UNIONS have vowed to stage regular blockades of P&O vessels at Cairnryan following the company’s mass sacking of workers.
The RMT union, who say the workers have been replaced by a “scab army”, is planning to step up action to protest at the company’s actions.
A major demonstration to urge people to boycott P&O is planned for Wednesday, with buses taking protesters from Glasgow to the port in south-west Scotland.
But the union has also vowed to take direct action by blockading P&O vessels “on a regular basis” when the company resumes sailings again.
Gordon Martin, below, RMT Regional Organiser for Scotland, said around 80-100 staff between Scotland and Northern Ireland were believed to have been affected by the sackings.
He said: “The company are saying the staff are redundant – but a redundancy situation means you are leaving a business because there is no work for you to do.
“It doesn’t mean they replace you by other alternative employees.
“It is clearly not a redundancy situation, it is clearly a mass sacking of a loyal workforce by a scab army.”
Martin said the union would take legal action on behalf of affected members, but added P&O was prepared to take the risk that employment law is “so heavily weighted in favour of employers in Britain that they will get away with it”.
He added: “It may cost them money and it will cost them money, as we will pursue them through the courts, but it is a price they are willing to pay.
“It is an unacceptable price as it throws workers on the scrapheap and it decimates local community.
“The RMT will be doing everything in our power to overturn this disgraceful mass sacking.”
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One of the agency workers who was hired to replace the sacked P&O staff told the Sunday National how he was kept in the dark over what was happening.
Mark Canet-Baldwin, from Hull, travelled to Glasgow on Monday to work as an onboard services manager – but said the agency who hired him could not tell him anything about the vessel he was due to work on, other than it was a new ship.
He said suspicions were raised over the presence of security staff in tow when they travelled to the vessel on Thursday morning, but it was not until they arrived at Cairnryan and saw the P&O European Highlander docked they realised what was happening.
“There was a guy that had worked on the vessel a few weeks before who had a phone number for a couple of people on board, so he called them on the quiet,” he said.
“They told us we have all been sacked, said we have all been fired with immediate effect.
“We thought that is what they have brought us here for to fill in?
“I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I took this job, so I just basically stood up in the bus and said guys I am sorry I can’t do this I think is it wrong. I left the bus and two others came as well.”
He added: “I felt sick that I had been put in that situation.
“I’m sure every other guy that went to join a vessel around the country was told the same thing.
“Once we knew what had happened, we were just in shock as well. These are our fellow seafarers.”
P&O Ferries have defended both the sackings and the way in which they were carried out.
The firm has blamed a £100m year-on-year loss for its actions and said “all efforts” were made to notify crew personally of what was happening.
BUT speaking on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday, Gregor Gall, visiting professor of industrial relations at Leeds University, said it was a very unusual situation.
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“What this represents … is the mass sacking of workers, where they are not given the option even to have their jobs back on lesser terms and conditions,” he said.
“So we would have to go back to the 1980s, the 1990s to find other similar cases of mass sackings, which is basically people turning up for work, given no notice and told that with immediate effect they are without jobs.”
Gall also disputed the idea that the firm had to take the action because of losing money during the pandemic.
He said: “Other employers haven’t taken such brutal steps. We must also recall the owners of P&O are DP World which is Dubai Ports, which is one of the richest employers in the world given where their source of income stems from, basically oil-based income in the United Arab Emirates.
“So I think the argument the company was pleading poverty is not a particularly convincing one.”
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