Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Doctor Gollum]

I do find it strange that no one had an inkling of what was going on though, because having the new crews lined up ready would have taken some organisation... You can't just rock up at a port with 800 foreign workers

But that's exactly how lots of ships are crewed.

Absolutely agree, yet apparently no one noticed? My point is that the unemployed crews should have seen it coming.

[ronnyd]

Nice to see that a couple of Government ministers have sent stiff letters to the CEO of P&O Ferries. Good for them. Bit of a shame they sent it to the guy who stood down from the role last year. 

[tigers_gonads]

Both the company and the employment contracts written and registered under Jersey Law which is a lot softer / easier then EU or UK employment law apparently.

Still a prize bunch of Cee U Next Tuesdays though 

[Lizzie Zoom]

This connection with Jersey is interesting and rather dubious.

P&O Ferries are a British company registered in London, with their HQ based in Dover. Jersey is not part of the UK, but a crown dependency, and not part of the EU.

I wonder how P&O managed to issue Employment Contracts based on Jersey Employment Law, and why, when the base of their employees working is from Dover.  Looks like the work of dubious employment practices if all that is true.

It all stinks!

[Doctor Gollum]

P&O Ferries might have their office in Dover, but they are wholly owned by the company that operates Dubai port. The Dover office is probably a legacy kept for practical, ie tax efficient, purposes rather than an actual HQ... A working space for local management.

The Jersey office is probably a rental within a solicitors or accountancy firm. Fundamentally, the corporate policy will come from the UAE and will be based on their approach to labour relations.

P&O Cruises are a trading brand of Carnival iirc and have their office in Southampton. Like their stablemate Cunard, the bulk of their crews are from South East Asia. Most cruise companies pay their staff via employment agencies in the Caribbean, regardless of whether they like in Manilla or the New Forest and irrespective of where the ships are registered or the branding on them.

[Rangie]

Read in the paper today that the agency workers can earn as much as £2.80 per hour wonder if the pension is any good?😂

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

If a company has to pay people £2.80 an hour to remain solvent, they should do the decent thing and go out of business.
I dont see the argument that the crews who lost their jobs should have seen this coming.
 The company organised everything on the quiet, including security people to get them off the ships, and new employees being taken to just outside the ports by minibus without even being told exactly where they were going.
Not dissimilar to what Murdoch did to the printers when he presented them with new employment contracts which were little short of slavery.
Then when they inevitably went on strike, he sacked the lot of them, and had a new workforce, who knew how to use the new high tech equipment, already secretly lined up ready to replace them.
I had less sympathy for the printers though than I do for the ferry workers.
They were very militant unionists and earned a fortune for doing not very much.

[Lizzie Zoom]

P&O Ferries might have their office in Dover, but they are wholly owned by the company that operates Dubai port. The Dover office is probably a legacy kept for practical, ie tax efficient, purposes rather than an actual HQ... A working space for local management.

The Jersey office is probably a rental within a solicitors or accountancy firm. Fundamentally, the corporate policy will come from the UAE and will be based on their approach to labour relations.

P&O Cruises are a trading brand of Carnival iirc and have their office in Southampton. Like their stablemate Cunard, the bulk of their crews are from South East Asia. Most cruise companies pay their staff via employment agencies in the Caribbean, regardless of whether they like in Manilla or the New Forest and irrespective of where the ships are registered or the branding on them.

Yes, but as I stated the company itself is registered in London, hence the complexities of this case and the rights of British employees who operate from UK ports, and the Company’s HQ being based in Dover.

[Lizzie Zoom]

I mentioned before that employment law can be complex.

Well, for those interested in reading this:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/957335/MGN_477_Amendment_2_MLC_Seafarers_employment_agreements.pdf

You will understand how the rights of the P&O seaman are just that, complex.  If you read this in regards to the MLC Seafarers Employers Agreements, that applies to British seaman on both U.K. or foreign registered vessels,  you will note many legal loopholes that for me as a past mass employer suggests a company, such as P&O, can drive a ship through these so called “rights” that should give employment protection, but actually does not. Minimum notice periods, contractual specification such as hours, let alone any true form of employment protection under their SEA agreement appears to be so loose as to be not worth the paper it is written on.

In short, an employment lawyers field day, challenge, and an opportunity for lucrative work!

 

[Doctor Gollum]

It isn't registered in Lundun.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00237626

And according to their last tax filing, employed around 800 staff. On shore.

No mention of their crews. Ergo, P&O Ferries Ltd was not the employer of the previous crews.

Also worth noting that the claimed hourly rate will include food and accommodation and travel home on leave, and presuming that they are paid for the full day, by virtue of being onboard 24/7, they actually pull in a pretty decent income compared to what they might earn back home.

Condor Ferries crews average £11.5k, and apparently P&O were paying £4.50 an hour only two years ago... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/po-crew-earn-450-hour-3923380

I would wager that the 32 jobs McDonald's currently has in Hull pay thrice that. (The wage examples given are actually in $).

Not that facts should dare to get in the way of a decent outrage.

[Doctor Gollum]

That Hull Daily Mail article is from 2019, but confirms pretty much everything I suspected to be the case.

[STEMO]

That Hull Daily Mail article is from 2019, but confirms pretty much everything I suspected to be the case.

You're a walking encyclopaedia, lad 

[Lizzie Zoom]

It isn't registered in Lundun.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00237626

And according to their last tax filing, employed around 800 staff. On shore.

No mention of their crews. Ergo, P&O Ferries Ltd was not the employer of the previous crews.

Also worth noting that the claimed hourly rate will include food and accommodation and travel home on leave, and presuming that they are paid for the full day, by virtue of being onboard 24/7, they actually pull in a pretty decent income compared to what they might earn back home.

Condor Ferries crews average £11.5k, and apparently P&O were paying £4.50 an hour only two years ago... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/po-crew-earn-450-hour-3923380

I would wager that the 32 jobs McDonald's currently has in Hull pay thrice that. (The wage examples given are actually in $).

Not that facts should dare to get in the way of a decent outrage.

Yes it is.  Like all UK companies, P&O is registered at Companies House, London. But their registered Head Office is in Dover.

[Doctor Gollum]

That Hull Daily Mail article is from 2019, but confirms pretty much everything I suspected to be the case.

You're a walking encyclopaedia, lad 

Full of useless information me. Occasionally it happens to be topical... 

[Doctor Gollum]

It isn't registered in Lundun.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00237626

And according to their last tax filing, employed around 800 staff. On shore.

No mention of their crews. Ergo, P&O Ferries Ltd was not the employer of the previous crews.

Also worth noting that the claimed hourly rate will include food and accommodation and travel home on leave, and presuming that they are paid for the full day, by virtue of being onboard 24/7, they actually pull in a pretty decent income compared to what they might earn back home.

Condor Ferries crews average £11.5k, and apparently P&O were paying £4.50 an hour only two years ago... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/po-crew-earn-450-hour-3923380

I would wager that the 32 jobs McDonald's currently has in Hull pay thrice that. (The wage examples given are actually in $).

Not that facts should dare to get in the way of a decent outrage.

Yes it is.  Like all UK companies, P&O is registered at Companies House, London. But their registered Head Office is in Dover.

Of course it is registered at Companies House, in Lundun, as that is the government office to whom companies must formally declare themselves.

Their registered office, however, is in Dover.

Feel free to split hairs if you must, but to say they are registered in Lundun is akin to suggesting that your car is registered in Swansea. The DVLA is in Swansea and they administer the registration of your car to the address of the registered keeper. Companies House is the business version of the DVLA.