Today the Labour Party will present a motion to suspend contracts with DP World as a result of the layoffs implemented by P&O Ferries

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The British Labour Party will ask parliament today for an emergency vote to ask shipping company P&O Ferries the reinstatment of 800 seafarers, workers who were laid off in logs last week ( March 17 2022), and to urge the government to strengthen protections for workers. In particular, with the vote it is intended to prohibit the practice of dismissal and re-recruitment, practice which in the United Kingdom is not illegal and which, with limitations that protect the employee, allows you to dismiss a worker and summarize it to new conditions, with the additional constraint of triggering consultations with the social partners if this practice involves a significant number of employees.

The Labour Party's motion also calls for the suspension of contracts with the emiratense group DP World, which owns P&O Ferries, until the situation on the redundancies implemented by the company has been resolved. The protests unleashed by the sudden action of P&O Ferries, in fact, are increasingly widening to the other activities of the DP World Group in the United Kingdom, including mainly the terminally-run activities in the container sector managed by the medial group at the terminals of London Gateway and Southampton. The focus of local institutions ' attention was, for example, Thames Freeport, the economic zone near London that links Ford's engine factory in the London district of Dagenham with the port areas of London. Gateway and Tilbury, with DP World being one of the initiators of the initiative. The cabinet of the Thurrock Council, the borough of Essex on whose area lies part of the economic zone, condemning the actions of P&O Ferries and DP World, has announced that although the issue is of relevance to the central government, the Council of Thurrock intends to obtain unequivocal assurances that all work activities in the Thurrock district and Thames Freeport are carried out in full compliance with all UK labour laws and that any organisation of the private sector that is a partner in Thames Freeport respects them in full.

The Labour Party's motion also calls for the removal of DP World from the UK government's Transport Advisory Group. In mid-2020, DP World was included in one of eleven new consultative groups created at the initiative of Liz Truss, then the Minister of Commerce and currently the Foreign Minister.

The motion also includes requests from the Nautilius International union that calls on the government to pursue any legal options against P&O Ferries and to ensure that the Maritime & Coastguard Agency inspections each ship of the company's navigation before it takes back navigation.

"The Labour Party," said Louise Haigh, the Party's shadow transport minister, illustrating the content of the motion-it will fight at every moment for jobs and the livelihoods of these loyal workers. This scandalous action must form an inassessable line. If P&O Ferries is able to get away with it, it will give the green light to other exploitative employers. It is the consequence of the Conservatives 'assault on workers' rights, " Haigh said. A Labour government will strengthen employee protections and ban the practice of dismissal and resuming to give people the security they deserve for an honest day's work. "