French and European ferry crew unions are calling for a minimum pay and conditions deal for English Channel workers in the wake of P&O’s sacking of 800 staff and their replacement with agency staff, reports The Connexion. P&O is reportedly paying the agency workers less than 2 an hour and the company is able to do this by employing new workers from areas such as India on agency contracts out of Cyprus, where some of its ferries are registered, and consequently avoiding paying the 9.50 UK minimum wage. The European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) is urging action at European level while France’s Feets-FO union is calling for a France-UK deal on a ‘level-playing field’. ETF General Secretary Livia Spera told The Connexion, “If they are losing money, there is enough money in the mother company, lowering wages is not the way forward. We can’t let this go.” Feets-FO head of international issues Laurent Le Floch said, “Our fear is that, for competition reasons, other firms could start to be interested in this kind of practice, which would be awful.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson told MPs there may be legal action and he would “take steps to protect all mariners working in UK waters and ensure they are paid the living [minimum] wage”. However, some of the sacked workers were employed via Jersey, a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK with its own laws. ETF believes UK-France ferries should apply standards of at least one of the two countries and engage in...
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