The P&O proposals would have officers working for below the CBA-determined pay scale, and working more than the long-standing agreed schedule of seven-days-on, seven-days-off. It insists that agency staff are being used to undercut Collective Bargaining Arrangements (CBAs) around pay and conditions previously reached by Nautilus and the employer. Nautilus International, the trade union representing maritime professionals, captains, officers, and similar employees, declared its opposition to the move. After redundancies, it turned to an agency crew - meaning the staff would not be hired in-house by P&O, but by a recruiter paid by the shipping giant to source staff. With the arrival of Irish Ferries threatening its market share, P&O brought the vessel back. During this round of layoffs - spurred by reduced traffic due to pandemic-era travel restrictions - P&O announced its intention to retire the Pride of Burgundy and reduce its overall operation by three vessels. But in recent times it has enacted a wave of redundancies, 670 in Dover last June alone. One of the most longstanding ferry operators in the Port of Dover, the firm is a household name in Britain. Much of the change owes to P&O, today Dubai-owned but until 2006 a British shipping and logistics giant. But with new business practices and the resulting industrial strife, the nature of the port economy is changing - along with the jobs it supports and its relation to the local community. One of the busiest such hubs in Europe, it supports around 22,000 jobs, handling 13 million passengers, 2.5 million freight vehicles, and £100 billion of UK-European trade annually. Dover is famed around the world for its “white cliffs,” but most important to locals’ livelihoods is its port, twenty-five miles across the water from France.
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