Grant Shapps’ response to P&O Ferries won’t get its sacked workers their jobs back
Grant Shapps sounded terribly pleased with his nine-point response to the P&O Ferries debacle, but it is hard to see how any of the transport secretary’s measures will force the company to reinstate the 800 workers it sacked without consultation a fortnight ago, which seemed the government’s aim only a few days ago.
The toughest new policy will create powers to block ferries with crews paid less than the minimum wage from British ports. The Harbours Act of 1965 will be revised via primary legislation; until then, port operators will be told to refuse access to non-compliant ferries.
Fine, that reform will close a minimum wage loophole – or, rather, a door that the government deliberately left open for ferry firms when it altered rules covering other seafarers in 2020, Tim Tyndall, employment partner at Keystone Law, told this paper this week. But P&O Ferries will probably regard the change as perfectly acceptable from its point of view.
The company, it seems, cannot be compelled to reinstate anybody on old rates – ones that worked out at £36,000 on average under a Jersey-based contract, according to chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite. In the meantime, P&O Ferries’ competitors, the under-cutters he grumbled about, will have to fall into line with enforcement of minimum wages. So P&O Ferries won’t be able to pay its irregular crew of agency staff £5.50 an hour average, which was its plan A, but it may get the “level playing field” it said it sought.
In the meantime, DP World, the parent company that blessed the law-breaking sackings and is the power behind the ferries, probably now has fewer reasons to fear being thrown off the UK’s freeport programme, where its big assets are ports in the Thames and Solent. Shapps said the
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