 In what is being called one of the most shameful acts in British industrial history, British ferry operator PNO fired 800 workers without notice. The workers were informed they had been laid off to a Zoom video call. A three-minute pre-recorded message was played to them on March 17 after they were asked to return to Port and de-board the passengers. At the door, Port PNO sent private security officers who sought to board ships with handcuffs to remove crew. The company is replacing the fired workers with cheaper agency labour from overseas who will be paid much less than the minimum wage, a mere £1.8 per hour. On Monday, March 21, Nautilus International and the National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers who are representing PNO workers led demonstrations in London. At a demonstration outside the offices of PNO's parent company, DP World, the company bosses refused a meeting with union leaders, Mick Lynch, Mark Dickinson and Francis O'Grady. He wants to answer the phone or come down to reception to see us. I'm Mick Lynch, the general secretary of R&T, Mark Dickinson, the general secretary of Nautilus International, Francis O'Grady, the general secretary of the CUC. So there's obviously no interest in DP World in getting a solution to this. They're hoping they're putting their head in the sand and have gone into the bunker, unfortunately. But we'll keep going and we'll keep campaigning until we get a resolution for our PNO. Yeah, well said, Mick. We're here to show PNO ferries that they can't get away with sacking 800 people with no notice. We've called on them to ban undercutting. What do they say? No. We called on them to ban zero hours contracts. What do they say? No. So we called on them to ban fire and rehire and still we're waiting. Another demonstration was held outside the parliament where MPs debated banning the fire and rehire policy. Labour Party called on the government to initiate criminal action against PNO and DP World. But the motion failed as the Tories abstained from the vote. This is modern Britain at its absolute worst. It also calls into question quite a lot about legislation, about employment legislation in the past. The Member for Hayes and Hardington and myself went many times to the Department of Transport over the years demanding that national minimum wage at the minimum apply to international seafarers operating in and out of British ports, as well as obviously those working within the territorial waters. That never happened, I guess, because of pressure from the ship-owning companies on successive governments. Absolutely disgraceful. And other legislation, which is weak on trade union protection, weak on employment protection, weaker than most countries in Europe and many other countries in the world have, has to change. If we're serious about protecting employment rights, then we need legislation that does protect those employment rights, that doesn't allow companies to behave like this and doesn't allow them to get away with it. I suspect the Member for Thorick might well be right that they gained all this thing through on a legal basis, to think they can get away with it. Well, if they think they can get away with it, the government has options before it. The options put forward in the RMT document are, one, reverse the decision. Tell the company to reverse the decision. Two, remove all government contracts of any sort with P&O with immediate effect. Three, we can all boycott P&O. We don't have to go on P&O. Nobody else needs to go on P&O. Labour MP Diane Abbott wrote in an op-ed, if any unionised workforce can be tossed away like this to be replaced by agency labour on much worse terms and conditions, then it can happen to anyone. Because they could have voted last October to make sure that this didn't happen. And what they did instead was they talked the bill out. What's happened to you and your families will go down in the history of employment relations in this country as one of the worst betrayals by a management of a workforce that we've seen in a hundred years.