P&O workers on £4.87 an hour

[davidsrsb]

Strange how we warble on about how awful we were 200 years ago but still buy loads of stuff produced by slave labour in China.

Most Chinese workers are paid reasonable wages, they are currently losing jobs to lower cost SE Asian countries.
There are questionable camp labour practices there too, but these also exist in large numbers in the US prison system.

 

[Richard Lines]

Good afternoon all,

As I must have posted elsewhere there is nothing new in what P&O did, it has been happening, in one one form or another to the British Merchant Navy, for the last 30yrs.

I don't think there are any cases where the affected employees benefited, myself included. Overall I have been fortunate but, as an industry, we've been shafted every which way and there has been no government intervention.

I think I've also posted, may be not on this forum but elsewhere that I saw the other side of the coin on my last job whist still self-employed. The marine crew outside the Master, C/E and C/O were Filipino. The job was cable laying to one of the Dogger Bank wind farms. The Filipino's were replaced with EC nationals, only one of which was British, in line with EC/ UK legislation given the work was off the British coast.

Doubtless the vessel will have returned to Filipino crewing once out of the UK and working elsewhere.

If the intent is to encourage ship operators to utilise Europeans throughout then it doesn't appear to be working overall.

Off the top of my head I don't know precisely what the legislation says but I imagine it will work around 12 mile territorial limits as a fair number of vessels in the wind farm line of work still operate, mainly, Filipino's crews.

It also has to be said that Filipino seafarers are well paid by the standards of their country.

Regards

Richard

 

[stevec67]

Strange how we warble on about how awful we were 200 years ago but still buy loads of stuff produced by slave labour in China.

Most Chinese workers are paid reasonable wages, they are currently losing jobs to lower cost SE Asian countries.
There are questionable camp labour practices there too, but these also exist in large numbers in the US prison system.

I dealt with Chinese contract manufacturers, albeit 15-20 years ago, and they were far from the bottom in terms of T&C. They had a min wage system which paid I imagine the going rate in that part of the world, but interestingly they had some decent welfare rules. For example a lunch had to be provided and somewhere to eat it away from the workplace. This was generally delivered by an outside catering company and it consisted of a dish of boiled rice, some steamed or stir fried vegetables, a bit of soy sauce or similar and a cup of tea, but it's a meal and you can live on it. I can't speak for what happens in the Chinese prison system, I don't know anything about it. But the "Chinese slave labour" trope is misplaced when you are looking at general employment.

 

[dweezil]

I dealt with Chinese contract manufacturers, albeit 15-20 years ago, and they were far from the bottom in terms of T&C. They had a min wage system which paid I imagine the going rate in that part of the world, but interestingly they had some decent welfare rules. For example a lunch had to be provided and somewhere to eat it away from the workplace. This was generally delivered by an outside catering company and it consisted of a dish of boiled rice, some steamed or stir fried vegetables, a bit of soy sauce or similar and a cup of tea, but it's a meal and you can live on it. I can't speak for what happens in the Chinese prison system, I don't know anything about it. But the "Chinese slave labour" trope is misplaced when you are looking at general employment.

Interesting to get more inside views, i've seen the 30 million in slavery figure thrown about with little supporting evidence.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I dealt with Chinese contract manufacturers, albeit 15-20 years ago, and they were far from the bottom in terms of T&C. They had a min wage system which paid I imagine the going rate in that part of the world, but interestingly they had some decent welfare rules. For example a lunch had to be provided and somewhere to eat it away from the workplace. This was generally delivered by an outside catering company and it consisted of a dish of boiled rice, some steamed or stir fried vegetables, a bit of soy sauce or similar and a cup of tea, but it's a meal and you can live on it. I can't speak for what happens in the Chinese prison system, I don't know anything about it. But the "Chinese slave labour" trope is misplaced when you are looking at general employment.

There seems to be evidence that forced labour is indeed a problem in China - but it's a large country and I think it's hard to generalise.

This article is based on a report that found evidence of forced labour of the Muslim Uyghur people - where the majority of cotton clothing is produced in China.

‘Substantial volume’ of clothing tied to Uyghur forced labour entering EU, says study

Calls for legislation after dozens of brands identified as being at risk of sourcing materials linked to China’s transfer programmes

www.theguardian.com

 

[KrisW]

China has pretty good labour laws, but it also has quite a lot of corruption, where companies owned by well-connected people never get inspected.

There is also widespread use of prison labour, but China isn't alone in this respect: in many states of the USA, prisoner labour can be sold to private contracting agencies.

 

[eisenach]

I've just watched the French film "Ouistreham", (Between Two Worlds) with the wonderful Juliette Binoche. I'd always believed that Brittany Ferries were, along with Stena and DFDS, one of the better ferry companies.

Maybe they are, but the film doesn't paint a great picture of the daily lives of the staff.

There aren't many options, but I'll certainly avoid the likes of P&O (have done for years, ever since they tried to break the strikes 20 or so years ago) and Irish Ferries, which seem to use the same employment techniques. The crew on Brittany Ferries always appear to be quite content and friendly, and they aren't always über expensive : Portsmouth to Le Havre is good value, and Rosslare to Bilbao / Santander has been great, even if it did mean a stop off last autumn for a crew change in Roscoff on the way out.

 

[hifinutt]

watched the Baftas recently , noticed the podium sponsored by P&O