FOR Eddie Dempsey, RMT’s assistant general secretary, the destruction of Britain’s maritime sector is an act of national self-harm — one the union is determined to reverse.

With Nautilus and the TUC, it’s working on a mandatory seafarers’ charter — not just to prevent more scandals like the illegal mass sacking of workers by P&O ferries two years ago, but to rebuild one of the country’s proudest working-class industries.

“My father was a deep sea sailor who sailed out of the port of London. There’s no more deep sea sailors in Britain. The people that are working in the maritime sector are retiring, there’s no training provided to bring new people in,” he told journalists on the fringes of a union rally last week.

“All you’ve got to do is look at some of the port cities in this country — they’re in absolute destitution, with drug problems rife, unemployment sky high, people in despair.”

The country once had a “very strong, well-paid, unionised workforce in the maritime sector. A merchant navy that was the pride of the world, and they had connections with workers in every port in every country on the planet. 

“That was destroyed through deliberate actions taken by successive governments. Allowing British companies operating British vessels to flag those ships to other countries, so they can bring in workers from the global South and pay those workers poverty wages and make sure they have absolutely no rights.

“At the same time they sacked and got rid of British and Irish seafarers in the ports, leading to the deindustrialisation and destitution of our port towns. Once the merchant navy goes the docks follow, once the docks go all kinds of industries in the supply chain go.”

Yet this isn’t a sector that is somehow outdated or unviable. “Britain is an island. Ninety per cent of our international trade arrives on a boat.

“There’s no law on Earth that prevents a British government from making sure seafarers in Britain are paid properly, have decent rights under employment law, and that there is a level of fair bargaining between trade unions and employers.

“France has just legislated to bring in a minimum wage law for workers coming in and out of Calais. In America they’ve got what we call cabotage laws, if you’re working port to port in America, you’re subject to their labour laws and there are minimum standards. In Australia they have agreements.”

British politicians have ducked the issue, opting to tinker around the fringes with bilateral deals or a voluntary seafarers’ charter the government promotes. But there’s no obligation on an employer to sign up to it — P&O, whose mass sacking two years ago led politicians including then employment minister Grant Shapps to promise reform, has not signed up.

“A voluntary agreement means you don’t have an agreement because employers don’t voluntarily give up their profits in order to make sure workers are well paid.”

And as Dempsey points out, a voluntary charter puts employers who want to do the right thing at a disadvantage, as they are undercut by unscrupulous rivals.

So what does the union want done about it? RMT is looking at the Labour Party’s New Deal for Workers and wants to work with MPs to flesh out proper protections for seafarers.

A number of MPs addressed the No More P&Os rally called by RMT, Nautilus and the TUC outside Parliament this week, including shadow employment rights minister Justin Madders.

Madders said the mass sacking was a moment politicians should have woken up to the need to “reset the dial” on workers’ rights, which had — as the government even acknowledged at the time — become far too weak.

P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite “admitted to Parliament that he had factored in the cost of breaking employment law. Factored in the cost of trampling over people’s rights … and to rub salt into the wound they’ve allowed P&O and its parent company to win more government contracts, get more public money.”

Madders argues Labour’s New Deal for Workers will “end this race to the bottom, end this obscenity of fire and rehire” and establish “a level playing field for all workers.”

RMT has welcomed Labour’s commitment to a mandatory charter for seafarers which is similar to the commitment to Fair Pay Agreements contained in the New Deal. British employment law, however, does not always protect all seafarers and RMT is working with Labour to make sure that there are no loopholes in the New Deal that can be exploited by unscrupulous employers like P&O. 

Dempsey likens some ships operating out of British ports to “floating prisons,” since the super-exploited mariners on board may be “paid below the minimum wage — well below it. They’re not allowed off, they’ve got no recourse to law.

“We’re going to be providing people in the Labour Party working around the new deal with the legal arguments.

“There’ll be a lot of pushback from the Chamber of Shipping and so on, and a risk MPs will say we’ve got these complicated laws, they’re too difficult to unpack.

“We’re going to give them the legal arguments, we’re going to do the work for them, because that’s rubbish. We’re going to say: ‘this is how you do it,’ we will help you get the legislation — but we want a Labour government, in the first 100 days, in an Employment Bill, to include British seafarers and we want them on parity — to get all the benefits of the new deal they’re proposing for workers on land.”