John Lansdown joined P&O Ferries as a 16-year-old apprentice more than 20 years ago and was working as a chef when he was fired last month.
Formerly a Conservative and campaigner for his local councillor in Herne Bay, Kent, he is currently the only dissident to take a stand against his former employer. me, this laid off 800 UK-based cabin crew without consultation.
Lansdown was the only former employee who did not participate in discussions with P&O when the deadline to accept the company’s offer to cut staff was passed on Thursday.
P&O said all but one of the fired crew members had accepted the severance clause, which offered 2.5 weeks for each year of employment with the company and an additional 13 weeks for lack of interest. consult – or are negotiating to do so.
Explaining his decision to refuse payment, union member RMT said: “This cannot be allowed to exist as it would be common to the entire UK corporate landscape.
“I’m far from a far-left activist, just someone trying to make an honest living.”
Severance agreements prevent former workers from speaking to the media – employees are told that doing so will sacrifice their 36.5 million pounds pot P&O has been set aside to fund contingency payments of up to £170,000.
But Lansdown still resolutely sued this company. After going through two separate periods working with P&O, he will receive one week’s pay for each of his second eight years on the job, while former colleagues agree to enhanced terms that will walk away with at least £15,000.
Several other workers also spoke to the Financial Times anonymously about their layoffs and their prospects after the P&O.
One person, whose role is involved in ensuring safety on ships, said he has worked for the company for his entire career of more than 30 years. After a night shift on a Dover-Calais ferry, he was awakened by colleagues on March 17.
He was given 15 minutes to pack up his belongings before being escorted to the runway by security personnel, where he was handed a spare package. Hands shaking and still half asleep, he said he was in so much shock, I couldn’t even open the envelope. It was like being in a dream.”
On different boats, the experience is similar. P&O representatives boarded the ferry, marked their names on the sheets and read out a scripted message, telling employees that the company had made the “very difficult but necessary decision” to fire them. .
Out-of-hours workers heard the message on a pre-recorded video, with some receiving backup packages from delivery service Ecourier, with bright purple packaging bearing the slogan: “happy”. assigned”.
Lansdown said watching company employees board the Pride of Canterbury while he was leaving was “humiliating”. Several employees who spoke to the FT have yet to receive their belongings.
Workers at foreign ports also described similar scenes. Two British employees laid off in Rotterdam said they were busy arriving in Calais, had no food or water for the four-hour journey, and had to arrange their own transport back to the UK, no back until after midnight.
P&O did not respond to requests for comment on the individuals’ statements.
Peter Hebblethwaite, its chief executive, admitted last week break the rules on the sack. He said he ordered a staff change because P&O is losing £100m a year and cannot survive unless costs are reduced. The new arrangements will reduce freight costs by 50%, he told employees.
Despite heavy losses, P&O has agreed to increase workers’ wages by 3% in January, and offer better bonuses and survivorship benefits. “Why did they do that [if they were in so much trouble]? ” said one of the former workers.
Motivated by a raise, he bought a new car five days before he was laid off. “If they had given me three months’ notice I wouldn’t have spent a lot of money,” he said.
Hebblethwaite told the rest of the company’s employees the day after the layoffs that the new arrangements would help transform the company from “good business” to “golden business,” according to an email released by the FT. .
The agency responsible for replacing P&O staff, International Ferry Management, has re-hired 67 senior captains and crew, but most of the workers are new to P&O ships.
The government has an implementation plan minimum wage but currently, new P&O employees will receive an average of £5.50 an hour.
Because of this week’s deadline to accept P&O call for lunch approached, the officer in charge of safety checks said he had felt “blackmailed”, an emotion echoed by Lansdown.
His payment is almost double his annual salary of nearly £40,000, which makes it possible for him to pay off his mortgage. But he worries that it will also put him in the highest tax bracket. “I’m completely crammed for at least next year.”
After decades at P&O, he now faces a precarious agent job with other ferry operators or starting over elsewhere. “It’s my life, it’s my job,” he said. “I won’t get a job that pays like that because I don’t have the skills to do anything else.”
Another laid-off worker who accepted the redundancy package and is now considering a role in the renewable energy sector said: “I have a wife and children. What has been done here is extremely wrong. But when there are children involved, I can’t afford to [P&O] above.”
