Demands are being made for legal action over P&O hiring foreign agency workers for as little as £1.82 an hour to replace sacked 800 staff - with some temps living in tents.

Unions have raised concerns over the "exploitative practice" as Labour MP Karl Turner told of the low payments, saying they were expected to work huge 12-hour shifts for eight weeks at a time.

The 800 workers were fired with no notice through a view message - with reports some staff were removed from ships in handcuffs.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union say they are earning less than the £8.91 minimum wage, with one secretary claiming they got as little as £1.82 an hour while other eastern Europeans were hired on between £2.60 and £2.80 an hour.

The union said the Dubai owners of P&O should face "severest sanctions" over the mass-sacking.

The maritime union Nautilus said that P&O should face swift legal legal action over not just the way the redundancies were handled, but "blatant discrimination" in terms of wages to the agency staff aimed at a 50% cut in crew wages.

Mr Turner said he wanted the government to crack down on P&O firing and rehiring practice.

“Ministers give you platitudes and say ‘It’s not very good is it, we’re going to have to do something about it’, then do absolutely f*** all,” he said.

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Asked what they are being paid, he said: “What P&O has accepted previously in meetings with me and the RMT, they’ve said $2.40 an hour (£1.82). That was only admitted by them because we got some correspondence from the P&O management a couple of years ago which was leaked to the RMT. We produced those documents to ministers at the time. It’s grotesquely exploitative.

Mark Dickinson, general secretary of Nautilus said: "We need P&O to be held to account legally.They've broken the law, let them feel the full force of UK law. If I break the law, if I do anything to try and organise industrial action, you can be rest assured within minutes I'll never have writ served upon me. Yet it doesn't seem to apply to companies who blatantly break the law.

"And we're not just talking about the redundancy issue. We've got issues around, of course, the unfair dismissal issue.

"We've got discrimination, with the wage rates that they're offering to the agency crew that they're trying to recruit who by the way, are leaving as fast as they're joining.

"But they're offering different wage rates and different roster arrangements to seafarers from Romania, from Latvia and from India and this is blatant discrimination. This is a legal morass that this company has created by their own failed, ridiculous strategy."

In the UK, when 100 or more employees are proposed to be made dismissed, a 45-day consultation has to take place and collective redundancy rules apply and the business secretary has to be notified.

P&O say that the sacked staff were Jersey-contracted seafarers, which has raised questions over whether the depth of their legal employment rights in the UK.

Three years ago, P&O said it was shifting the  registration of its UK vessels to Cyprus ahead of Britain’s departure from the European Union, in part to keep its tax arrangements in the bloc.

P&O say they are compensating all 800 Jersey-contracted staff for lack of notice with enhanced severance packages and it is understood they have a deadline of Thursday to accept or reject them.

Mr Dickinson said the staff deserve, salaries and conditions that reflect their commitment, to safety professionalism, and the time it takes them to get qualified.

He told Sky News: "Those legal options are coming while the company has set a deadline of Thursday for many of them to decide whether they want to take redundancy or they want to stay and work on on agency terms. So it's going to be a difficult call for them and I don't I'm glad I'm not in their shoes.

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"I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. It's a really difficult call. I don't know why the company is holding a gun to their head in terms of these redundancy terms. They should give them time to think and reflect about it but over the next few days our support for our members is going to have to focus on that very difficult decision and give them a clear pathway in terms of their options, take the redundancy or fight unfair dismissal, seeking protective awards.

"And that's going to have to be on a one to one basis because each member of ours, each officer will be will have a different context."

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "They [P&O] should face the severest sanctions possible.

"We think they are importing Indian workers, Philippinos and Ukrainans at the moment to work on these vessels. That cannot be acceptable. We cannot dismiss our people to bring in other people on a discount rate.

"We were due to have a meeting with the business on Friday, then on Thursday they sacked all our members."

P&O, which has received over £50m in UK government contracts and subsidies in two years suspended its services on Thursday before axing the staff.

Services between Cairnryan to Larne, Dover to Calais, Dublin to Liverpool and Hull to Rotterdam would be out of action for between seven and 10 days.

P&O attributed the move to £100 million of losses built up during the pandemic, although its owner, DP World, reported record profits this month of £2.9bn.

An analysis revealed that P&O Ferries received £38.3m in UK government contracts since December 2018.

They include a £3.6m deal in 2020 to provide transport services between the key Scotland to Northern Ireland route – Cairnryan to Larne.

The ferry company has also received more than £15 million in public subsidies in a year to support jobs and services during the pandemic and there are calls for them to be refunded.

Mr Turner said: "What P&O has accepted previously in meetings with me and the RMT, they've said $2.40 an hour (£1.82).

"That was only admitted by them because we got some correspondence from the P&O management a couple of years ago which was leaked to the RMT.

"We produced those documents to ministers at the time. It's grotesquely exploitative."

He added: “They can’t afford to get decent accommodation... so they get terrible multioccupancy-type accommodation in Hull, very often staying in hostels for about £9 a night. Some have been known to pitch tents for a fortnight.”

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) are calling on DP World to engage in meaningful dialogue with affiliates RMT and Nautilus International about P&O Ferries' future.

"These kinds of brutal shock tactics are reminiscent of the infamous Patrick dispute, that represents nothing more than an outmoded and discredited management style," said Paddy Crumlin, president of the ITF and chairman of ITF's Dockers' Section.

"DP World's callous decision to sack and attack 800 hard-working seafarers represents a brutal attack on their dignity," said Mr Crumlin. "In doing so, they're breaching laws and failing to meet their own company's standards."

P&O sources said said wage figures cited were wholly inaccurate but could not clarify what they were actually being paid. 

Protesters gathered outside the London offices of DP World on Monday afternoon, before marching to Parliament.

Mr Lynch accused the logistics business of refusing to meet him and his counterparts at unions Nautilus and the TUC, who all attended the demonstration.

He said: “This company are quite happy to sack our members by Zoom but they are not prepared to meet us face to face. That speaks volumes about their complete contempt for their staff.

“We will continue to use political, industrial and public pressure to secure justice for the P&O workforce and we are at Parliament today to step up that campaign.”

Labour will force an emergency vote in the Commons on Monday afternoon demanding that the Government takes action to outlaw the so-called fire and rehire of staff, which involves making workers redundant before giving them their jobs back with worse terms and conditions.

The party will also call on the Government to suspend contracts with DP World until the matter with P&O Ferries is resolved.

Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “What I want to see is those workers reinstated to their jobs, as they should never (have) been dismissed from them.

“I want to see the Government take action here to ban this fire and rehire, which is the cause of this in the first place.

“There’s a vote on that this afternoon. So, what I don’t want to hear is ministers, Government ministers, complaining about what P&O have done.

“Now they’ve got the chance to do something about it, vote this afternoon for reinstatement and banning fire and rehire.”