The Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) gave clearance to the “Spirit of Britain”, a P&O Ferries vessel, to resume its services, after it was detained on April 11th.
As reported, P&O Ferries its trying to return to its full service, a month after the company fired almost 800 seafarers seeking to replace them with contracts with crewing agencies.
Now that the case bas been closed, the details of the inspection were released. The inspection showed issues related to crewing issues and training, as well as to rescue boats that were not properly maintained, inoperative oil filtering equipment, fire doors that were not as required, and issues with fire dampers.
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According to the company, P&O Ferries will resume service on its busiest route between England and France on Wednesday morning for passengers and cargo. It is important to remind, however, that another P&O ferry, the “Pride of Kent”, remains under detention after failing the safety checks. P&O Ferries also announced that both the European Causeway and the European Highlander were back in service between Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Along with the detention issues, unions are continuing to call for P&O Ferries boycott for allegedly paying below minimum wage. A few days ago, officials at the Port of Dover refused access to ITF inspectors who were present in order to investigate welfare issues that had been raised by replacement crew members on board P&O Ferries’ vessels in the port.
Currently, RMT reports that P&O tried to reduce the wages of the agency workers that it brought on at already reduced rates. However, P&O is denying the latest union accusations saying it was a misunderstanding with one employee that did not understand the terms of the contract.
There are no plans to change or reduce the wages of any of our agency seafarers
…the company said in a statement.
The complaint made by the RMT union about seafarers’ welfare and employment contracts was fully investigated as part of the reinspection of Spirit of Britain and upheld
…the MCA said.
As informed, the average wage for the agency employees is £5.50 an hour, which is below the UK minimum wage and below the levels that the government has been working to enforce for crews working on all ships servicing UK ports.
