Former P&O chef sues company for £76m, claiming unfair dismissal, racial discrimination and harassment

A former P&O Ferries chef is suing the company and its chief executive, becoming the only seafarer to take legal action against the company after 800 staff were sacked without notice last month

38 year-old John Lansdown, who joined the company as a trainee when he was 16, said the action was not just about him but about the “bigger picture,” telling the BBC that he felt the need to seek justice for his colleagues who were left with "no choice" but to settle their case.

The chef is the only ex-employee to resort to legal action out of the 800 that were fired last month. In his legal documents, he alleged that the redundancy was unlawful because there was no fair selection process, no diminished need for his job, and that P&O Ferries' parent company, DP World, is highly profitable.

He added that his British nationality was a significant influence on the decision to let staff go, as the company would be able to replace them with non-British crew paid below the minimum wage of up to £5.50 per hour - as little as £1.80 an hour, in fact, according to the RMT union that represents a proportion of the fired staff.

What's more, he claimed that private security staff bearing handcuffs and balaclavas were hired to remove workers who refused to disembark the ferries they had been working on.

'This is not just about me'

He said: “This is not just about me. Seven hundred and ninety-nine of my seafaring family have lost their livelihoods, their way of life, their homes for half the year.”

The news comes after formal criminal and civil investigations were launched on 1 April into the decision by P&O Ferries to sack almost 800 workers without notice on 17th March, a move which Transport Secretary Grant Schapps called "shameful and unacceptable" after it emerged that ex-employees were only being given redundancy pay on the condition they sign 'gagging orders' (or Non-Disclosure Agreements). 

John is seeking financial compensation as well as exemplary damages of up to £76m, which he hopes will "deter" P&O Ferries from acting the same way in future.

If he wins, he will use the money to create a new trust to campaign for improved wages and terms and conditions for seafarers and to outlaw "fire and hire" practices.

The P&O Ferries chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, told a Commons committee that his company did indeed break the law by not consulting with trade unions before sacking workers, but that he would make the decision again if he had to.