P&O FERRIES DOVER: AN AGENCY EMPLOYEE’S STORY.

Allegedly the instructions sent to Interforce security guards ( many are ex-military) on 17 March 2022.Note the comment about ‘Cuffs, Utility belt and Body Armour?’  Against long-serving employees who had done nothing wrong.Remember the miners’ strike? Well, it looks like Thatcherism all over again, doesn’t it?

 I usually got called for a P&O ferry assignment in Dover once or twice yearly and although well aware of the temporary nature of one week’s work, even I’d be dumbfounded to be sacked via Zoom call.
A week on a Peninsular and Orient ferry wasn’t a job particularly sought out by agency crew, mainly due to the low daily pay rate – about the worst in UK shipping, I’m sad to say.

However, and although deep-sea Merchant Navy, I reasoned that it was only one week.Problematical though was the first hurdle insofar as P&O wouldn’t pay actual travel expenses to Dover.Instead the seafarer was paid an extra day’s pay to cover travel costs, which travelling from the Liverpool area just about covered the off-peak train ticket, but obviously the further north from Dover the guys and girls lived the more they were out of pocket.

So the majority of crews lived around Kent, especially Dover and Deal. I would estimate that over the past year one third were agency staff – the least remunerative jobs were those at zero hours contract, some crew actually experienced travelling in to work only to be told they weren’t needed that day. Go home, they were told.

And agency crew with a Seafarers Employee Agreement (SEA) fared a little better in that their week’s contract couldn’t be cancelled by P&O providingthe terms of that contract were adhered to – but P&O certainly didn’t do that on March 17, did they?

So that left contracted staff, many of these with the company since the 1990’s.From catering crew to skippers, all had seen terms and conditions, pay and crew welfare deteriorate in this time-frame.

And nearly all would report on a poorly-managed company where bullying was endemic; of time worked in excess of hours of rest; of impossible targets unmet; of hastily rearranged shifts and missed meal breaks, etc.From 2019 to 2021, for example, hardly anyone at sea received a pay-rise as far as I’m aware – this was confirmed by the constant grumbling from contract colleagues.

Despite this drop in morale, I personally found most crews cheerful and helpful to agency staff; some ships, just like any workplaces were better than others and indeed, the Spirit of France was a ‘happy ship.’I was impressed to notice that groups of the France’s two crews regularly met up (with their families) for meals, drinks and get-togethers around Deal and Dover – a nice social aspect of the job.

I found the Pride of Kent’s crew similarly good company, but whilst joining in 2020 I was informed that to sign on Pride of Kent I would have to apply for a Cyprus discharge book. 
What’s wrong with my UK book?’, I asked, only to be told there was now a flag-of-convenience Cypriot flag on the stern and that if I didn’t like it I could go.
Well, my view is that if a UK book was good enough for merchant seamen in WW2, it should be good enough now.So not wishing to sell my soul to the Devil I left the ship that first day.

There was a massive blame culture – something I’d hardly experienced deep-sea and shifts were 12 hours on/off with a concessionary 45 minutes meal break – mostly the industry norm – but by this time it was noted that more eastern European agency crew were appearing.Eager to work rosters in excess of one week they entered all departments: deck, engine and catering and previously this wouldn’t have happened due in part to agreement with the French maritime union General Federation of Labour (CGT)  who stated that only British or French sea staff were to be employed on the eastern Channel. CGT (membership: three quarters of a million), a hardline union who with typical French militancy could shut down any ferry sailing – they didn’t mess about –  and for their part P&O were afraid of them. So the rules were followed.

Our unions would, of course, liked to have had the same preferential power had they not been rendered toothless by UK anti-union legislation.But for various reasons, the British/French crew-only pact was gradually watered down which gave P&O the foothold they needed to needed to go for the least-cost option.

CGT promises ‘solidarity with RMT and Nautilus trade unions’ (1) and it is interesting to note that no seagoing French employees have been made redundant from the company. Whether this is due to French employees enjoying protection under the Code du Travail  (2): basically P&O would need to go through a long process with their crew members over the Channel.It doesn’t take much to figure out that French workers are not an easy target.

On the U.K. side, reports state that whilst 800 seafarers were immediately sacked, there were a further 300 employees in P&O office in Dover who seemingly retained their jobs.

Although it seems strange that no office staff were displaced, what is widely understood in Dover of this huge white office – locally known as the ‘wedding cake’ due to its similar appearance – has seen a surge in employee numbers whilst at the same time, crew members on ships needing a replacement due to sickness or course attendance just didn’t get one.

‘There’s no-one around to recruit’ was the lame excuse given by the office and although the seafarer managed to go home, this meant an absent crew member which added to the work load of others.

 Nearly everyone in Dover knew someone who worked at the ‘wedding cake’ who would describe in full  the accountancy-led decisions; how the office was building its own little empire of admin and business analysts there, and that relations between office and sea staff were so bad that some office workers would disparagingly refer to the ferry crews as the ‘boat people.’

After three years at a maritime college prior to P&O you’d have preferred to be known to your employers as someone other than a ‘boat person’ , but that notwithstanding, I’d have thought that 300 office staff to 800 ship’s crew is quite a skewed number, ie., one pen-pusher to three skilled seafarers – surely not?

Anyway, in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, P&O embarked on the first redundancies.In fairness, the  absence of business was dire, but soon after paying-off some long-term seafarers with five-figure payments, several were immediately re-hired the next week under the very same salary.

That’s an awful lot of money wasted, but I doubt if the guys getting the golden handshake were bothered.In fact, it’s undeniable that some seafarers in their later years might find this round of redundancy payments to their advantage.
But that isn’t the point. What’s relevant is that British seafarers in Dover are no longer employed. Which means that their families and dependants are impacted; as the Commons Select Committee asked P&O’s CEO Peter Hebblethwaite on 25 March: ‘could you live on £5:50 per hour?’ (the CEO did not reply).

Returning to the mass sacking via Zoom – this reminded me of Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 in which anti-hero Winston Smith, is regularly summoned to the telescreen.

But instead of Orwell’s Ministry of Thought it was P&O who communicated workers’ sackings through a grainy image of a grey, middle-aged businessman (it seems he’s a senior executive) through a brief two-minute statement.
His dreary face lacked any form and was expressionless, his tone of voice as cold as a landlord’s heart and if the senior executive is reading this, I’m sorry if it sounds personal.

But you had every opportunity to follow the rule of law didn’t you, pal?You could have told CEO Hebblethwaite to sit down and confer with seafarers. You could even have told Hebblethwaite to get someone else to do his dirty work for him. But you didn’t, instead choosing to centre your own brand of moral relativism on money and higher share dividends.

You said P&0 Ferries lost £100 mn, but they paid out £230 mn to shareholders, did they not?Which sums it all up. Not only are P&O content to destroy livelihoods, but also the camaraderie and dignity of seafarers. This company know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

REFERENCES:

1) http://www.nautilus it.org CGT France expresses solidarity with RMT and Nautilus campaign against P&0 Ferries 25.03.2022 (accessed 28.03.2022)

2) the local.fr Code du Travail 02.03.2022 (accessed 28.03.2022)