Anyway, yet another brand to boycott - not hard as I never used them in the first place (as they only do the eastern crossing routes there would be little advantage over the tunnel).
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P&O Ferries sacks 800 workers but crew refuse to leave ships
Well I’m sure the British Government will take immediate steps to help the workers and stop this (illegal?) fiasco…who’s the Transport Minister? Grant Shapps? So in good hands then…
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Yes we can. Had the UK stayed in the EU then EU employment laws prevent this sort of activity - according to a UK Trade Union official friend of mine.
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I meant the take-over specifically.
Yes, I have seen the same comment. It was always obvious that the type of “red tape” they really wanted rid of was typified by EU employee protection legislation, but after 40 years of misdirection the public thought it was something to do with bananas.
Which is fitting as we have now become a banana republic.
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Interesting to note that the French P&O Ferries staff are not affected. Perhaps someone should email Rees-Smogg about this “Brexit Bone-us”?
Disgusting treatment by P&O 
, I have closed my account with them and will not be travelling with them again, also the British Government had a chance to stop and outlaw this kind of treatment of employees by companies in their review of firing and rehiring in 2021 and choose not to, usual idiot decision 
.
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P&O are Tory Donors…
It’s such a shame when a company with a viable business has been hit by circumstances to come to this.
What I really hope we won’t be seeing is ferry boats contracted up or repurposed soon to carry troops.
I know 
INteresting to note that the French P&OFerries staff are not effective.
They’re probably just as ‘effective’ as their Brit counterparts, but unlike the latter they’re protected by EU employment legislation. However, given that many of those UK employees made redundant probably live in Brexit voting hotspots such as Dover and Hull, one has to wonder what percentage of them voted for Brexit…
Whoops! Many apologies. My phone’s keyboard changed ‘affected’ to ‘effective’. With not-terribly-hilarious results.
Original post now corrected - thank you for drawing it to my attention…
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When I worked for a large multinational with offices across UK and Europe it was always the UK who had to make people redundant while Germany, who were comparatively overmanned, didn’t.
Same in another huge multinational German company that owned a household name in the UK.
With some internationally responsible business units also based here in the UK, doing a type of work the UK is particularly skilled at.
3 rounds of redundancies in all locations, because the German operations (with huge weight of legacy staff they no longer needed but they could not get rid of) were performing badly. But far more jobs were lost in the UK company, who were already running with no spare capacity.
On round 3 those UK based employees performing international functions were fired and the relaxed but protected Germans got the work given to them and did it less well. Because German employees couldn’t be touched even if the average cost of a German employee was considerably higher.
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In 2012, I was very fortunate, that after being made redundant from a f/t university lectureship in the UK, to pick up a lot of teaching Continental European students with the Open University that had just made its Continental European staff redundant. The OU wanted to put all staff on the same contract, but my benefit was working online from home, or from our French house and working with some of the best students in my forty year teaching career. I’d still be working for the OU, were it not that one has to be tax resident in the UK
You have to wonder who thought this was a good way to go about this, it is a political, public and PR disaster for them 
Parent company made £2.9 billion profit last year, I wonder if they thought this is how we would do it in the UAE, so it would be fine in the UK.
Just another example of ‘dancing with the devil’ business partnerships that many countries seem happy to going along with, until things go wrong of course.
If it is how this is done in the UAE then I’m quite sure they can’t see what the fuss is about.
I once worked for a medium-sized American company in the UK who (due to internal politics) decided to close the UK lab operation. It was a shock for them to discover that it wasn’t possible to simply fire staff on a Friday afternoon, which was what they would normally have done.
I do also wonder sometimes if over-protective employment regulations contribute to the poor customer service that gets frequently mentioned on SF.
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If P&O survive this massive mistake it will be surprising,i think a lot of people will stop using them due to safety fears if nothing else.
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UK employment law has not yet changed significantly from EU law, but there is certainly a mystery in the fact that the 250 French P&O staff based at Calais and on the ferries are not affected.
Maybe it’s the fearsome reputation of the French trade unions?
This is not a good thing for freight costs nor passenger costs. Taking out the P&O capacity which was massive, is going to put huge pressure on every other route. Not good for businesses, and not for passengers