Mesmerising work by P&O Ferries, whose determination to sack 800 seafaring employees over a Microsoft Groups assembly makes them barely extra distasteful boat house owners than a number of folks on the worldwide sanctions checklist. Certainly, at some point of the HR chief’s message on Thursday, there might even have been folks smugglers within the Channel who would have been extra palatable. Definitely, they appear to function among the identical routes extra reliably.
And so to how the day unfolded. On Thursday morning, P&O Ferries recalled its vessels to port with essentially the most ominous phrases within the transport forecast – “all-colleague announcement” – promising that “long-term viability” was about to be secured. Sounds good! At which level, the human sources man delivered a pre-recorded message from some sort of middle-management bunker, as if he had been coordinating the resistance of a besieged jap European nation and never simply avoiding having to look any of the employees within the eye when he tells them they’re being “restructured” with quick impact. The previous workers had been knowledgeable their jobs can be promptly taken over by cheaper company employees. Whether or not that is even authorized is a matter of some debate; suffice to say the implications of the story proceed to unfurl themselves just like the petals of a stinking corpse lily.
Having made their peace with shedding out on Employers of the Yr 2022, P&O Ferries apparently adopted up the video message by sending balaclava-wearing, handcuff-trained personal safety guards on to the boats to clear away all remaining … colleagues, is it? Some employees refused to depart their vessels however ultimately dispersed when it was advised that they had been risking their severance. Justified outrage is outwardly above their paygrade. Sorry – ex-paygrade.
Even the federal government appears appalled, whereas lots of people have a variety of questions. None of that are, “Ooh, is that HR man single?” For the video alone, he should be judged the worst individual related to ferries since Chris Grayling. (Though, as I do know you’ll recall, Chris was extra related to corporations that didn’t have any ferries. That was sort of the issue. All proper, all proper – one of the issues.)
I can let you know {that a} mere 4 months in the past, the HR man was on LinkedIn pushing a video celebrating P&O Ferries as an employer who needed to “do issues in another way”. As this uplifting movie defined of working on the firm – “It’s not only a job; it’s a profession. It’s not only a job; it’s the way forward for seafaring. It’s not only a job; it’s household.” Righto. Sadly, it’s the Roy household. What a crew that is. On his LinkedIn web page one of many P&O household’s guys basks in a glowing salutation from considered one of his earlier managing administrators. He’s fairly the person, it says, “particularly when going through union challenges. He has a ardour for pushing boundaries of present apply to discover new concepts and methodologies.”
I believe we’re all on the purpose of having the ability to see that, mate. The boundaries of present apply seem to have been not a lot pushed as shat on. Dimly and belatedly realising that maybe he should say one thing, P&O Ferries’ chief govt, Peter Hebblethwaite, wrote to employees on Friday morning, touching euphemistically on what he known as “adjustments we’re making to our crewing mannequin”. Why do folks speak like this even of their workers’ hour of anguish? It’s not “adjustments to a crewing mannequin” – it’s sacking them. I see he’s additionally claiming it’s “important” that employees “keep away from posting any feedback or views on social media”. So I’m comfortable to level out that Peter will probably be paid a whole bunch of hundreds of kilos a yr to be this a lot of a cowardly arse.
After all, it’s not simply Peter and the P&O household guys we see – in some ways they’re the monkeys versus the organ-grinder. As you’d count on of any self-respecting island nation, Britain’s P&O Ferries is now owned by the Dubai-based DP World. Issues we find out about DP World? They’ve a £146m unpaid debt with the Service provider Navy Rankings pension fund, which is meant to supply P&O Ferries employees safety of their retirement. And so they’ve additionally simply spaffed £147m sponsoring golf’s European tour. Which appears slightly on the nostril, even by the debased requirements of the age.
As for the age, it continues to really feel not-as-billed. The films might need led you to imagine that late stage capitalism would function a charismatically monstrous overlord, shot on a multimillion-dollar lighting finances. Actually, it’s only a HR man studying off his Notes app, as he explains that your quick monetary devastation is “effectively past the statutory necessities”. Exhausting to think about how this might have been extra excruciating, until he had prefaced it with a poem by Bono, because the Home speaker, Nancy Pelosi, did the identical day in her St Patrick’s Day remarks.
Affectlessly conscious that they will do no matter they need, executives like our HR man speak just like the maintain music to the underworld. Maybe appropriately. In spite of everything, in historic Greek mythology, Charon the ferryman would carry the newly deceased souls throughout the River Styx. It was a reasonably turbo-capitalist transit system itself, really – in case you didn’t have the fare you needed to wander the shores for 100 years, in all probability whereas a variety of spectral figures defined how you possibly can simply have saved for a home deposit in case you’d simply had the drive to stay a bit longer. Charon was described as a “sordid god” by Virgil (who was not the poet Bono is, however nonetheless fairly good), although that was all hundreds of years in the past. Nowadays, we must always count on our passage to the opposite aspect to be helmed by somebody very like our HR man, in all probability droning “get within the gap” as he watches European tour highlights on his cellphone. Would possibly as effectively begin sucking it up, passengers – you’re a very long time lifeless.