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P&O Ferries sparks outrage by sacking 800 workers

17 points| lifeisstillgood | 4 years ago |bbc.co.uk | reply

8 comments

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[+] rkk3|4 years ago|reply
Had an expat US friend who was working for a UK firm try to give notice to his company. The company refused to accept his giving notice & threatened legal action against him if he didn't give it-least 12 months notice... So 0 days notice is surprising here.
[+] londons_explore|4 years ago|reply
I want to know how they plan to get 800 third party contractors sufficiently trained to run a ferry service in a few days having already fired everyone with knowledge of how these ferry's run...
[+] londons_explore|4 years ago|reply
It only takes a handful of the disgruntled employees to sneak some sand into the ships engine lubricant system and that ship is going to be out of action for a year...
[+] bmsleight_|4 years ago|reply
No consultation for a redundancy were the service remains the same. Can notsee hwo this is compliant with UK employment law.
[+] Traster|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that even if it is in breach of the law the compensation isn't much so P&O can do this and just pay off the people they're firing. Having said that, the scale of the redundancies open them up to other issues - like they were meant to inform the business secretary, but I don't know how strong that law is.
[+] gertrunde|4 years ago|reply
I read somewhere that they were exploiting some sort of maritime-related loophole, although the article didn't get into the detail of what said loophole was.