Foreign agency workers have been hired by P&O Ferries for as little as £1.82 an hour and some had to live in tents, a Labour MP has claimed.
Karl Turner, who has been dealing with the shipping company for years in his Hull East constituency, said that migrant workers were expected to work 12-hour shifts for eight weeks at a time.
The Dubai-owned company has sacked 800 workers, replacing them with agency staff who, according to the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, are earning less than the £8.91 minimum wage. Billy Jones, branch secretary for Humber shipping for the RMT union, claimed that eastern Europeans had been hired on hourly wages of between £2.60 and £2.80 to crew P&O’s Pride of Hull ship.
Turner said in an interview that he had known foreign crews to be hired for even less and implored the government to crack down on the practice.
“Ministers give you platitudes and say ‘It’s not very good is it, we’re going to have to do something about it’, then do absolutely f*** all,” he said.
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When asked how little workers are paid, Turner said: “What P&O has accepted previously in meetings with me and the RMT, they’ve said $2.40 an hour (£1.82). That was only admitted by them because we got some correspondence from the P&O management a couple of years ago which was leaked to the RMT. We produced those documents to ministers at the time. It’s grotesquely exploitative.”
P&O Ferries suspended its services on Thursday before sacking 800 staff. It attributed the move to £100 million of losses built up during the pandemic, although its owner, DP World, reported record profits this month of £2.9 billion.
Turner claimed that foreign crews on P&O’s Pride of Rotterdam ferry service between the Netherlands and Hull were also subject to poor working conditions. “On the Pride of Rotterdam, they work eight weeks on and two weeks off,” he said. “They do 12-hour shifts with a short break to eat.
“They can’t afford to get decent accommodation . . . so they get terrible multioccupancy-type accommodation in Hull, very often staying in hostels for about £9 a night. Some have been known to pitch tents for a fortnight.”
Sources close to P&O said that the hourly pay figure claims made by Turner and the RMT were wholly inaccurate and that staff were employed by an agency. They did not recognise the claims regarding working conditions and cheap accommodation.
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The government will not stop DP World operating one of its new freeports on the Thames. In the company’s bid to run the freeport, one of eight hubs where imported goods will be exempt from tariffs, DP World said that it would help to create 25,000 jobs and regenerate 1,700 acres. Rishi Sunak told the BBC’s Sunday Morning show: “I think one of the most important things that we can do is create the conditions for companies to create jobs for people.” He confirmed that the government was reviewing all its contracts with P&O.
