One year on, has P&O Ferries got away with illegally sacking all its crew?

theguardian.com:

O n a bright March morning a year ago, it took just a few hours for P&O Ferries to bring the careers of its seafaring crew to a shocking halt. Recalling the fleet to port, it summarily sacked 786 people, many by video message – with foreign agency staff lined up to take their place.

Politicians were united in outrage; the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, said: “P&O plainly aren’t going to get away with it.”

A year on, plainly, P&O has got away with it. The brand may now be synonymous with corporate cynicism, and a civil investigation rumbles on. But no one was prosecuted, meaningful reform is yet to happen, P&O’s cross-Channel ferry business is gearing up for another summer as market leader – and there has been no sanction against either the firm or its owner, DP World.

Nor indeed, against the directors: in a second jaw-dropping act the following week, the company’s chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, told MPs the company had knowingly acted illegally, and would do so again. While ministers insisted his head must roll, he remains firmly in his £325,000 a year post.

Few seafarers from P&O have been so lucky. Sacked workers have been restrained from speaking out by non-disclosure clauses in redundancy agreements, signed to a short deadline that gave traded enhanced payoffs for their legal rights. Steve – not his real name – was one long-serving seafarer who reluctantly took P&O’s money. “If you didn’t sign, you had a lot to lose,” he says.

No one on the ships saw it coming, he says. “I didn’t think anybody would stoop that low. We’d gone through Covid, all the restrictions, two rounds of redundancy. Then it looked like light at the end of the tunnel with strong bookings – only to find they’d decided to sack everybody.

“I’v