LOYAL workers all over Britain were left wondering after P&O sacked 800 staff by Zoom, “Could I be next?” So often we think “That could never happen to me”…until it does!

When I first started campaigning to stop the disgraceful tactic of fire and rehire over a year ago people didn’t understand there was a problem. 

They could not believe it wasn’t already against the law. After all, these workers had a contract. That must mean something. Well now we know the shameful truth: the law in our country protects bosses not workers.

That is why I drafted my Stop Fire and Rehire Bill. It put good practice into law and penalised bad employers like P&O which failed to consult and negotiate with its workforce.  

It would have stopped P&O in its tracks and allowed workers to secure an injunction to reverse these sackings because of the company’s failure to consult and open up its books. But as union members know only too well, that Bill was blocked by the government.

When the P&O scandal broke, ministers were keen to sound tough. They said they were outraged and demanded that P&O give seafarers their jobs back. 

But after the deadline passed and many workers had been bullied into signing the compensation package (and the non-disclosure agreement that went with it!) the government’s limp response was to announce a new code of conduct that would “guide companies” about how to behave! 

Did they not realise that if companies like P&O are prepared to break the law then the chances of them obeying a non-binding code of practice are zero?

The point is this. It is cheaper for the company to act illegally because the penalty for breaking the law is less than the cost of operating within it. 

Because of this, even decent companies who do not want to treat their workers badly are undercut by the cowboys who do. It is a downward spiral. 

That is why we need primary legislation to set a fair baseline from which companies cannot grind down workers’ wages, terms and conditions in a race to the bottom.

One of the key elements of my Bill and of any future Labour legislation on employment rights is to level up the playing field between the employers and the unions. 

By issuing the Section 188 and threatening workers up front before any negotiation or consultation has happened, the union is often unable to fight back immediately. 

The existing anti-trade-union legislation demands that the union notify, then ballot and then notify once again before any strike action can be taken. 

This often takes four weeks or more. In the meantime, workers have been called in one by one by management and put under enormous pressure. 

“How are you going to pay your rent?” “How are you going to feed your kids?” “You need to sign, because we have hundreds of people lining up to replace you if you don’t.”

The hapless Employment Minister, Paul Scully, was quick to insist that P&O was not an example of fire and rehire. 

He’s right. It is worse. 

The idea that an employer simply sacks you because he can pay someone even less to do your job is disgusting. The law needs to insist that, rather like the Tupe regulations, anyone brought in by management to replace fired workers must be paid the pre-existing rate for the job.

So the next time you hear Tory ministers saying how disgraceful P&O have been and how appalled they are that loyal workers have been treated with such contempt, ask them why they filibustered to block the very Bill that would have prevented it. 

Insecurity in the workplace is not an accident. It is government policy. We need new employment laws now. I am proud to be a trade unionist and a member of Unite, a union that always has and always will fight for fairness for working people.

Barry Gardiner is member of Parliament for Brent North.

This article first appeared on the Campaign For Trade Union Freedom website (www.tradeunionfreedom.co.uk).