New crew on P&O ships will be paid at rates well below the minimum wage, a union has claimed
Image: PA Image: PA NEW CREW ON P&O ships will be paid at rates well below the minimum wage, a union has claimed.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “The weakness in UK employment law has not only allowed the mass dismissing of UK seafarers it has also incentivised this barbaric behaviour because employers know there may be no effective sanction to stop them doing so, and on top of that they can get away with paying below the minimum wage.
Lynch added: “We need new employment legislation to protect UK seafarers. The reason P&O have not been able to sack seafarers on Dutch and French contracts is because they have far stronger national employment laws.” TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “There was no attempt to challenge P&O on these unconscionable tactics or even question whether these actions were legal.
“P&O may pay more than the minimum wage at first to agency staff but they will eventually move to rates below this simply because there is nothing to stop them from doing so. It believed that “the business wouldn’t survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements, which in turn would inevitably result in redundancies”.
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