P&O Ferries: Not consulting on job cuts broke law, boss admits

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

P&O Ferries: Not consulting on job cuts broke law, boss admits

By Tom Espiner & Daniel Thomas
Business reporter, BBC News

25 March 2022

P&O Ferries boss Peter Hebblethwaite has admitted to MPs that a decision to sack 800 workers last week without notice broke the law.

He said there was "absolutely no doubt" that under UK employment law the firm was required to consult unions before making the mass cuts.

However, he said no union would have accepted the plan and it was easier to compensate workers "in full" instead.

The P&O boss also said he would make the same decision again if he had to.

Huw Merriman, the Conservative chair of the Transport Committee urged him to resign.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60862933

[LeftishBrit]

1. Nasty dodgy bastard

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. As some have said (eg the RMT, I think), DP World is not fit to run freeports

It's been given the contracts for the Solent and Thames freeports, in which the company basically is in charge of seeing the financial laws concerned with freeports are followed. If DP World was OK with its P&O subsidiary breaking labour law, it can't be trusted to oversee laws elsewhere.

The acid test of whether the Tories are serious about making DP World face the consequences of its P&O decision will be whether they keep the freeport contracts. If they do, anything will be just a slap on the wrist, for show.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. P&O Ferries owner DP World loses status as partner in Solent freeport

Ministers have confirmed that DP World, the Emirati logistics giant behind P&O, no longer had a central role as a “partner” in the Solent freeport after the resignation of its UK commercial director from the scheme’s board last week.
...
Speaking for the government, Stephen Greenhalgh, a levelling up minister, responded on Wednesday night saying: “On 28 March 2022 DP World resigned from the Solent freeport board and are no longer a partner in the freeport consortium.”
...
Greenhalgh appeared to suggest in the Lords that the company still had a role as a partner in the Thames project. “The government is continuing to work to understand whether DP World or P&O Ferrymasters are in breach of any of the requirements on them as investors in the Thames freeport,” he told Bennett.

Last week DP World’s UK commercial director, Aart Hille Ris Lambers, quit the Solent freeport board amid local pressure, including from Portsmouth council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson, another of the 11 members on the Solent freeport board.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/07/po-owner-dp-world-loses-status-as-partner-in-solent-freeport

One down, one to go.