Grim P&O sackings flag up pertinent economic and political issues

Even at this time of tensions over the Ukraine war and financial troubles post Covid, the P&O mass sackings of 800 of its workers has shaken people.

Almost everyone who has held a job has at some point been so dependent on the income from that employment that they will have feared suddenly losing their position for one reason or another.

Footage emerged yesterday of a horrifying video in which hundreds of people suffered that very fate, via film of a man tells P&O staff that their employment is terminated at once.

That staff were escorted off their boats was a grim and unnecessary part of yesterday’s trauma.

The dismissals, for all the horrifying way in which they were revealed, flag up a number of issues that are highly relevant to contemporary politics and economics.

The first is that the decision to shut down much of the UK economy for the better part of two years might have been narrowly justified on medical grounds but came at immense social and financial cost, which at the time often seemed not to have been properly assessed. The closure of much of the travel sector inevitably caused lasting damage to the industry.

Another relevant issue is the outworkings of Brexit. Critics of the UK departure from the EU love to talk of consequences such as the reduced flow of immigrant labour, but there was in fact always a coherent case to be made in favour of the very opposite — strictly controlled external UK borders and increasing reliance on domestic employees, partly achieved by wooing some of the economically inactive population back into jobs. In core respects, such a vision is the very opposite of P&O’s apparent blueprint for its future as a ferry company.

Companies at times have to slash overheads. They even go unavoidably bust. But they should do all they can to ensure a slow and transparent transition to any new dispensation.

Meanwhile, as an absolute minimum gesture the P&O severance package needs to be generous, as it was implied yesterday it will be.

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