P&O workers 'desperate' after being told to sign contracts on less money
dailyrecord.co.ukScandal-hit P&O Ferries was accused of plumbing new depths yesterday after telling its new foreign workforce : Take a pay cut or go home.
Agency workers hired to replace the 800 illegally sacked by Zoom call claimed they have been asked to sign new contracts on lower wages.
If they don’t agree they face being out of work, it is claimed.One agency worker penned an email to the RMT union complaining about pay and conditions on board the firm’s Spirit of Britain ferry in Dover.He signed off by pleading: “We are desperate.”In one example, workers say chefs paid £2,336 a month on an initial temporary contract are being asked to sign new agreements giving them £195 a month less.Darren Procter, national secretary of the RMT, which is campaigning for the dismissed P&O seafarers to be reinstated, declared: “They are just as much victims as our members.”P&O sparked uproar last month when it sacked 786 staff without notice, to replace them with cheaper overseas staff on as little as £5.50 an hour.The mass sackings were condemned as illegal by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.And Transport Secretary Grant Shapps called for P&O’s £325,000-a-year boss Peter Hebblethwaite to quit after he admitted to MPs the company had deliberately broken employment law by not consulting unions.But Labour has accused the Government of “sitting on their hands” rather than holding P&O to account.The replacement P&O workers have been employed through International Ferry Management, a Malta-based firm set up in February just five weeks before a recorded videom message told P&O staff they were being made redundant.Shipping companies registered in other countries and operating routes from UK ports to Europe are exempt from legislation and can pay below the
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