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P&O boss reveals his salary while he’s grilled by MPs over making 800 staff redundant
He also confirmed that the company’s new agency workers are paid just £5.50 an hour
P&O Ferries boss Peter Hebblethwaite publicly revealed his salary as he admitted the company broke the law when sacking its 800 crew-members.
Speaking before a committee of MPs yesterday, the chief executive confirmed his salary is nine times that of the company’s average seafarer, and that P&O Ferries were offering agency workers replacing sacked staff an hourly rate below UK minimum wage.
Hebblethwaite revealed that he is paid a basic salary of £325,000 a year and, in addition, qualifies for two bonus schemes.
He said the average sacked seafarer earned £36,000 a year and will get £46,500 in compensation.
MPs were told the company is paying its new agency recruits an average hourly rate of pay £5.50, plus pension contributions.
But Hebblethwaite admitted the lowest hourly rate would actually be ‘around £5.15,’ telling MPs: “The average rate is from about £5.50 to about £6, depending on exchange rate.”
When asked whether he could live on £5.50 an hour, Hebblethwaite did not answer.
Read More: Calls for P&O Ferries to pay back all their £10m furlough payments
Hebblethwaite also told MPs there was ‘absolutely no doubt’ P&O was required to consult with trade unions, but it chose not to.
He said: “I completely throw our hands up, my hands up, that we did choose not to consult. We did not believe there was any other way to do this to compensate people in full.
“We assessed that given the fundamental nature of change, no union could accept it and therefore we chose not to consult because a consultation process would have been a sham.
“We didn’t want to put anybody through that. We are compensating people in full and up-front for that decision.”
The ferry operator, which was bought by Dubai-based logistics giant DP World in 2019, sparked outrage last week when it told its 800-strong workforce that their jobs had been terminated with immediate effect in a virtual Zoom meeting.
In its statement, P&O cited significant year-on-year losses and taking decisions to ensure its ‘survival’ as an explanation to its controversial decision.