looks like they are about to go bust, have cancelled all sailings atm, with an announcement soon. Might have an effect of people fishing abroad atm

In reply to Post #1
You would think if that's the case they would take the website down for making a booking.

In reply to Post #1
It appears they are to sack all UK employees

In reply to Post #2
Monarch did,nt just before they went !

They have sacked every employee!!!

And even kicked people off ferries !!!

In reply to Post #5
That's not what the media is saying it saying there are reports they're going to and replace with foreign labour. Whichever it is there'll be an absolute ****storm from the unions if they do

In reply to Post #1
What a coincidence that their 120m loan agreement of no repayments ran out this month.

In reply to Post #1
Replacing uk staff with foreign agency staff according to reports,40%Russian owned.

Anyone use anything other than Ferrysavers to book crossings from Dover to Calais?

In reply to Post #9
Direct with dfds, free changes if you book direct.

In reply to Post #8
https://twitter.com/KarlTurnerMP/status/1504421582277652480

For those who wonder,
Pride of Hull is a Bahamas registered (ferry) in service with P&O North Sea Ferries.
P&O Ferries is a British shipping company (...) formed following the purchase of P&O by DP World.
DP World is an Emirati multinational logistics company based in Dubai.

so twitter says

In reply to Post #10
Just been on DFDS site but they say every booking is sold out for the day i want to go.

In reply to Post #12
my friends that went out last Sunday could only book on P&O all the others were fully booked they are due back this Sunday

In reply to Post #13
Just looked at Eurotunnel and they want 300 bucks and im not paying that.

In reply to Post #14
When are you going,just booked the tunnel for the 26th this month for a week return at £308 that's for a large van

In reply to Post #14
have a look at fishing ferry these guys are the cheapest

In reply to Post #16
A quote off Twitter, the Mirror reports "DP World's also been dodging putting cash into the the MNRPF pension fund (for P&O retirees). We reported in Jan that the company's billionaire owners spent £147m on a golf contest despite there being a £146m black hole in the pension fund."

I would be boycotting P&O thats for sure.

In reply to Post #17
Getting sick and tired of seeing stuff like this. It's every 5 minutes. Low and behold Euro Tunnel prices rocket as soon as P&O go tits up because they can make a killing. What a rip off this country is.

In reply to Post #18
You and me both.

In reply to Post #18
It's a carp forum for a reason?

In reply to Post #18
Supply and demand. Demand goes up and supply stays the same then prices go up. Same for everything unfortunately.

Need a few Rainbow Warrior escapades...that'll focus the greedy rsole's attention !

In reply to Post #20
And carp anglers heading to France and mainland Europe are affected.
Also, it gives them the chance to avoid the company in the future.

P&O is just another case of profit over service and employees.
Their actions leave a very bad taste in the mouth.

In reply to Post #8
Replacing uk staff with foreign agency staff according to reports


I can see it now, captain of the ship stood at the helm and the captain's mate stood next to him and the following conversation.

"Do me a favor Tamil pour me a cup from that thermos my mouths as dry as a chip I was installing a patio all day yesterday cutting the slabs with no dusk mask or water suppression.

"No problem Captain, bloody hell it was only a month ago we were coming across the channel in a dinghy and had parted with our life savings now look at us"

In reply to Post #17
Not just 1 golf contest but the whole of the formerly known European Tour and now known as the DP world Tour!

In reply to Post #24
They've opened themselves up effectively to 800 tribunals, no consultation on redundancies, could be expensive.

In reply to Post #26
But even if they paid out 10 million in compensation, they will soon make it back with cheap labour

In reply to Post #27
Only if people use them

In reply to Post #28
I will guarantee this will be forgotten about within a few weeks, people have better things to worry about. Its absolutely crap for those involved, but once the dust has settled itll long be forgotten about

In reply to Post #29
Sadly I probably agree with you. If they keep trading and offer the cheapest crossing most people with still use them as everything else is going up in price so saving a few quid is important to most people now

In reply to Post #30
you would have to look really good to find products or services that are not in one way or another connected to foreign workers... you gonna stop using everything?

So whare have all the foreign agency staff appeared from if they are foreign ? They must have already been UK registered emplyies as they were at the ports yesterday when the redundancies were announced.

In reply to Post #29
Yup

The news is that the government were apparently aware this was going to happen .

In reply to Post #34
Must have been spoken about at one of the lockdown parties lol

In reply to Post #32
As far as I'm aware, RoRo staff can work visa free because they're leaving british waters within a set timeframe. I may be wrong though!

In reply to Post #24
Very true,🤣🤣

In reply to Post #26


I hope they close the ****s down

Watching the news, DFDS who P&O are a part of made 8 billion apparently

Let's hope they get their jobs back and 100k compensation would be nice

In reply to Post #26
Dp

In reply to Post #18
My feelings exactly It boils my piss

In reply to Post #32
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-60792999

A bit of context on the agency staff story.

It's terrible treatment of staff with years of employment history / fresh out of apprenticeship with the promise of a career.

I can remember being in the shipyard in barrow when there was a huge redundancy push (similar story as welders were then drafted in on agency style short contracts). Dozens of stories of blokes who were given letters by security staff as they were on the job, then escorted to get personal belongings from lockers and tool boxes before being further escorted off site.

In reply to Post #41
Only got rid of the English workers and none in France etc.

In reply to Post #42
Because EU laws protect those French Employees.

British Employees would have been protected by the same regulations. But we (the UK) voted to ditch those pesky regulations.But we knew what we voted for apparently!!

All part of Bojos "low regulation free economy". Who wants all that pesky stuff that protects workers rights eh?

This is another example of big offshore owned businesses exploiting the black whole opened up in workers rights and regulations by Brexit I am afraid.

Because, if Britain was still in the EU they simply couldn't do this, which is why the French workers did not lose their jobs.

We were warned, but it was dismissed as "project fear".

In reply to Post #43
Well said, the cracks are starting to show.

Get it done, got it done, now what...???

A cluster me thinks

In reply to Post #43
oh BEHAVE !!! bringing brexit into it is laughable

we are talking about FRENCH worker that have balls when it comes to things like this ? dont matter if its the fishing or anything the price of diesel they block the roads

P&O KNOW they would never beat the FRENCH WORKERS end of ............................ bog all to do with brexit

They're replacing UK labour with cheape4,non UK labour.
Apparently BoZo has written a strongly worded letter to them.

In reply to Post #45
Correct, it's not brexit related. It's not related to the French causing road blocks either...
It's illegal in France (and I think Ireland) to fire and rehire, which is why only British staff have been stiffed (so far). They're trying to save money not spunk it up the wall on legal teams

What a shameful way to treat your fellow human beings.

This is what happens with big companies, the head is distant from the body as it where.

In reply to Post #47
And why do you think it is illegal in France and Ireland?

Could it be because they are both in the EU perhaps?

But apparently it has nothing to do with Brexit that British workers and only British workers were selected! 🤔


Come in please! Wake up.


I suggest you fact check your statement that it has not to do with Brexit, because under EU labour directives P&O can not do this. it's illegal.

Given that Britain is no longer subject to those directives I put it to you that that is why P&O chose all British workers and ONLY British.Had Britain still been in the EU then P&O would have had to follow the regulations and would have made redundancy across the board.

Now (as a result of Brexit) it's easier to sack a British worker than say a French or Irish. But as you say Brexit has nothing to do with the fact that only British workers were chosen!!

When will people wake up!

In reply to Post #49
They are not eu laws, it's not illegal elsewhere in the eu.
Don't spout off about fact checking when you are incorrect

In reply to Post #49
your soo wrong !!
FRANCE had made its own laws
BOG ALL TO DO WITH EU these laws were in place long before the EU
so stop making assumptions or stories up check you facts why dont you ?

they have lots of laws that really protect their citizens for instance if a French company decides to discontinue a metal detector
then it has to support it for TEN YEARS AFTER due to their longevity laws ! and thats got F=all to do with the EU either
people may slag off France but their WORKERs dont get pushed around and shafted like people in the UK

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/22/anger-as-ministers-block-fire-and-rehire-bill-in-commons

In reply to Post #49
It was brought forward this year as a white paper to try and change the hire and fire law to make it illegal..... the government filibustered it out of parliment.

The holding group took £15m of grants during covid and paid a total of £270m in dividends to its shareholders on the same years results.

Same group signed some major contracts with the government last year as part of the maritime 2050 plan. Apparently a certain Mr Sunak is very well in cahoots with the global CEO of the group.

In reply to Post #50
Yes it is... it is illegal to fire someone and just hire someone else instead unless you can prove neglect or give huge compensation... Unless that person is on short term contract of course.

In reply to Post #54
Unless the contract you are offering is completely different, or as in this case they work for an agency. In which case you are not making a like for like replacement. The EU is more heavily regulated but it is not written in law in every country. It's not impossible to manipulate the rules when penalties are at worst, financial.

In reply to Post #55
Turn it around however you want there isnt a country in EU where firing so many employees and just hiring new ones would go through...

In reply to Post #56
Unfortunately Noj is correct.... as i said the current government stopped the law being changed around this.

Agree with your view on the EU having a different outcome but its a tad irrelevant as that ship has sailed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/18/government-p-and-o-british-workers-tories-dp-world

Personally I'd love to see P&O go bust over this, but as others have said it'll soon be forgotten by most when making a booking.

In reply to Post #57
So, 800 seafaring jobs that don't currently exist are advertised and 800 workers are employed by agencies acting for??? to do these non existent jobs. They don't know where or for how long as they are told a permanent job may arise later. They are put on coaches which are accompanied by a group of security men in black utility wear and black balaclavas carrying handcuffs.
On arrival at the ports they watch as private security men force the current employees, who have been informed of their dismissal by "zoom" on the same day, off the vessels. These employees have zero information on the conditions of their dismissal. Must have been quite a feeling to be stood on one of those Quay sides.
Taking this action which drives a coach and horses through the laws, institutions and traditions of our country is a foreign based company which fronts billions for Kings and princes of absolute monarchies (among others) with appalling human rights records.
What will our government do, nothing, because this is how they want it to be.

In reply to Post #60
Let's not pretend our entire maritime history is based on humanitarian aid missions. Many existing ‘laws, institutions and traditions' are a result of sailing into the unknown and taking whatever land, resources or humans we wanted.
The government will screw whoever they want, as is our nautical and financial tradition

In reply to Post #60
100% Agreed buddy... the way they have gone about is disgusting. Especially after taking tax payers money and then paying such a high dividend payment to their shareholders.

In reply to Post #43
It isn't anything to do with Brexit. The workers contracts are based in Jersey, which means they're offshore and have less workers rights than UK/EU.

in 2014 I retired

and British Airways were in the process of making the Aircraft Dispatchers all redundant and then they had to apply for their jobs back on the new contracts at way less money and half the benefits and of course the ones they didnt want didnt get their jobs back
all this type of thing is not new

In reply to Post #61
I'm not pretending anything and my post has nothing to do with our nautical and maritime history. It just so happens the jobs are with a ferry company.
The point is we have as the British people protested and fought for laws and rights that prevent the government screwing us over. Unfortunately in the last 40 years we have allowed politicians and the last 2 Conservative governments in particular to legislate our freedoms, rights and laws back into the 1900,s. All on the altar of a deregulated unrestrained free market economy. The P&O situation could not make that any clearer.
If the thought of a foreign company, or any company come to that employing masked, uniformed and hand cuff carrying private security guards to intimidate and if necessary physically remove fellow citizens who an hour before were legally going about their business as contracted employees of P&O doesnt ring serious alarm bells with you and send a shiver down your spine I think you may be missing something.

When the Labour Party and trade unions grew up to protect people whose life expectancy was 35 years, who died in droves from chemical poisoning, pneumoconiosis, malnutrition, dysentery, cholera and every kind of mining and industrial accident the law was changed. The law became important. Scabbing, black legs and strikebreaking became things of the past. No more it seems.
The traditions of rapacious greed, callous,
brutality, slaughter and colonisation were the traditions of aristocrats, merchants, the products of the public schools and the officer classes. The traditions of the other 90% of the populace was survival.

In reply to Post #65
I managed to condense all that into..
The government will screw whoever they want.

In reply to Post #66
Only if we let them. We have stopped them before and we can stop them again. Cynical, hopeless defeatism posing as arrogance doesn't help anyone.

In reply to Post #66
Of course they will. The only surprise is that people are still surprised by it.

They knew this was happening the day before. Their mock shock and empty words of outrage are pathetic. This is the same government that instigated the sacking of thousands of care staff before Christmas- and then when they realised the great British unemployed weren't going to step up, they relaxed their own post brexit rules on immigration so that cheap labour from overseas could fill the huge gap. Sound familiar?

The shipyard I worked at was the single biggest employer in not just the town , but the region. Went from 14000 to about 6000 in a few years. The town still hasn't fully recovered.

Conservative government for you.

And New Labour too before I get the 'lefty' barbs.

As for P and O and the legalities of their horrible decisions, I'm sure they did their homework on it first

Halfcentury- the only way to stop them is to vote them out. But you only have to look at recent history to see that could be unlikely with Labour being such weak opposition and too big a proportion of the British public making excuses for the behaviour of the incompetent, corrupt and dishonest selfish behaviour of our current crop.

As always, it's regular working men and women who end up in the stink

In reply to Post #67
Having never been employed by anybody but myself I'll count myself out. But best of luck getting corruption and greed out of any viable political party

In reply to Post #69
Fair enough. Good to see people doing it for themselves. Make sure you have a good pension plan, ample health insurance and good legal cover. I fear if you are under 50 years of age you and many others are going to need it. Good luck. 👍

Jeeze-Louise! Yet another angry thread. Stick it in the Non-Carp Section with all the post from all the usual soapbox heroes.

WTF is wrong with people? Sweetness and light has been cancelled, it seems!

In reply to Post #71
It's a fair point- guilty as charged

One for Ken - totally unrelated and on an entirely positive note

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-evans-captain-america-bridger-walker-sister_n_5f104b5bc5b6d14c3363c473

In reply to Post #71
Ffs Ken. Get down off the box, TeeCee is due at 20 past

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In reply to Post #74
I have heard the wages that P&O are paying their new foreign agency workers is the minimum wage, in the Eastern European country they come from...

£3 per hour...

In reply to Post #64
British gas currently in the process of doing the same with their service technicians.
Many have declined and started their own small business instead.

In reply to Post #76
BG lost about 800 guys last year after they refused to sign new contracts that would give them worse conditions. It's left them very short on skilled service and repair guys. It's a shambles of a business. I do loads of subcontracted S&R work and BG are the worst I've ever dealt with. I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with them anymore. On a plus side they are treating their customers so badly that they are cancelling their service contracts with them in their thousands. Which is great for guys like me who actually turn up and who actually have more than five minutes experience in the industry.

My personal opinion is that within ten years BG will have completely got out of the S&R occupied sector altogether. The same as SSE have done and they will concentrate on just gas/power supply. All those little blue vans to run and pesky staff that god forbid don't want to be treated like dog **** gets expensive.

A disgusting business, run by disgusting people who provide a poor level of service and prey on the ill informed and vulnerable, with the sole aim of maximising profits. Avoid at all costs.

In reply to Post #77
A friend and I were partners and BG usdd to sub us loads of work, we had one BG customer that BG had quoted to convert an old system to a combi that her son got her to allow me to quote like for like and we would have been half BG price but she refused to believe we could do it for that price and more or less told her son we must be con men. She payed BG price but BG subbed it to us, when we arrived she wouldn't answer the door and we had to get BG to send a blue van man to explain to her we were doing it for BG, when we finished and explained the system and programmer to her she asked if she could pay us what we quoted for the job but wasn't happy when we said no you've accepted and signed the BG quote.

In reply to Post #77
I'd be more than happy to see BG go bust...like yesterday.
I remember before the industry was de-regularised and BG had separate regions...like Northern Gas.
At the time new regulations came in force preventing oil field companies from flaring off gas .
Now the gas has to be removed before the oil can be safely extracted.
British gas was being charged - £0.01/cubic ft to remove the gas yes that's minus one pence, they were being paid one penny for each cube of gas they took and stored or sold by the likes of Shell , BP and Exxon.
Needless to say customers were still charged the full rate for usage.
It was at that time I decided that the acquisition of a used gas meter from a row of soon to be demolished houses was the way forward. I need say no more.

In reply to Post #78
@ Glenn
I thought you were the Glenn that I knew that was a British Airways Engineer at Heathrow ? or have I got the wrong guy ?
also in the 70s I got a quote from a guy that worked for BG he said go to the the Hounslow shop look at all the central heating systems pick out the one you like and get them to come and quote you then you will get a breakdown list and a price and whatever it is I will do it for about half
and true to his word the £2200 he did for £1100 he said you dont need to move anything we will come at 07.30 you all go out for the day dont come back till 17.30
5 or 6 guys arrived at 7.30 in a couple of vans in mins the front lawn was full of pipes and rads we come back at 17.30 and it was all finished up and running

after a year he had left BG and started his own business

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/19/ministers-told-in-advance-about-po-mass-sackings

...


*don't tell Ken

In reply to Post #80
No not me Gerry, I did hnd mechanical engineering via the mod then went to Edwards High vacuum as a global service engineer for near thirty years but did city and guild in plumbing and heating and the gas qualifier cations while still working for Edwards as when overseas for long periods I would have long periods off when back in UK. Took voluntary redundancy to start up with a mate but unfortunately five years in he passed away.

Am i tempting fate by booking a crossing for May with P&O?

In reply to Post #83
bit risky mate

In reply to Post #84
yeh i know mate but price is £198 at the moment and just wondering how much they may rise in the next couple of months?

yes all this I will never go on P&O AGAIN ..................until you want to go on your French trip and they are the only one with space or they are sixty quid cheaper

In reply to Post #85
tunnel not much different last time i looked, as least you know you wont get mugged off and risk loosing best part of £200.

must admit, i stopped using the ferries years ago, find the tunnel so much better and quicker.

In reply to Post #87
Plus at least you'll know that you're also not supporting a company that's just ruined the lives of 800 of its workers.

In reply to Post #87
Just been quoted £494 for Tunnel and DFDS £328. P&O looking good at the moment

In reply to Post #89
blimmey

In reply to Post #90
Busy time of year apparently!

In reply to Post #91
ive just quoted £216 return

In reply to Post #92
Whats dates is that? Im looking end of May/june.

In reply to Post #93
sept mate...bit later than your trip

In reply to Post #94
yeh, travelling peak time unfortunately. Plus the week we go has 2 bank holidays in it. Just gonna take a gamble with P&O.

In reply to Post #95
good luck mate

In reply to Post #95
Let's hope the 800 they got rid of aren't there to wish you bon voyage.

Thats handy Harry. DFDS both ways. £204 via Ferrysavers

That's more expensive than the train

Why does that rather lame joke have an image of Diane Abbot in it?

In reply to Post #100

In reply to Post #99
I was quoted over £400 for the train.

In reply to Post #103
Blimey, I booked the day after the P&O debacle and got a price of £220