Not illegal at all tricky, unfortunately. The ships are registered in Jersey, apparently, so not subject to UK Law. What P&O have done is perfectly legal under maritime Law.
Interestingly P&O French staff still have their jobs..... long live Brexit?
It seems Johnson, Farage and Cummings managed to persuade millions of underpaid working class people to vote a certain way so million- and billionaires don't have to pay tax.
Oh they are subject to UK law, but leaving the EU means extra protections offered under EU law are no longer applicable. Also the Tory's voted against removing "fire and rehire" from employment law.
There is a legal challenge but P & O will just offer enough dosh to each employee to get around this, i.e. more than would be awarded by an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal.
AS for the Government telling P & O to do one, doesn't Thicky realise that this is exactly what the free marketeers and hard Brexit people want, a deregulated, low wage exploitative economy which benefits the rich elite?
You could argue that the EU workers are protected by their lack of EU protection for a decent wage, which the UK workers have, hence the cheaper EU workforce are being employed. Other than impact of Brexit on income for P&O, I struggle to see the correlation. Agree with Swale and Andy that P&O will just take the costs, but as Andy said, we don't really know the details, all we know is that there is some ethical malpractice.
Sorry to disagree Andy, But I believe DP World moved the registration location of some (of not all) of its cross channel ferries to Cyprus a couple of years ago in order to remain INSIDE the EU in the same way as a lot of the UK based financial services businesses created subsidiaries in EU member states for passporting services. In which case the ships are still inside EU jurisdiction
CTD)
Maritime employees terms of employment, conditions etc are to be in accordance with the ILO's Maritime Labour Convention (2006) provisions which have been adopted by both the UK and the EU. Supervision of compliance with these provisions is down to the flag state - which is Cyprus for the cross channel ferries at least, and so supervisions remains "in the EU" despite Brexit.
So whilst it might seem expedient for the media and others on this platform to blame Brexit for this happening, I'm not sure its strictly correct to do so. It may be that some UK shore based employees do not fall under the MLC and thus will be subject to UK employment law - I only ever deal with shipside exposures - but those "mariners" should still have full EU rights. That said, such rights still may not put them in any better position.
Have you bought you nice red clip on pretend EU cover for your new blue British passport yet rA? I remember getting a blue cover to obscure my first nasty red EU cover in the 90s. Just didn't want a Forest coloured identity document!