What's happening with P&O ferries

[Paul Halford]

Change the job title and description

[William Kean]

I do wonder how much of the loss is accounted for by “management fees” paid to the company base in the UAE with no corporation tax. What is more worrying is on a visit to India I was chatting to a fellow about sailing and was told you could get a "masters ticket" for the equivalent of £2.5k and my only martime qualification is a yacht masters from the RYA.

[Bill Morrow]

Last week the union UNITE had backed its members who were refusing to unload a tanker carrying Russian Oil at Tranmere, Merseyside. Why has UNITE and the unions not taken similar actions with the P & O ferry now operating normally out of Liverpool following the redundancy of its crew ?

[happy daze john in oz]

Tim #44, not just the UK did all this, many others as well.
Here in Oz we had at one time 5 vehicle manufacturers now we have none.
Food, we send so much overseas, particularly meat where the farmers get a better deal, than on the home front it has become expensive.
Clothing, shoes etc all made here once, now come from China, much cheaper but with built in short life time.
But you are correct, greed the one thing that controls the world, E. Musk and Putin, well over 150 biliion each, what for????

[Steve Neale]

export the jobs and import the problems

[John Arton]

Just been watching the commons select committee give a right roasting to the boss of DP world and the head of P&O ferries. They claim that without the changes made to the "model" the business would go under. Initially the crews were to be Ukrainian and Russian but that quickly became a no no. Some of the new crew are on £5.50 per hour which they claim is the ITF going rate for qualified seafarers, presumably for catering and deck crew. It would appear that deck and engine officers are being offered big bonus to sign new agreements so long as they sign by midnight today.
Also according to P&O they were in contact with the government back in November about the state of the business and that all new hires from an agency in Glasgow? are suitably qualified according to the MCA but where these new hires are from was not told.
Rgds
J.A.

[Peter Drake]

John I wouldn't call that a roasting the MPs were completely out of their depth.None of them had even looked at maritime law in order to ask hard questions .All they were trying to make him feel uncomfortable,he's the CEO for God's sake, back in his office for a G&T now.Many of the guys on this site will have sailed on foreign ships or with foreign crews it's been going on for years

[j.sabourn]

A lot of seafarers on those ships are going to be middle aged , and know probably no different from the life they have been living for a number of years. The chances of them being employed elsewhere in shipping is very slim. So you can say they have been struck down in mid life. Whatever redundancy they get is never going to be enough, but they should hold out and expect every penny they can get. I had to change my expectations at the age of 41 and it wasn’t easy, today it will be even harder. I don’t begrudge them every penny they can get , the shipowner and his minions ashore their life will carry on with nowhere near as many hiccups as the seamen are going to have to face. JS

[Colin McClelland]

Is this P&Os way of getting rid of all the Union agitators . I sailed with some of them, they were unsackable and a pain in the arrs.

Colin

[j.sabourn]

That’s the difference between a democratic country and a non democratic country where a person is allowed to state their political or any other rights and views.. They were sackable as well as anyone else if they stepped out of line .Talk is cheap actions count , the ones that got on other’s nerves knew their limits and was a small price to pay for our wonderful democracy. ? JS