Sometimes a company can break employment law deliberately due to it being the least damaging option.
Which ones?
Good! I think! Not actually surprising, as there doesn't seem to have really been much time to train the replacements fully.
Boat maintenance, port fees, fuel, loan repayments etc all needed to have been paid these last few years. They've had 2 years of virtually no foot or car traffic, haulage only. I'm not at all surprised they have lost millions, same as the airlines. Margins on these routes are tight, the slightest blip impacts massively and 2 years of a pandemic is more than a blip.
Ah right. But being critical transport infrastructure you'd have thought the government would have helped out with a 'bridging' loan of some sort - or taken them on board for a while as has been done for at least one of the rail companies (btw that's just an obvious question without any political undertones or implications).
Not (entirely) true!
A loan still has to be paid back though. Taking loans is just adding to your debts, it doesn't resolve the issues.
They lost money (£39.8m) in the year before Covid arrived too.
Clearly not going in the right direction then. Throw in the pandemic which screwed over all overseas transport and it's not hard to see how they are in big trouble. What they did is not the answer but the company needs some sort of overhaul or change of tack or they would be / will be going into administration.
Governments do, however, do bail outs where a business is UK-critical, or indeed sometimes take them into public ownership. Just surprised that a critical part of the UK transport infrastructure has got into such a mess that it had to resort to breaking the law to stay afloat.
Possibly on the ship, possibly in 'company supplied' accommodation in Europe which will be taken off their wages, 6 in a portakabin etc. It's a murky one but hopefully this is a loophole that is getting closed.
It's complicated . It's a matter of what's the difference between the potential compensation they will need to pay off the old workforce and the salaries they will have to pay the new. There's also the experience the old workforce had doing the job verses how long the new will need to reach the same productivity. The losses they've made will still be there unless they are cash rich enough to write them off. Without looking into their balance sheet there's also the question of whether the wage bill is the main or only loss making part of their business.
Inference would be that they are not 'UK workers' then - irrespective of where then. I believe several of the ships are registered in Cyprus and/or maybe Jersey, so perhaps UK's minimum wage doesn't apply to the 'new' workers.
Grant Shapps seemed to be suggesting their actions were illegal under employment law as they have not consulted with the employees. The flag of convenience seems to only be pertinent to who they give notice to.
That was admitted by the CEO! And he also stated that it was deliberate - but as a last resort.
