P&O should be a lesson – we need to plug the legal loopholes

Before the grubby mass sacking of its workforce to be replaced with cheaper agency workers, I always had a soft spot for P&O Ferries.

A ubiquitous British brand on a par with Cadbury’s and Wimbledon, rooted favourably in the psyche in fond nostalgia, its sailings bookended many of my childhood trips to France over the years and into adulthood.

In fact the scope of its on-board offering was very much the final flourish, the last hurrah if you like, of these biannual breaks before a return to the usual routine beckoned. I recall a spate of P&O sailings at some point in the 90s, which included a cabaret – usually a female singer dressed in full showgirl feathered glam, belting out Whitney Houston songs; on reflection all quite an effort for the one-hour afternoon crossing to Calais and probably long since abandoned.

Food and entertainment were formulaic but effective; the shop with giant Toblerones and perfumes, the canteen with its fish and chip and curry staples where passengers flocked on masse as soon as it opened. When we were flushed with unspent francs, there would sometimes be an upgrade to the higher-end dining option on an upper deck. Usually called the captain’s club, this was a more sedate bolthole far from the noise of the soft play area, serving mostly steak, where tables had cloths and the walls were decorated with wooden ship wheels.

While for some, the ferry, with its fume-y diesel aroma emanating from the car decks and slow pace, will always have been the poor relation to air travel, best left to school trips and hauliers, I only saw positives. Much of this was steeped in the reliability and quality of the P&O service. Generic and mass market perhaps, but efficient with a notable absence of delays and last-minute changes to crossing times which could often blight the experience when sailing with newer, cheaper operators.

With a strong track record comes an expectation that the business will act honourably, making the fall-out of the recent failure to do so all the more acutely felt. Replacing mostly UK-based crew on average salaries of £36,000 with cheaper agency labour on hourly wages of £5.50 for the Dover to Calais route, all announced via a video message to a shell-shocked workforce, seemed to be an unthinkable scenario.

In this case, paying workers well below the UK minimum wage is allowed because by trading in international waters in vessels registered abroad, P&O Ferries is not subject to UK employment law. Specifically, a 2020 legislation which extended the minimum wage to many seafarers in UK waters but excluded ferries has given rise to this discrepancy. In fact, the only legal breach in this sorry mess concerns the company’s decision to forgo the “consultation” period employers are supposed to carry out with affected employees before making redundancies. It’s laughably termed anyway in its pretence of two-way communication and meaningful discussions when all too often it is a box-ticking preamble to a foregone conclusion.

Managing to swerve more acceptable employment standards and responsibilities is, however, a very cheap win for the business that has been in the hands of Dubai-based multinational logistics business, DP World, since 2019. In these supposedly more progressive times, where shoddy actions tend to incite heavier repercussions and reputations take a deserved knock, it’s surprisingly risky behaviour for such an established brand. How this regressive treatment of workers – both in the sacking of the existing team and payment terms of their replacements – will affect the business is yet to play out.

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Will today’s more socially conscious consumer travel elsewhere? Will the greater discernment displayed over more sustainably produced food and fashion choices be applied to ethical considerations around workers’ rights or will the focus on booking a holiday after a tumultuous last few years render the behind-the-scenes debacle an irrelevance?

Moreover, peanuts wages smack of the short-termist approach which ultimately so often fails. The message and sentiment this sends out to those workers in receipt is unlikely to underpin an effective working culture. By and large, times have moved on from when people were just grateful for a job, any job, and people, regardless of personal circumstance and nationality, have higher expectations around how they are treated.

Ultimately this is a service industry and passenger-facing workers will be expected to deliver hospitality regardless of their wages. Very few people can feel fully committed and motivated to go the extra mile and will keep an eye out for a better offer, ready to literally jump ship. Poor employment practice will inevitably filter through and manifest itself in the service experience.

Last week, P&O Ferries chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, (annual salary £325,000) was called before the Scottish parliament’s net zero, energy and transport committee to explain himself. It all seems such a waste of time giving him a platform to air empty platitudes and meaningless apologies.

“Controversial but necessary” was his response, and as someone happy to make the decisions and act in the way he has, he was always going to brazen out a few awkward questions. The focus needs to be on addressing the legal loopholes that ultimately enable poor practice to flourish, rather than MPs proffering rehearsed telling-offs and maritime-related metaphors. All of it was met with a glazed, impenetrable expression from Hebblethwaite, reminiscent of the staff on the check-in desk at a budget airline giving short shrift to angry passengers. No intention of backing down, and simply counting down the minutes until it ends so they can do something else.