P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Like so many in my community, in this House and across the country, I am sick to the back teeth of working-class people in our society being treated with contempt and like dirt. That was shown graphically, was it not, with balaclava-wearing, handcuff-trained security guards boarding ships to chuck workers off their ships?

We have also had enough of the crocodile tears and manufactured anger from Conservative Ministers. We heard the Secretary of State earlier make the pathetic suggestion of a response including asking P&O to change the ship’s name from “Pride of Britain”. Now, if it were to be renamed, I would suggest the unwieldy yet accurate title “Pride of Neoliberalism”, because that is where it has landed us.

The brutality and authoritarianism of the security guards—people laugh, but it is a company whose parent company is in Dubai, and trade unions and labour strikes are illegal in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates—provided a grotesque spectacle of workers being treated like dirt. We need action. Forty years of the domination of neoliberalism and the celebration of the weakening of trade unions and working people’s legal powers have brought us to this despicable point.

DP World has done very well. It posted record profits and has paid dividends of hundreds of millions to its owner, the state-owned Dubai World company, in the past two years. Its own website has a press release saying:

“DP World announces record results”,

and adds:

“DP World Limited announces strong financial results for the year ended 31 December 2021.”

It states that revenue grew 26% to $10.8 billion and earnings grew 15% to $3.8 billion.

Today, the Government have a choice. They need to act like a Government, because what this company is doing is treating not only workers and trade unions, but an elected Government with contempt. It is saying to the workers, “You can’t do anything about this. We can treat you like dirt,” and it is saying to the Government, “We know you won’t dare to act.”

The Government need to act. Nothing should be off the table. That means that until P&O reinstates the workers, the Government must ban P&O from using British waters, cancel any Government contracts with P&O and DP World, including future involvement in freeports, and launch a national consumer boycott campaign encouraging citizens of this country not to go with P&O. If after all that P&O still does not comply, the Government should take the P&O ferries on those routes and run them.

The reason P&O has not been able to sack seafarers this way in France is simply because France has better employment laws than we do. We need stronger employment laws in favour of employees. We need stronger trade unions. We need a repeal of the anti-trade union laws. Let us stop attacking trade unions. We heard the nonsense about so-called militant trade unionism earlier. If the Government want to see militant trade unionism increase—because it will have to increase—they should allow P&O and DP World to get away with this, because all that workers will be able to do in response is increase action and increase strong, fighting trade unionism.