P&O Ferries crew paid below minimum wage

P&O Ferries, which controversially sacked about 800 workers in 2022, has paid some crew members less than half the UK minimum wage thanks to a continuing legal loophole the British government promised to close two years ago.

- Simon Goodley

Agency workers at the company, which is owned by the Dubai-based DP World, have in some cases been earning about £4.87 an hour even lower than the £5.15 an hour the company suggested was its lowest pay rate - an analysis of recent payslips conducted by the Guardian and ITV News suggests.

The low-cost crew, who replaced many of the  workers P&O Ferries axed two years ago, are being hired from countries including India, the Philippines and Malaysia. They are understood to be working 12-hour daily shifts, without a day off for months at a time, on the Dover to Calais route. One worker described it as like being in jail.

Grant Shapps, who was the transport secretary when P&O Ferries fired its workers in March 2022, had promised to legislate to improve pay for cross-Channel ferry workers. At the time he accused the ferry company of operating like "pirates of the high sea" and wrote to the company to state: "This government will not stand by while the requirement to treat seafarers with due respect and fairness is brazenly ignored." While the British government has so far failed to set legally binding pay rates equivalent to the UK minimum wage, the French government is poised this week to make its response to P&O Ferries' sackings, with the introduction of legislation that will force cross-Channel operators to pay their workers the French minimum wage of €11.65 (£9.95) an hour.

The UK minimum wage is £10.42 an hour and will rise to £11.44 from April - but it does not apply to maritime workers employed by an overseas agency who work on foreign-registered ships in international waters.