Which should come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever.
Surely if they have broken the law that is a matter for the courts and the government can't act until the case is brought?
If no one ever investigates said breach of the law and prosecutes it will never get near a Court. Personally I would say that the Chief Executive admitting to a Parliamentary committee that the law was deliberately broken is more than sufficient for Government action.
Of course, if he'd thought for a moment there was any serious chance of the government taking any punitive action he'd have never been so frank.
Indeed. If l was cynical l'd say that donations have their uses lol...
Though which government? As I understood things, the legislation around notifying the government about large scale redundancies was changed in 2018 so that the government to be informed was the one the ship was flagged under. I've not heard of any court cases being launched in Cyprus...
Would a prosecution (if in fact the law was broken, and which part of it) have been in the public interest? In order to sort out the competitive financial position, the company had the choice of (a) taking the risk of law breaking and paying off their staff or (b) declaring bankruptcy and paying off their staff. Either way, the staff got paid off, but in (a) I believe the staff got a better deal, and the option for many of re-employment on a new contract as the operation continued, whereas (b) would have been statutory minimum and possibly no or fewer re-employments as capacity may have been stripped out.
I don't really know. The idea would be to try and ensure nobody tried to do something similar but that assumes that a) it was probable to secure a conviction and b) the government wanted to go down such a course.
But, if a similar situation occurred (and I appreciate that there is a certain amount of uniqueness and national interest present in the P&O case) in another place/industry, why would the Government want to force an operating company out of business, rather than allow it to restructure its cost base to that of its competitors?
As I point out, the government are quite happy for big companies to screw over the workers, and that's why it's happened with little consequences for P&O.
How were the workers screwed over?
By being sacked with zero notice?
I doubt most people would have seriously blamed DP World for wanting to change their operating model. It also wouldn't have attracted much attention in the media, had they bothered to go about it in the way everyone else is obliged to.
Absolutely. We find ourselves in a bloody dangerous place if we start questioning which laws should and should not be enforced.
But they weren't. They were paid their notice period. The employees lost no money whatsoever.
Failing to prosecute unlawful acts, because it would not be in the public interest, happens with all sorts of laws.
Eventually. Did they all get to recover their property they were locked out from on the ship and were they compensated for the distress caused by the initial actions?
Of course, treating the workers fairly by managing the transition to new contracts responsibly would also have avoided disruption to the companies actions.
Don't underestimate the impact of a period of not knowing if you'll get so much as a penny, as was an initial concern. Being paid eventually does not cancel out getting turfed out unceremoniously.
There's a difference between failure to prosecute by the CPS and a decision or pressure not to investigate. If you don't search for evidence of lawbreaking it's impossible to find any.
What happened was still unlawful.
What disruption did you have in mind? Who was going to cause it and how?
So are you suggesting that this hypothetical would have been a defence against breaking the law? In my view your hypothetical is nonsense and there's zero chance this would have been a relevant defence.
If you're not sure what you read maybe you ought to be checking it rather than speculating?
Even if you actively want to contract yourself out of your employment rights, you may not do so. There's a very good reason for that. Putting your staff under duress like would have likely attracted greater compensation, over and above lost wages, than was paid too, if claims had been made in the Tribunal rather than accepting the settlements offered, so I'd say there's a clear element of compensation most of the former employees lost out on.
Go slows, strikes, vessel sit-ins etc. Quite a history of such action on this route. Caused by the staff affected by the redundancy.
Sounds like this is just your prejudice talking to me.
It is an explanation of the company's actions, not a defence of any law breaking. No defence has been required because no prosecution has taken place.
Most people are arguing that Ministers are complicit in the unlawful sale of people's employment rights. You're arguing against that point by accusing the workers of intending to cause "go slows, strikes, vessel sit-ins etc" without evidence. And you're now indignant at having been pulled up on the point?
You asked the question, and I am speculating as to the likely reason and you want to attack me for the reply! Is there a likely other reason then why the company might have taken the action they did, rather than go through a 3 month consultation period for the same result?
Without evidence of what? No accusation, merely speculating as to the reason for the Company's actions - presumably they wished to avoid that possibility.
You're missing the point, which has been made repeatedly now. Obviously they wanted to avoid costly consequences and breaking the law is one easy way to do that. This applies to nearly all businesses, nearly all of the time, and is nothing at all to do with the conditions of this particular business. Good businesses respect that there are some rules that they must follow, costly to do so or otherwise. Bad businesses ignore the rules, and do things like what P&O did. If we're willing to tolerate that in some cases but not others we're fundamentally undermining the basis of employment law. If a business can only survive by breaking the rules in this way, it's better it doesn't survive at all. The consequences of that are exactly the same, but it doesn't have the effect of undermining the rules for everyone else.
I assumed you were going to present one that might be justified, yes. Clearly that was too naive of me.
I respect your opinion, but I don't think that life quite works so black & white, whether it is individuals or companies.
If and when you are unjustly deprived of your legal rights l am sure that you will get loads of sympathy.....
You're free to pass off bad things happening to people who aren't yourself as "life" as if it's some kind of universal constant if you like, of course. But personally when I see other people making a case that they're unhappy with their lot I look at it based on the facts, and it's a fact here that due process wasn't followed - the company themselves have admitted as much. That's not "life" - that's a choice by an unethical company to get ahead over a less unethical one, and by all of the rest of us to let them do so and then keep the benefits from it.
Indeed. Even if you're comfortable enough that you couldn't care less about other workers being stripped of their rights, you never know when your own time will come.
As it seems the 'right' that they were deprived of was effectively the opportunity to disrupt the Company's operations (and any additional compensation that they could blackmail the Company into paying to prevent that) - in a similar situation I am unsure that I would get loads of sympathy anyway. I am quite entitled to have my opinion as to whether any law or right is just or not (there are plenty of laws all of us don't agree with or like, I am sure) and consequently this will influence my sympathy or otherwise to those who transgress - and that works both ways as you point out!
