Vocal Voices

Mr Hebblethwaite, whose basic annual salary is £325,000, also confirmed its new crews were being paid as little as £5.15 an hour - below the UK's minimum wage of £8.91 - apart from on domestic routes, but insisted this was allowed under international maritime rules.

Mr Shapps said: "What I'm going to do … is come to parliament this coming week with a package of measures which will both close every possible loophole that exists and force them to U-turn on this.

"We are not having people working from British ports... plying regular routes between here and France or here and Holland, or (anywhere) else, and failing to pay the minimum wage.

"It's simply unacceptable and we will force that to change."

The irony? Let me explain. International maritime rules are an international body or rules (think treaty), of which the UK is a founder member. Only one country signed up to the international maritime organisation before the UK and that was Canada.

Do I hear the other side of the house screaming about how the UK is going to "ignore" our international commitments and obligations???

Of course I don't. Because that would upset the voters.

Isn't it wonderful to know that our government, on all sides, has such flexible morality!

Personally I'm wondering how they're going to "force" this? Withdraw their license? What if they withdraw the service? We talk about all the other services being stressed to the limit simply by a delay in restarting the service and by people not wanting to use P&O. If they withdraw the service transport and trade will collapse across the channel.

Personally I'm wondering how they're going to "force" this? Withdraw their license? What if they withdraw the service? We talk about all the other services being stressed to the limit simply by a delay in restarting the service and by people not wanting to use P&O. If they withdraw the service transport and trade will collapse across the channel.

Nationalise them! Seize the ships. Let GBR (Great British Railways) run them. Put the original crews back on them and rebrand. Let's call them "Sealink" .....

According to the Independent that's stealing. Well when the Russians do it anyway.

Then again what would nationalisation net us?

We'd have to buy out the ships at current market value. Then deploy a whole government layer of management.

Then we'd have to pay more than minimum wage, to prove we're the good guys.

Oh and the ~350k for the CEO? Government CEO, at least 1.6m

Then we can operate the service. Right now P&O is not cheap, they're quite expensive, losing business to DFDS and losing money.

So we operate the service at a loss. And continue to operate it at a loss. Gaining not one penny for it.

Then the staff, who are now working for the government, go on strike for more pay. Which they get. As Stalin said, gratitude is a disease for dogs. So the service makes an even bigger loss.

By which time we'll have spent maybe half a billion for 800 jobs.

Tell me again. What are we doing for the poorest in the country? Apparently that was an issue in the latest financial statement.

And how is Shapps going to enforce his new law? It would have to be for all shipping and there are thousands of ships docking at British ports with ultra low paid Filipino, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Honduran and other crews. He can't just make it for P&O.

There is no International Minimum Wage for seafarers, that's why flags of convenience (FOC) are so popular.

I'm with Ossie, Nationalise!

Suff, you are over egging the downsides. P&O are cheaper than DFDS and a Gov't CEO will not be £1.6m. There is absolutely no reason to operate at a loss.

Workingman wrote:Suff, you are over egging the downsides. P&O are cheaper than DFDS and a Gov't CEO will not be £1.6m. There is absolutely no reason to operate at a loss.

They are already running at a loss. Buying the ships at current market value means that they'll never run at a profit until the Government writes off the cost.

As for the director or CEO....

Executives on the six-person board of DfT OLR Holdings, which runs the LNER and Northern rail networks, shared £718,000 this year according to recent filed accounts.

Cheap at twice the price....

As for prices. With the £5 an hour crew, looking forward (you can't get a quote for now with P&O), of all the quotes on Aferry, only the tunnel was more expensive than P&O.

Irish ferries and DFDS were cheaper in all categories.

P&O hasn't been a cheaper option for quite some time. There is no way a Nationalised P&O Ferries with staff significantly above minimum wage could hope to compete. DFDS is running mainly French crews from the significantly depressed Nord Pas de Calais area of France where wages are way below the norm for France, let alone the UK.

Minimum wage in the UK, based on a 40 hour week, comes out at €1,850 per month. France is €1,540, Germany €1,580 and Spain €1.050.

Granted France is fixed 35 hour week.

But, even then, UK crews are not going to compete with continentals. Lithuanians are €607 per month minimum wage, Estonia €584 and Latvia €430. They work home contracts on the ferries with transport home and back for their off shift. All entirely legal. If you were calculating, the Latvian, for a 40 hour week, gets paid €2.5 per hour.

Scandalous right? EU minimum wages should be harmonised shouldn't they? Hence jobbing workers form Latvia working short contracts all over the EU under Latvian contracts. They get paid more than home minimum wage and get to take it home. Hence why the more advanced European economies are all running 10% unemployment or more.

Nationalise it all you want. But it will never make a profit and all it will do is suck badly needed money from people who really need it.

We get it, you are an anti EU Tory boy, but you do not have to make things up. Executives (plural) at £718k is not one CEO at £1.6m, as you claimed. P&O (SeaFrance, Sealink) and the LD Cat, were nearly always cheaper than DFDS, that's why I used them for years and years. P&O ferries are not cheaper because of the new crews, they are the same as last autumn when I intend to go wandering on a driving / camping holiday.

Love the bit about Lithuanian. Latvian and Estonian crews... So under Shapps' Law they will not be allowed to dock here. Is that right?

Just say that Nationalisation is Socialism and that you are ideologically opposed to it. We will understand.

OK, I admit, £1.6m was a bit OTT. But this position will be radioactive so any nationalisation would require a highly paid director. You aren't going to get a £100k director for a nationalised P&O.

P&O prices have remained over DFDS for years now. Only in circumstances where the DFDS ferries are booked out do P&O prices start to be competitive. I've seen this for the last decade. Yes SeaFrance was cheaper than P&O, you will also note it vanished. As did the Sealink cross channel route. Only DFDS has been able to compete with them and only because DFDS has a near monopoly on the routes between the UK and Europe and only the Channel really provides any challenge for them.

Shapps can shape whatever law he wants. It will only really effect whether companies are authorised to supply maritime services to the UK. Because he doesn't have the right to interfere with contracts for workers in a different country and, let us be clear here, these contracts are in a different country.

The whole thing about minimum wage was to try and open your mind about it. Failed, but the try was worth it.

Let us put this in perspective. This is 800 workers who were contracted to spend the vast majority of their working time in another country. They got the shaft. Yep, it's true. But let us have a bit of perspective here. If 800 UK workers in Cyprus got the shaft would we be up in arms and trying to "nationalise" Cyprus? Of course we wouldn't.

Just because the workers, the Unions and the UK government were totally clueless to the actual employment status of 800 people does not make this an act of employment mass destruction. This knee jerk reaction will cause tens of thousands of workers in the UK to lose opportunities that would have come their way. But now we've proven that if the people don't like something we are just as protectionist as the EU, regardless of what we are saying, those opportunities will go elsewhere.

Me? Don't give a crap either way. I was summarily ejected from RBS when we left the EU, along with thousands of others who were contractors and thousands of permanent staff. Hear anyone screaming that it was totally OTT? Personally I expected it and made allowances and moved on, I didn't care. Others were completely shattered, separated already, working to become Williams & Glynn, jobless in a month.

What is needed here is some perspective. Not ridiculous outrage. That is for leaders like Putin. It was the Law. It was used. Now it is time to sit back and work out whether that law was of benefit to the UK as a whole or not. If it was not, then we need to rectify it and warn any companies working in this mode that their days of doing what they want are over.

All of this outrage and beard tearing over 800 jobs?

Grandstanding!