The P&O scandal must be a turning point in the Tory assault on workers’ rights

Our country witnessed the most shameful episode in labour relations in a generation last week. We watched in disbelief as 800 men and women working for P&O Ferries were sacked in an instant and marched off their boats by hired heavies. They were lured into thinking they were turning up for a normal day at work but instead were being led into an ambush – an ambush that robbed them of not just their livelihoods but also their dignity.

When I went to Dover to stand alongside the sacked workers, I met a married couple who had worked for P&O for 14 years. They loved their jobs and saw their colleagues as family. They lived together, ate together, all in the cramped spaces of an existence at sea. “It was our life and we gave it our all,” they told me.

Their loyalty was repaid with an email link to a Zoom video telling them that they were being fired – instantly. They and many others were marched off their boats by specially hired security guards, some of whom were alleged to have been equipped with handcuffs and balaclavas. The couple have a four-year-old child that they no longer know how they will feed and clothe. They told me, with tears in their eyes, that they felt they’d been treated like criminals.

This scandal is the cruel consequence of the assault on workers’ rights that has taken place during a decade of Conservative government. We must make it a turning point. On Monday in parliament, Labour stood side by side with sacked P&O workers, and we will fight every step of the way for their jobs and livelihoods. Because the truth is, if P&O Ferries get away with this, it will give the green light to bad bosses to try and ride roughshod over the rights of their workforce – whilst the Conservative government does absolutely nothing to stand in their way.

Despite the synthetic outrage of the Tories, when they had the chance to vote with Labour to stand up for loyal P&O workers and outlaw fire and rehire, they didn’t even bother to turn up. In the end, they took the side of the overseas billionaires over a loyal workforce in Britain.

But the fight is not over. We cannot allow the exploitation of workers and accelerate a race to the bottom. The country was told that we would take back control in the post-Brexit world. But the P&O scandal shows how willing the government is to give away control – to bad bosses.

We have some of the weakest employment safeguards in Europe, which is why P&O workers are being replaced by exploited agency staff from overseas, paid below the national minimum wage. And the truth is that DP World, the owners of P&O Ferries, did this because they thought they could do what they like and get away with it.

Ultimately traced back to a Dubai sovereign wealth fund worth billions of dollars, DP World appears to have made a cynical calculation – that it could disregard workers’ rights and UK laws and the government would do nothing to stop them. Whilst the Conservatives won’t stand up to them, Labour will. We will not let the plight of the P&O workers fade into the background.

There are still serious questions that the government needs to answer about how much they knew about P&O’s plans and why they didn’t take action to stop it. They must suspend all their contracts with DP World, launch legal action and force them to think again, so sacked P&O workers are reinstated.

A Labour government will transform rights with a powerful enforcement body to protect workers, guarantee protections from day one, expand sectoral collective bargaining and end cruel fire and rehire for good. It will be the driving mission of the next Labour government to end the poverty wages and insecure work that blights the working lives of millions of people and holds back our economy. Labour will make Britain work for working people.