At 11 am on 17 March 2022, seafarers aboard vessels operated by P&O Ferries were told to attend a pre-recorded Zoom meeting. In the video, a besuited executive of the company announced: ‘I am sorry to inform you that your employment is terminated with immediate effect . . . your final day of employment is today.’ With that, the company had just sacked 786 people to be replaced by a crew of agency workers on short-term contracts to be paid as little as £5.15 an hour, less than a third of the staff they were replacing and almost half the minimum wage at the time, via the exploitation of loopholes in National Minimum Wage legislation as it pertains to international waters.

The rug had been pulled out from underneath everyone, as neither the government nor the appropriate trade unions —  RMT and Nautilus — had been notified within the legal parameters, a flagrant breach of the law, and, according to RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch, ‘one of the most shameful acts in the history of British industrial relations.’

Fuelled by the 2022 scandal and its national backlash, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh announced this week that the government’s Employment Rights Bill would close loopholes relating to seafarers, strengthen laws around collective dismissal and provide minimum wage protection for foreign agency workers. On 9 October, as part of the government’s media roll-out of its self-described ‘biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation,’ she referred to the company and its owner, the Dubai-based logistics company DP World — who reported a $5.1 billion profit margin in 2023 — as ‘rogue operators.’

The description was fair and accurate, and if anything, mild. However, after provoking a negative response from DP World, the government has been quick to throw Haigh under the bus, distancing itself from the popular sentiments of the Transport Secretary. Reassuring the company, which shelved a £1 billion investment in its London Gateway facility following her comments, Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that the Transport Secretary’s comments did not reflect the government’s view.

Despite grovelling before the corporate giant now, it would be nice if government ministers remembered their sentiments from the time. As Leader of the Opposition in April 2022, Keir Starmer spoke of how the P&O board’s decision to illegally sack 800 members of staff made his ‘blood boil,’ going on to describe the actions as ‘disgusting’ and a ‘complete betrayal of the workforce’ and asking then prime minister Boris Johnson to ‘guarantee that those companies will not get a penny more of taxpayers’ money, or a single tax break, until they reinstate the workforce.’

Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, has been sent out to defend the company’s image and improve corporate relations by dismissing characterisations of its practices as ‘rogue’ in an interview with the BBC while allaying any fears that the group should face financial losses for its egregious history by stating ‘it’s not the government’s position to boycott them.’ Jonathan Reynolds would do well to remember that he co-signed an Early Day Motion on 24 March 2022, calling on the government ‘to suspend the contracts and licences of DP World and remove them from the government’s Transport Advisory Group.’

Whilst demonstrably in line with what her colleagues had also been saying when the wind was blowing against P&O, Louise Haigh’s comments are clearly popular in the country. By July 2022, one YouGov poll estimated that while 90 percent of the country had heard of P&O Ferries, only 18 percent had a positive view of the operator. Following the board’s decision, P&O’s ‘brand Index score’ — which measures brand health as an aggregate of public perception — plummeted from a score of 13.3 to -34.9 from March to April 2022. Since then, P&O’s score has failed to recover to pre-April 2022 levels. A similar YouGov poll conducted in the fallout of the company’s layoffs demonstrated that 76 percent of adults thought that the P&O boss should resign, with only 5 percent supporting him to remain in post.

Louise Haigh’s comments were rather tepid, all things considered. Besides being clearly shameful, P&O’s decision was illegal. Under UK law, companies proposing to dismiss as redundant twenty or more members of staff are required to consult the appropriate trade unions, in this case RMT and Nautilus International. That P&O failed to do this was a calculated decision. At the Business and Trade Select Committee, Chief Executive Peter Hebblethwaite — who won the International Trade Union Congress’ ‘Worst Boss in the World’ title in 2022 — claimed that the decision not to abide by their legal obligations on consultation was based on an assessment that the sackings were so egregious that ‘no union could possibly accept our proposals.’

The company also failed to notify the relevant authorities or the Secretary of State where its vessels were registered of its intent to carry out a mass redundancy programme within the forty-five-day statutory timescale, causing cross-party shock and anger at the decision. The TUC has highlighted two further legal breaches by P&O regarding the neglect of director duties and unfair dismissal legislation. Neither P&O Ferries nor DP World have faced legal ramifications for their flaunting of the law, a decision the chief executive told a parliamentary Select Committee he would make again.

P&O claimed the decision was necessary to cut costs and save the company’s commercial viability. While the pandemic did adversely affect passenger numbers, parent company DP World boasted record profits, with a 52 percent increase to $721 million in the first half of 2021. The company’s supposedly dire finances also did not seem to affect its shareholders, who DP World paid dividends worth over £3 billion in 2023. Nor did it affect P&O’s Chief Executive. Just one year after the sacking scandal, Peter Hebblethwaite accepted a £183,000 ‘performance-based bonus’ atop a £325,000 salary in April 2023. At the same time, P&O was the direct beneficiary of millions of pounds in government support. Throughout the pandemic, the company had received an estimated £11 million in taxpayer funding through the government’s furlough scheme. This was brazen hypocrisy by a company that felt its industrial relationship with the country was integral enough to claim support from its job retention scheme, yet apparently not enough to abide by its laws.

After P&O illegally sacked its workforce, the company explained to MPs that it had calculated that the profits it set to gain from breaking the law would outweigh any punishment they might receive — and they have been proven right. Company directors and executives escaped prosecution, the threat of an ‘unlimited fine’ never materialised, and now, politicians who previously castigated the company are defending it from public criticism. Far from being punished for its behaviour, and without reinstating a single worker, DP World stands to profit greatly from the government’s controversial freeports.

While the new legislation makes it unlikely that the P&O scandal of 2022 will reoccur, Labour politicians especially should remember the disgraceful decisions made on 17 March. A rich company registering record profits, able and willing to provide millions in shareholder dividends and at least hundreds of thousands in senior management bonuses, flouted the law on several fronts — and claimed they would do it again — in order to cut costs by slashing wages and worsening terms and conditions. The decision, illegally administered and unpunished, caused almost 800 people to become immediately unemployed, cutting off their income streams in the thick of a cost of living crisis within a pandemic-ravaged national economy, all amidst soaring private profits. It would be easy to think of another adjective for P&O Ferries and DP World, but almost impossible to think of one milder than ‘rogue’.