Trouble with P&O Ferries?

[niemeyjt]

BUt were those the staff sacked?

[exile]

I gather so.

That makes things interesting for the Hull routes since the captain is also a registered pilot for negotiating the Humber estuary where the mud banks change continually.

I was once on the bridge and the official list of channel changes was to be seen to be believed. Probably 100+ notifications for the month (all individually held on a clip board hung on the bridge wall) - many of which were upstream of the KG dock but had to be recorded nevertheless.

When I made the crossing, there were two routes out to sea; a deep water route that was long and rather tortuous more towards the north bank and a second more shallow and narrower route, closer to the south bank and Immingham facilities, which was the preferred shorter route. IIRC they said that fully laden they had 1m clearance over parts of this route. Making an error could be a rather expensive mistake.

[niemeyjt]

Making an error could be a rather expensive mistake.

And we should all remember what can go wrong and the Herald of Free Enterprise (which also put paid to the TT brand as I recall).

[exile]

Something that was pointed out to me was that despite us all remembering TT because that was what the ship was emblazoned with, the operator on the day was in fact P&O.

[rabbit]

I am surprised at the sudden outrage of employing lower paid foreign workers. Banks and the IT industry have been doing this for 40 years or so. Nobody was outraged except the UK workers who lost their jobs. When I worked in IT we outsourced UK jobs to India. Banks and other organisations outsource their call centres and cheap foreign labour is used in agriculture. It is a facet of globalisation.

[rsm]

Surely a facet of greed firstly!

[niemeyjt]

I quite agree - globalisation has destroyed many European workers' lives to benefit the shareholders and bosses (though some would point out this benefits pension funds invested in said companies).

As various long-term forum members will attest, I have long been critical of offshoring - and of China in particular. I vote with my wallet and try to buy British, other European, American and Japanese (in that order) in preference to Chinese - but whilst people want to buy CCC nothing will change. It is down to materialism and owning many cheaper things rather than fewer quality items.

But back to P&O - looks like the UK Government is now trying to get the workers rehired - although there will still be issues over the wages paid to rehired workers (RMT aren't happy about only minimum wage).

[rabbit]

I agree. Offshoring is a quick fix for boosting profits with negative long term consequences. In the IT industry we have outsourced not just IT but knowledge of the business processes. Not good for European futures. Financial Services is a key revenue earner for the U.K. and big U.K. FS institutions have outsourced and are now dependent on resources from China and India. Once it has gone we’ll never get it back and valuable knowledge based workers in the U.K. loose their jobs

[Spardo]

I quite agree - globalisation has destroyed many European workers' lives to benefit the shareholders and bosses (though some would point out this benefits pension funds invested in said companies).

As various long-term forum members will attest, I have long been critical of offshoring - and of China in particular. I vote with my wallet and try to buy British, other European, American and Japanese (in that order) in preference to Chinese - but whilst people want to buy CCC nothing will change. It is down to materialism and owning many cheaper things rather than fewer quality items.

I agree J, I do exactly the same, but easier said than done. I spent quite a lot of time recently choosing between what appeared to be equally qualified choices of an item I required. All were apparently Chinese until I found one from Vancouver, Canada, and all the evaluations were from Canada too (this on Amazon.fr) so I bought that one. It really is as good as advertised but when I looked it over, in tiny writing at the bottom, it said 'Made in China'.

How the hell do we get out of this mess we have made for ourselves?

[exile]

How the hell do we get out of the situation?

Good question with no easy answer.
If I take my hobby of model railways, almost all models around the world are now made in China and have been for a couple of decades or more. Attention to detail has been extraordinary and quality has been generally very high (not always the case for Chinese made items).
One European manufacturer has however retained some manufacture in low cost European countries. For an equivalent model of a locomotive - as far as that is possible - you will pay €100 - 150 more. Not even my pocket extends that far.

Now expand that to all items that are currently sourced from China with a 25-33% increase in price and see where that leads with inflation and living standards.

Our whole economy has been directed for at least the last 2-3 decades towards low manufacturing cost and import of cheap labour goods. Even though labour costs have gone up considerably in China, we are still wedded to their products and much of the skills have migrated. I might also say so have peoples' expectations. People do not want to work in factories doing repetitive operations 8 hours per day.

A change will require a complete reset of how our economy works and what people want and expect from life.