Once one of Kent's biggest employers, P&O Ferries' reputation is now holed below the waterline.

It has been accused of "acting like thugs" after unceremoniously plunging 800 employees into redundancy and suspending all cross-Channel services for at least the next week.

Staff were told the news through a pre-recorded message from one of the firm’s bosses, before handcuff-trained security teams reportedly escorted them from their vessels.

Passengers were left stranded at the last-minute, prompting many customers to vow never to travel on P&O’s ferries again.

Jon Primett tweeted: “I don't think I've ever been as appalled by an employment issue as I've been today. P&O Ferries are a disgrace, plain and simple.

“I hope a mass boycott ensues. Sad news for Dover, an area already with high deprivation, this is a hammer blow to the town.”

P&O’s social media accounts have been peppered with messages from outraged users, with many of them calling for mass boycotts of the firm.

Season-ticket-holder David Dacosta also promised never to use the service again, adding what it had announced was the “reason I will never spend money with you again”.

Many with tickets booked for the following weeks are unsure what yesterday’s news means for their journeys.

Meanwhile, the shock decision prompted protests on the streets of Dover, with sacked P&O staff being joined by RMT Union members – and more are planned for today.

Politicians were quick to condemn P&O, with shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh branding its decision to axe 800 members of staff without notice “clearly illegal”, “the action of thugs” and a national scandal.

Dover MP Natalie Elphicke accused the firm of acting in a “shabby, disgraceful and utterly unacceptable” manner, while Canterbury’s Rosie Duffield stated the dumped staff “just want their jobs back”.

The shocking news of on-board P&O staff being made redundant yesterday as they sailed back into port will be a bitter blow for the many families it will inevitably impact upon – but it is not the first ferry company to take such drastic action.

In 2005, Irish Ferries carried out a similar move.

As vessels sailed on its routes in the Irish Sea, 543 directly employed seafarers were told they were being kicked out and replaced with "predominantly eastern European" agency crew. Security staff had boarded the vessels before revealing their hand.

The fall-out of the decision was significant. Crews refused to leave, unions were apoplectic, and ferries were laid up in ports for nigh on three weeks.

In Ireland, where many of the staff originated, huge protests took place.

Ultimately, the unions hammered out a deal which saw "favourable terms and conditions" for those wishing to stay with the company and, importantly, the introduction of the minimum wage for those eastern Europeans working on the vessels.

Ironically, Irish Ferries has gone on to heap pressure on P&O's shoulders after launching its own cross-Channel rival service earlier this year.

Faced with what P&O say are unsustainable losses in recent years, it seems unions will face an uphill struggle to save UK jobs this time around, if the company's very future depends on it.

In a statement issued yesterday, it revealed it was haemorrhaging £100million for each of the last two years and that the business, as a result, was "not viable".

For many, it is a remarkable decline for a company so synonymous with the Channel route.

It wasn't long ago that P&O was king of the cross-Channel marketplace – it's distinct branding a common sight.

Yet in recent years it has both changed owners – and fortunes – as the seas got ever more unpredictable for the industry.

The loss of the once lucrative duty free deals, the arrival of the Channel Tunnel and our penchant for cheap airline travel eroded its position yet further.

By the time the pandemic disrupted its services so dramatically in 2020 and 2021, those waves of financial pressures were beginning to break over its bow.

P&O Ferries today is owned by the Dubai-based DP World which, over the years, has done little to ingratiate itself with staff, unions or the public.

In April 2020, as the travel industry started to buckle under the lockdowns which so stifled travel in the early stages of the Covid crisis, DP World dished out $322million (£270m) in dividends to stakeholders - just days after asking the British government for a £150m bail-out to help it survive.

It claimed it was legally obliged to pay out. But it sat uncomfortably dishing out cash in one hand and holding out its begging bowl for British tax payers' money in the other.

During the crisis, it also took advantage of the government's furlough scheme and, ultimately, went on to make 1,100 staff, nationwide, redundant.

DP World is a multinational logistics company with interests in companies around the world. Prior to the pandemic, it was generating revenues in excess of $8.5billion (£6.5bn).

It acquired P&O Ferries in 2006 - before selling it to its parent company, the investment company Dubai World not long later. Dubai World handles investments for the Dubai government - one of the richest in the world.

But in 2019, DP World re-acquired P&O Ferries in a deal worth £322m. That same year, the vessels operating its UK routes were reflagged as being registered in Cyprus, in order to take advantage of tax breaks following Brexit.

The single biggest stakeholder in Dubai World and, as a consequence DP World, is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum - ruler of Dubai and worth, alone, some £4bn. In short, it's not short of a bob or two.

Which makes it all the more surprising that there's also a £146m deficit DP World owes on behalf of P&O Ferries to the Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund (MNRPF) the pension scheme for workers in the maritime industry. It is the largest single employer in the scheme, and P&O accounts for a third of the scheme’s overall liabilities - something the Pensions Regulator is looking into.

The irony being that if the pension fund comes up short, the government could be hit as a number of public sector entities - including the Royal Navy's civilian arm, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, are part of the scheme.

In 2020, the Rail, Martime and Transport (RMT) union flagged up concerns over DP World's employment plans for the ferry company.

It accused the firm of replacing 60 UK ratings staff (ratings are skilled seafarers working across a range of on-board departments) on its Hull to Rotterdam route and replacing them with cheaper foreign labour, in an effort to cut costs.

DP World denied, at the time, there was any intention of doing the same at Dover.

For now, DP World's decision is a damning indictment of the current climate for trained, experienced seafarers in both east Kent and the UK as a whole.

But you can be sure the unions will ensure the move will not be taken lying down.

Mark Dickinson, general secretary of global trade union for seafarers, Nautilus International, said of this week's move: "The news that P&O Ferries is sacking the crew across its entire UK fleet is a betrayal of British workers. It is nothing short of scandalous, given that this Dubai-owned company received British taxpayers' money during the pandemic.

"There was no consultation and no notice given by P&O."

The union added the action "follows several years in which the company attempted to drive down pay, reduce occupational sick pay, and introduce lay-off clauses in its collective bargaining agreement" and "attempted to introduce a 'no strike clause'".

Expect this saga to run for weeks if not months.

None of which will come as comfort for the hundreds of families in the area who are facing up to hardship as a consequence.