The Dubai-based proprietor of P&O Ferries has been accused of behaving like “company gangsters” after celebrating record-breaking earnings simply months after sacking 800 of its UK-based staff with out discover.
DP World, which is in the end owned by the Dubai royal household, stated in March that firing 786 P&O seafarers and changing them with less expensive company staff was the one means to make sure the “future viability” of the historic ferry enterprise.
Nonetheless, on Thursday Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, DP World’s chair and chief government, introduced the corporate had elevated its first-half revenues by 60% to $7.9bn (£6.6bn) and earnings had risen by greater than 50% to a report $721m.
“We’re delighted to report a report set of first-half outcomes with … attributable earnings [profits] rising 51.8%,” he stated within the firm’s incomes’s assertion on Thursday. “Total, the sturdy first-half efficiency leaves us effectively positioned to ship improved full 12 months outcomes.”
DP World didn’t give separate particulars on the efficiency of its ferries enterprise in its outcomes, however the bulk of revenues and earnings come from different divisions. It operates ports in 78 nations on six continents together with London Gateway and Southampton, and purchased P&O in 2006 for £3.3bn.
DP World had informed a parliamentary inquiry that P&O “had no future” except it sacked the employees. At a Commons listening to in March, Peter Hebblethwaite, the boss of P&O, stated the corporate had chosen to interrupt the legislation and sack the 800 staff with out discover or session as a result of “no union might settle for our proposals”.
The employees had been informed in video calls on the ships that it was their “last day of employment” and ordered off the ferries.
Hebblethwaite’s testimony prompted MPs to ask whether or not he was a “shameless prison”, however he insisted he would “make this determination once more”.
Nonetheless, Hebblethwaite informed an trade convention in Might: “We have now not carried out ourselves on the day, or since, in something like the way in which that has been advised of me and us.”
Frances O’Grady, the final secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), on Thursday accused DP World of creating “eye-watering earnings … off the backs of P&O illegally sacking a whole bunch of devoted employees”.
“DP World have been allowed to get away scot-free with behaving like company gangsters,” she stated. “They’re an insult to widespread decency.
“Ministers ought to have stripped DP world of all their profitable public contracts and severed all industrial ties with the corporate.”
The TUC has written to the Insolvency Service, which is finishing up prison and civil investigations into the corporate, saying its administrators must be disqualified.
The Insolvency Service investigation is being watched intently by the federal government, which has stated it’s unable to take direct motion in opposition to the administrators of P&O Ferries regardless of the corporate admitting to breaking the legislation.
Boris Johnson had initially promised to take authorized motion within the courts in opposition to the corporate, however every week later it emerged that this was not the case, and that the federal government would as a substitute depend on the Insolvency Service investigation.
Proposed laws the federal government stated would guarantee P&O and different ferry operators pay seafarers the minimal wage was outlined through the Queen’s speech earlier in Might. Nonetheless, port operators and the TUC each solid doubt on whether or not the proposed legal guidelines would have any impact in apply.
When it introduced the sackings P&O stated it had “made a £100m loss 12 months on 12 months” which had been “coated by our father or mother DP World”.
“This isn’t sustainable,” the corporate stated. “Our survival relies on making swift and vital adjustments now. With out these adjustments there isn’t a future for P&O Ferries.”
The corporate had requested the federal government for a £150m bailout after commerce collapsed through the pandemic. Nonetheless, the federal government turned down the request for assist after it was reported to have paid out £270m in dividends to traders.
On the time a DP World spokesperson stated the £270m of dividends associated “to a delisting course of, which was introduced pre-Covid-19 and which DP World is legally obliged to pay”.
