SHIPS MAIL

letter of the month

THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF P&O’S ACTIONS

Events in Ukraine provided an ideal smokescreen for burying other bad news. None more so than P&O’s decision to sack 800 workers at the click of a switch, replace them with cheap agency labour, and use a private army of thugs as enforcers. That must have taken a lot of planning, and the timing was carefully chosen. If P&O can get away with this, other unscrupulous employers will follow suit and no employee’s job will be safe. The ramifications are enormous.

However, the response of the politicians, pundits and trade union bosses was as predictable as it was hypocritical. They wring their hands in condemnation but the policies they all support – globalisation, open borders, deregulation, free trade and foreign ownership of key industries – have made decisions like P&O’s inevitable. Furthermore, they have no intention of changing those policies