P&O Ferries’ move to sack 800 staff was ‘awful’, says Sunak
P&O Ferries’ move to sack 800 staff this week was “apalling” and “wrong”, Rishi Sunak has said today.
The chancellor said he would now be investigating whether the actions of P&O were legal.
The shipping and logistics firm, which is owned by Dubai-based DP World, told 800 workers over Zoom that they had been made redundant immediately.
It was widely reported shortly after that P&O was planning on replacing them with cheaper foreign labour.
Sunak told the BBC that P&O Ferries had been “appalling in the way that they’ve treated their workers”.
It comes after The Sunday Times reported that the firm told the Department for Transport about their plans before they were carried out.
A senior Whitehall official wrote a memo to ministers outlining the plan and said P&O hoped the mass redundancies would ensure the firm remained “a key player in the UK market for years to come through restructuring”.
It read: “We understand that P&O Ferries have an intention to try and re-employ many staff on new terms and conditions or use agency staff to restart routes; they estimate disruption to services lasting 10 days.”
The Department for Transport said that it was not aware of the full details of the plan before it was enacted.