P&O Ferries sacks workers and docks ships

[weepiper]

P&O: Agency seafarers quit after hearing about sacked staff

Seafarers felt "like a traitors" when they heard they were taking over from sacked staff at Cairnryan.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[weepiper]

 

[MickiQ]

P&O: Agency seafarers quit after hearing about sacked staff

Seafarers felt "like a traitors" when they heard they were taking over from sacked staff at Cairnryan.

www.bbc.co.uk

That's interesting, The implication from that is that their replacements are not cheap foreign labour shipped in from abroad but people recruited in the UK through temp agencies. I wonder if they thought the sacked workers could then go to the same agencies and also apply?

 

[The39thStep]

Brilliant

 

[hitmouse]

P&O: Agency seafarers quit after hearing about sacked staff

Seafarers felt "like a traitors" when they heard they were taking over from sacked staff at Cairnryan.

www.bbc.co.uk

Love this story, infuriated at the BBC sub-editor or whoever who decided to change "felt like traitors" to "felt like a traitors" for that preview text.
Anyway, in non-pedant news, the RMT are also calling for people to turn up to the Blackpool demo the TUC organised and then cancelled tomorrow, which I imagine must be properly infuriating for anyone who'd previously booked travel/accommodation and then cancelled theirs:


Also called one for Cairnryan for Wednesday 23rd, travel being organised from Glasgow:

 

[spitfire]

Brilliant

She is a proper nasty piece of work.

 

[existentialist]

This is going to look like a lot less of a good idea when some accident occurs that is down to poor crew integration, training, management, morale, etc.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Nautilus International (a global seafarer union) has this to say about the agency used:

International Ferry Management (IFM), the crewing agency named by P&O as their new partner in replacing the 800 UK seafarers laid off on Thursday, was only set up in recent months – heightening concerns around whether the company is capable of safely operating ships in some of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

IFM is registered in Malta and has one registered director, Antonio Ciriale, who applied to become director on 11 February.

Mr Ciriale is named in the Paradise Papers – a set of more than 13 million documents leaked in 2017, which expose the ways that the rich exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.

He has been the director of many companies in the past, including two Swiss-based firms – Mediterranean Ship Management Ltd and NOE Management SAGL – that were liquidated last year.

Nautilus International is currently investigating the legality of P&O Ferries' decision to make the workers redundant and replace them with agency staff, with various legal avenues being explored.

Nautilus has also asked the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) how it intends to ensure that IFM can operate P&O's ferries safely under the law, after liquidating hundreds of experienced maritime professionals who are familiar with the vessels and the routes.

This morning the MCA responded to the Union.

'Prior to the P&O [Ferries] vessels entering back into service the MCA will undertake port state control inspections of all eight vessels,' a spokesperson told Nautilus.

'The inspection will focus on operational drills (i.e. the ability of the crews to fight fire, muster passengers in the case of an emergency and evacuate a ship) and ensuring that personnel have received appropriate training and familiarisation in the tasks for which they have responsibility.'

'P&O have engaged with the MCA and the teams at MCA have been briefed.'

Maltese crewing agency replacing P&O workers

International Ferry Management (IFM), the crewing agency named by P&O as their new partner in replacing the 800 UK seafarers laid off on Thursday, was only set up in recent months – heightening concerns around whether the company is capable of safely operating ships in some of the world's...

www.nautilusint.org

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

That's interesting, The implication from that is that their replacements are not cheap foreign labour shipped in from abroad but people recruited in the UK through temp agencies. I wonder if they thought the sacked workers could then go to the same agencies and also apply?

Was Scotland with the route to NI, seems the Dover agency workers mainly came from Colombia, which is a bit random.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Not sure about current setup but seafarers used to have their own pool that acted as the agent for contracts and paperwork . Suppose this has been taken over by some profit making agency shit now.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Nautilus is the officers union iirc

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Brilliant

I love the bit where she joins in the chant against herself

 

[hitmouse]

Oh, RMT also calling for a protest at Parliament on Monday:

 

[Ming]

She is a proper nasty piece of work.

Sold the story of her divorce from her husband to The Sun for GBP25,000.

 

[Wilf]

Sold the story of her divorce from her husband to The Sun for GBP25,000.

Was just about to post that. She also thought that her ex husband, who carried out several sexual assaults, only 'behaved badly' and got an excessive sentence. Wiki:

Personal life[edit]​

She married Charlie Elphicke in 1995; he is the former Conservative Party MP for Dover.[28] The couple have a son and a daughter.[3][29] After his conviction in July 2020 for sexual assault, she announced that they had separated after a 25-year marriage.[30] After he was sentenced in September to two years in jail for the offences, Elphicke spoke out in support of his appeal against the conviction and sentencing, as, although she felt that he had "behaved badly", she thought the sentence was "excessive" and criticised the court as being "on a bit of a mission".[31][32] After he lost his appeal in March 2021, she was reported as having ended the marriage.[33] In July 2020 she sold the story of her divorce to The Sun tabloid newspaper for £25,000.[34]

 

[Ming]

Was just about to post that. She also thought that her ex husband, who carried out several sexual assaults, only 'behaved badly' and got an excessive sentence. Wiki:

I remember when i was a younger guy working in Ealing Broadway. We had a party and at the arse end of it (when the music was over) we started talking about what everyone’s price was. The question mainly was how much would you have to be paid to walk the length of the Uxbridge road naked. Quotes varied from ‘I’d pay you to do it’, ‘millions and billions of pounds’ to ‘never’.

Thing is Tories are surprisingly cheap when in office considering how much of the public sector they sell off for a small bung. I suppose the real cheese cake comes when they go through the revolving door to the private sector after they’ve sold everyone out.

 

[teqniq]

I dislike PR firms at the best of times...

P&O Ferries using PR firm favoured by Putin allies

New Century Media, which has donated to the Conservative Party, will try to sanitise P&O’s profile following brutal sacking of 800 staff

www.opendemocracy.net

 

[bellaozzydog]

How did these nefarious fuckers manage to hire 800 replacement staff without it being noticed? If the new employees are non-British nationals on low salaries, how were they able to get into the UK with all the post-Brexit regulations preventing people from coming into the UK to take up jobs with low salaries? What are the safety implications of crewing large passenger ferries in busy international shipping lanes with entire crews who are new to both the vessels and the routes?

At work I make vessel management stagger crew changes for key critical roles so there is always a current depth of knowledge and experience on the vessel. Generally wouldn’t swap out captains, chief engineers and chief Officers in one go.
Full crew swap outs with unknown incoming crew would absolutely have a high enough risk factor to stop the process and put some heavy mitigation in place, normally leave outgoing critical roles onboard for a period of handover and familiarisation.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Haven't been able to find the full interview, but Novara have some clips from an agency worker talking to BBC Radio Humberside, explaining how they were all kept in the dark about the new job they were being brought in for.

Someone knew someone on the ship, though, and once they found out they would be taking other peoples' jobs some(?) of them refused to do it.



Also, I think there is now an understanding that those 800 who were fired could apply to work through the agency, and in that respect it's effectively just a 'fire and rehire' situation.

<edit:

P&O: Agency seafarers quit after hearing about sacked staff

Seafarers felt "like a traitors" when they heard they were taking over from sacked staff at Cairnryan.

www.bbc.co.uk

Oh, pissing hell, didn't clock this was the same story when skimming through

Anyway, think the article and the Novara vid have different parts of the same interview, so you still get different stuff from both

 

[pogofish]

So much then for P&O's claim that passengers/commercial vehicles affected by the boats being stopped would be found places on other operators.

Its just been reported on the radio that people and trucks arriving at Cairnryan are being told to "make their own arrangements" - ie, fuck-off..!

 

[pogofish]

Technically, I think that ships entering busy ports with bridge officers who are unfamiliar with that port need a pilot ...

Are the officers/engineering crew affected by this? I have a feeling that would be a safety issue too far?

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

So much then for P&O's claim that passengers/commercial vehicles affected by the boats being stopped would be found places on other operators.

Its just been reported on the radio that people and trucks arriving at Cairnryan are being told to "make their own arrangements" - ie, fuck-off..!

wouldn't that be a breach of contract of some sort?

 

[existentialist]

wouldn't that be a breach of contract of some sort?

They've just breached 800 contracts. I don't suppose they've really concerned themselves with such niceties.

They'll come back as O&P ferries, with whatever they could scrape up from the agencies to crew them, and it'll be as if nothing had happened (in their eyes).

 

[pogofish]

wouldn't that be a breach of contract of some sort?

They don't seem to give a shit about any other contracts.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

They've just breached 800 contracts. I don't suppose they've really concerned themselves with such niceties.

They'll come back as O&P ferries, with whatever they could scrape up from the agencies to crew them, and it'll be as if nothing had happened (in their eyes).

They don't seem to give a shit about any other contracts.

I guess there is that :[

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Brilliant

It is always a source of wonder how places like Dover elect Tory MPs.

 

[existentialist]

Brilliant

She didn't handle that well.

 

[bellaozzydog]

It is always a source of wonder how places like Dover elect Tory MPs.

Tory neck that

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It is always a source of wonder how places like Dover elect Tory MPs.

Possibly because after decades of voting Labour there are still no laws in place that prevent employers doing things like this?

Louis MacNeice post on the Brexit thread really does summarise it perfectly for me. People just give in eventually

 

[MickiQ]

Are the officers/engineering crew affected by this? I have a feeling that would be a safety issue too far?

A question I too have pondered. Jobs like cabin steward and bartender are probably fine learnt by the doing but driving a 60,000 ton lump of metal around in a small area like a dock probably takes someone who knows what they're doing.
Interestingly this email was in my inbox today.