Providing much entertainment, disbelief and shock in the United Kingdom has been the curious case of P&O Ferries and its new business model.
My overall reaction is that if this tawdry episode does not portray anything else, then at least let it provide a template for how not to go about “downsizing,” “rightsizing” or plainly terminating employees.
The episode started on March 17 when employees at the ferry firm were summoned to an online meeting, which without any forewarning ended the roles of approximately 800 people, many of whom had worked for the company for considerable time.
Media reported some staff did not even know the person who delivered the news, which was given in a pre-recorded Zoom call, apparently.
Grant Shapps, the U.K.’s minister of transport, said “if [a firm needs] to get rid of people because you need to change the shape of your company, you need to sit down around a table with them and discuss those redundancies,” according to Fortune Magazine.
There is talk that Shapps had some prior knowledge the ferry company was about to go through this process, but that has yet to be conclusively shown.
The ferry firm is hoping to employ new staff but at considerably lower average pay per hour, below that of the U.K.’s National Minimum Wage, which seems legal in some aspects of its business such as when its ships leave British waters.
Also allegedly, very recently contracted security staff wearing balaclavas (something P&O Ferries denies) and trained in the use of handcuffs were brought onto the ferries in case of any push back from employees.
Former employees stated that any redundancy pay would be forfeited if they spoke publicly on any of this matter. That is, they would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
P&O Ferries, owned by Dubai-based DP World, which seemingly until recently was a listed company but has reverted to ownership by the government of Dubai, claimed it has lost £100 million ($132 million) year over year, according to Reuters, and that changes had to be made for the firm’s survival.
That was not sufficient justification for the U.K.'s largest two political parties, the ruling Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party, which have been united in condemnation.
Shapps, and others, have called for the resignation of the P&O Ferries’ CEO Peter Hebblethwaite, who surely was Britain’s most uncomfortable person when he was summarily hauled in front of a cross-party parliamentary inquiry on the issue.
Hebblethwaite is in charge — the person at which the buck stops — and admitted the firm had broken the law and said under the circumstances he would have made the same decision again if he could go back a week or two.
Central to the firm’s misdeeds, allegedly, is that it was required to negotiate, or at least tell, unions of its plans because it had signed collective-bargaining arrangements with those unions.
The chairman of the inquiry said many company CEOs had pulled a seat up in front of him to say they were having financial difficulties, but the difference was they had negotiated with affected parties.
The justification Hebblethwaite used as to why that did not happen, I think, will go down in folklore as an example as to what not to do or say — as famed as the text of William Boot’s disingenuous but spectacular telegram delivered from the front line in Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant novel “Scoop.”
Parts of that novel read as juicily and lachrymosely as Hebblethwaite’s response under oath in Parliament, where all the conversation is officially transcribed, including:
Andy McDonald, member of parliament, Middlesbrough — “I’m sorry, but as the chair has already pointed out, there are many companies that have difficulties. They obey the law and consult their members through their trade unions. You have not done that.”
Hebblethwaite — “We have moved from one operating model to another.”
McDonald — “You have not escaped the law of this country. You’ve still got to do it within the legal framework. You cannot just decide that you are going to absent yourself from the legal system of the United Kingdom.”
Hebblethwaite — “It was our assessment that the change was of such a magnitude that no union could possibly accept our proposal.”
McDonald— “Oh, you’re right about that, Mr Hebblethwaite!”
There are more lessons to be learned throughout the entire transcript.
On a side note, apropos to almost nothing above, when I type in “Peter H” in Google, before I have chance to type in the name of the CEO of P&O Ferries entirely, the first listing is not of Hebblethwaite but of our dear friend Peter Hancock, recently retired CEO of Pride of Britain Hotels.
You see, that is true fame, not a search result based on fleeting infamy.
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