that it reinstate the 800 seafarers sacked with out discover this month, warning the transfer would topple the corporate.

In a letter to Grant Shapps seen by the Monetary Instances, the P&O chief government, Peter Hebblethwaite, stated: “Complying together with your request would intentionally trigger the corporate’s collapse, ensuing within the irretrievable lack of 2,200 jobs.”

He stated making the employees redundant with out due course of had been a “regretful step” taken to avoid wasting the corporate after contemplating all different choices.

Shapps wrote to Hebblethwaite on Monday to provide administration “one additional alternative” to rehire the employees and “go a way in beginning to restore your agency’s repute with the general public”.

P&O is within the means of changing the sacked sailors with company employees on extra versatile contracts who can be paid a median of £5.50 per hour, nicely beneath the UK’s minimal wage however authorized as a result of the crew work offshore.

Ministers have pledged to finish this loophole with laws forcing all ferry firms working out of UK ports to pay the minimal wage.

P&O has indicated it will be prepared to pay the nationwide minimal wage if different ferry operators did likewise, however insists it should change its crewing construction and put employees on extra versatile company contracts, no matter how a lot they’re paid per hour.

It has stated the brand new crewing mannequin, which is utilized by 80 per cent of worldwide transport, presents financial savings from the removing of job duplication in addition to decrease wages.

Crews are paid for the precise time they work — plus holidays — moderately than the earlier mannequin, during which they have been granted full pay for working 24 weeks a 12 months.

Hebblethwaite described this earlier mannequin as “unsustainable” in his letter to Shapps.

“I might welcome the chance to clarify this crewing mannequin in better element,” he stated.

P&O stated greater than 500 of the 786 redundant crew had accepted settlement presents, together with 67 officers who had accepted or are within the means of transferring to the brand new company. He stated 765 had “taken steps” to simply accept the settlement.

Hebblethwaite has come underneath concerted political stress to resign following his dealing with of the sackings and his assertion that the corporate knowingly broke the legislation when it laid off the employees with out correctly consulting unions.

Including to the disaster on the firm, two of P&O’s ferries have been detained by the Maritime and Coastguard Company following inspections on crew familiarisation and coaching in ports in Dover and Larne.