BEHOLD the remarkable sight of a Tory minister condemning a big business boss for his exercise of the capitalist “right” to hire and fire at will.
When, speaking of the P&O sackings, transport minister Robert Courts told MPs: “The way that these workers were informed was completely unacceptable” he usefully spelled out the extent of Tory concern.
No sense that the arbitrary act of throwing workers on to the dole queue at a time of economic crisis and crazily spiralling prices might be considered worthy of condemnation; just the way it was done.
It is, of course pure performative nonsense and trade unionists will demand more than cheap words from the government.
For the Tories this is not a good time to have workers’ rights and an employment Bill subject to intensive scrutiny while outrage at the P&O sackings grips the public and its mood is so unforgiving.
P&O’s present chief executive, newly appointed as is the chief finance officer, has been in conclave with the whole board over the past unnumbered months. They are all party to the decision to flout the law that compels employers contemplating “redundancies” to consult with trade unions and notify the state.
Inadequate though it is, the law stands there in all its tawdry majesty, ignored when it suits the patrician class.
When it applies to workers the law suddenly acquires fresh robes, a stern mien and reaches for its full armoury of sanctions.
In October 1972, after the National Federation of Building Trade Employers petitioned the then Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr he immediately instructed the police to investigate trade union activity at Shrewsbury during a strike of building workers.
Eventually, to a great media hullabaloo and intemperate speeches in parliament, 24 workers were arrested and charged with offences ranging from Conspiracy to Intimidate and Affray. They were convicted at Shrewsbury crown court in 1973 and six were jailed, with Des Warren getting three years and Ricky Tomlinson two years.
The judge in that trial said that a conspiracy could be as subtle as a “nod or a wink.”
It will be interesting to see how proportionate the sentences for conspiracy will be if ever the board of P&O Ferries find themselves in the dock.
The government’s statement is too late. Where the proposals are relevant they are inadequate, entail wage cuts for some, leave P&O’s Doha-based owners DP World with a free hand in its other British ventures and where they tackle the “fire and rehire” practice much favoured by employers they would require legislation.
But true to form the government’s majority voted down Barry Gardiner’s Bill just weeks ago.
When confronted with the class power that ownership confers on the boss class the instinctive response of workers is to take solidarity action.
Dutch dockers have refused to load a P&O ferry and port workers in Hull say they won’t cast off a P&O ferry. In Holland this is legal, in Britain solidarity (or “secondary” action) is illegal.
A key step would be for the absolute ban on secondary action — which would allow practical and effective support to be given to the P&O workers — to be lifted to confine the ships to their moorings until the seafarers are reinstated in their jobs, their pay and conditions protected and the right of their unions to represent them in negotiations guaranteed.
Proposals to regulate the ferry industry more tightly are the natural foundation of a sector-wide framework for negotiating pay, terms and conditions.
The government and employers are on the back foot. This is the time for Labour to press for the restoration of the freedom of unions to defend their members with laws protecting unions and workers from injunctions and damages claims.
