We are at a decisive moment for the future of industrial relations. Undertaken with no notice, no consultation, and no negotiation, the appalling treatment of P&O workers must be, as the TUC has demanded, a “turning point” for workers’ rights. At this pivotal moment, our organisations stand in solidarity with the 800 sacked workers and with the wider labour movement fighting to secure a fair future at work.

The need for systemic change, to not only the conditions of work but to the legal infrastructure that sets and curtails workers' rights and power, is urgent and clear. As extreme as P&O Ferries’ actions have been, they are in keeping with, not a break from recent patterns of behaviour from unscrupulous employers. According to analysis from the TUC, during the pandemic 9% of workers have been forced to re-apply for their jobs on inferior terms and conditions. Millions lack security, trapped on zero-hours contracts, bogus self-employment, and low pay, with in-work poverty rising across the country. More still are seeing their living standards squeezed as real pay suffers its worst fall in almost a decade, while since the 2007/08 financial crisis almost 40 per cent of employees have seen a decline in incomes and a majority have seen less than 2 per cent real increase per year over that period to 2020. People deserve security, dignity, and an income they can live well on –  but many are denied even these basic needs.

These conditions are not just an isolated case; as P&O Ferries has made so evident, there are bad bosses, but the problems of contemporary work are not simply because the wrong people are in charge. Instead, they are political problems with structural causes: of how power is distributed and exercised in society, and the institutions we design that shape how work is organised. Fundamentally, these conditions are symptoms of a deep imbalance of power in the economy, an imbalance policymakers have actively facilitated.

Employment rights have been stripped back and weakened. The rules governing industrial relations stack power in favour of the employer and constrain the ability of unions to organise. Company law prioritises the interests of shareholders above all other stakeholders. And a weak and punitive welfare system alongside the high cost of life’s essentials, from care to housing, ensures insecurity is the background condition shaping contemporary work. Taken together, this has built an unequal economic model in which labour is squeezed to boost returns for shareholders and wealthy investors.

The consequences – from insecure work to stark inequality – are all around us. In this particular dispute, P&O Ferries is attacking the rights of its workforce, with private security staff with handcuffs reputedly threatening to board P&O ships to remove crew, despite the company recently claiming £10 million from the public purse for its furlough scheme. Meanwhile, its parent company DP World - itself owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, via a holding company, with the holding company under the direct control of the Ruler of Dubai - paid outmillion in dividends last year, as it reported a record year for the company with revenue growing by 26.3%. Extreme as it seems, this is the signature of our economy: wealthy asset-owners are richly rewarded while ordinary workers are subjected to a relentless squeeze on wages and conditions, or worse, losing their job completely.

The fight for fair treatment for workers at P&O Ferries is, then, part of the same struggle to win a better world of work for all: secure, dignified, working less but better, with everyone having enough to thrive. Key to that is rebalancing economic power in and beyond the workplace. As the RMT and Nautilus demonstrated in this dispute, and many other unions have during the pandemic, there is power in the collective. But currently legal and financial infrastructures that shape the organisation of work actively disempower workers, individually and collectively, inhibiting their ability to secure decent conditions and wages. But what we have made, we can remake; we have the capacity to transform work for the better starting at P&O Ferries.

To that end, we echo the call of the TUC, RMT, and many others for immediate action:

[.num-list][.num-list-num]1[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Reinstate immediately all sacked workers. All sacked staff at P&O Ferries must be immediately reinstated with no loss of pay.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]2[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]End fire and rehire. Already illegal in many other countries, it is a bullying tactic that has no place in the modern world of work which can and must be banned immediately.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]3[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Make ‘fire at will’ illegal. All employees should be given protection from unfair dismissal from day one. No notices of dismissal should be given until consultation has been completed. All workers should benefit from a guaranteed, strong set of rights from day one. These should include statutory redundancy pay, family-friendly rights including maternity, paternity and adoption leave, holiday pay, protection from unfair dismissal, a clear setting out of their pay and conditions including hours, the payment for breaks during shifts, and union rights.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]4[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Ban exploitative employment practices. A range of measures are required to make modern work, work for everyone, including: An end to zero-hours contracts, replaced with contracts that provide a minimum number of guaranteed hours and have a premium rate for overtime; a statutory presumption that all individuals qualify as employees unless the employer can demonstrate in an employment tribunal that they are genuinely self-employed; and stronger and more equitable family-friendly employment rights.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]5[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Enforce existing rights effectively. Government must also do more to enforcement existing employment regulation. Too many workers currently do not receive the legal minimum wage or rights they are entitled to, such as paid leave. Enforcement agencies should be given the power and resources to proactively investigate employers over the payment of minimum wage and on wider employment status and rights. These efforts should also be supported by tougher penalties for employers who avoid the law - through increased fines, and greater use of ‘naming and shaming’ of transgressive companies.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]6[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Enhance collective bargaining and trade union power. The Institute for Employment Relations found that the legal framework which governs trade union rights in the UK “are the most restrictive in the Western World. This is indisputable in relation to the right to trade union autonomy, right to strike, and the right to bargain collectively.” Structural reform must address and reverse this as a priority, including rolling out sectoral collective bargaining, repealing legislation which places unfair or unreasonable restrictions on trade unions, and significantly strengthening the ability of unions to organise, to improve working conditions and pay, reduce wage inequality, and strengthen workplace democracy.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]7[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Democratise the company.Reform the Companies Act to end shareholder primacy and democratise corporate governance, including through making employees company members and electing workers to the Board.[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]8[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Increase the punishment for companies that break employment law. The TUC and others have argued that P&O’s failure to consult staff on their sacking was unlawful. But breaking employment law in this way only incur very low penalties at present; this should be revised so that the penalty is appropriate to the action.‍[.num-list-text][.num-list]

[.num-list][.num-list-num]9[.num-list-num][.num-list-text]Remove DP World from the UK Government’s Transport Advisory Group. Companies that behave outrageously should have no role in advising government, as the TUC and RMT have pointed out. Similarly, existing state contracts should be suspended until the sacked workers are reinstated.‍[.num-list-text][.num-list]

As the actions of P&O Ferries demonstrate, for too many, work is unfree, undemocratic, and unjust. Unfree as we lack control over our time and efforts; undemocratic because how we work is kept beyond the scope of democratic power to decide, subject to arbitrary power; and unjust because the many work under the direction of the few to produce wealth that they are then denied a fair share of. If we are to make work something that is genuinely free, just, and democratic, and create the conditions by which we can fairly reduce working time without loss of pay, we must reshape the institutions that structure work: employment and trade union law, company governance and ownership structures, the social security system, how the infrastructures and services we all rely on are owned and for what purpose. In short, we must rebalance power. The P&O Ferries scandal makes this urgent; the state of work more broadly makes it a necessity.