Hacker News Reader

No consultation for a redundancy were the service remains the same. Can notsee hwo this is compliant with UK employment law.

View on HN

The problem is that even if it is in breach of the law the compensation isn't much so P&O can do this and just pay off the people they're firing. Having said that, the scale of the redundancies open them up to other issues - like they were meant to inform the business secretary, but I don't know how strong that law is.

I read somewhere that they were exploiting some sort of maritime-related loophole, although the article didn't get into the detail of what said loophole was.

These are seafarers working on Cypriot flagged vessels used in international voyages.

UK employment law is entirely irrelevant here, only international maritime law applies.

To put it in context, P&O Ferries has always been UK based and flagged until it's sold to a Dubai owner in 2006 and it's reflagged to Cyprus early 2019. That opened up the opportunity for this to happen.

All the routes are contracted by the UK government. I'd say the government should have reviewed the contracts back in 2019 and done something to ensure the UK based staff are protected. But as we have observed the last few years the government has been rather distracted and incompetence at the same time. And now the horse has bolted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com