A company you might want to avoid when you travel

Travelling to Europe? P&O Ferries is a company that you might want to avoid.

You might recall P&O Ferries attracting widespread opprobrium for abruptly sacking 800 union workers earlier this year.

The company laid off the workers without notice and replaced them with low-wage agency staff. The move caused outrage from British trade unions and the public.

But this being chaotic post-Brexit Britain, no action will be taken against the company even though it admitted it had broken labour laws.

After being ordered to investigate, the Insolvency Service now says there is "no realistic prospect of a conviction", Travel Mole reported.

The news comes as P&O Ferries’ parent DP World - an Emirati multinational logistics company based in Dubai - posted record profits.

The decision outraged union Nautilus International.

“This is a deeply disappointing decision and will be met with frustration and anger by the seafarers and their families who were so cruelly discarded by P&O Ferries,” general secretary Mark Dickinson said.

“Only one day after P&O Ferries parent company announced record profits, we are further let down by a system that fails to punish apparent criminal corporatism.

“The message is clear, P&O Ferries must be held properly accountable for their disgraceful behaviour.”

P&O operates ferry routes including Dover to Calais, Hull to Rotterdam and Liverpool to Dublin. 

Some travellers might think it worth finding alternatives.

Australian workers beware: logistics company under fire

DP World is a United Arab Emirates multinational logistics company based in Dubai.

It specialises in cargo logistics, port terminal operations, maritime services and free trade zones.

In Australia it operates container terminals at DP World Brisbane, DP World Fremantle, DP World Melbourne, and DP World Sydney.

So what?

Well, DP World is also involved in the travel industry and is under fire for its unconscionable behaviour in the UK this week.

Ministers and trade unions have condemned P&O Ferries mass sacking of 800 British seafarers to replace them with scab labour as shameful and “completely unacceptable”, The Guardian reported.

P&O Ferries’ services could be suspended for up to 10 days, disrupting its cross-Channel and Irish Sea routes, after the operator sacked its entire British seafaring staff without notice.

Workers learned the news of their redundancy via a pre-recorded video message.

Staff were told by P&O to disembark passengers and freight before being sent a video message telling them P&O “vessels will be primarily crewed by a third-party crew provider … Your final day of employment is today.”

Scumbag behaviour.

Long-serving crew were removed from ships by security guards in Dover, Kent, and in Larne, near Belfast.

Replacement agency workers (who should hang their heads in shame) had already boarded some vessels in Dover on Thursday afternoon.

Legal experts have raised questions about whether employment laws had been breached. - bit clearly  union workers will plan to black ban the company and its Dubai owners.

“The way these workers were informed was completely unacceptable," said a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson. "Clearly the way that this was communicated to staff was not right and we have made that clear.”

But Johnson, like Australia's own Prime Minister for Promises, is renowned for talking a lot but doing very little.

The RMT union’s general secretary, Mick Lynch, said his organisation was seeking urgent legal action over “one of the most shameful acts in the history of British industrial relations”.

DP World is owned by Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund.