After Better.com, British firm lays off 800 workers over Zoom call

London, March 19

After Indian American CEO Vishal Garg laid off 900 workers of his company Better.com over a Zoom call in December last year, another company has laid off nearly 800 employees the same way.

British shipping company P&O Ferries sacked 800 of its employees en masse over a Zoom call that lasted only 3 minutes and the employees were not allowed to serve a notice period, reports Daily Mail.

"I am sorry to inform you that this means your employment is terminated with immediate effect on the grounds of redundancy," Daily Mail quoted the P&O chief during his Zoom call as saying.

The firm said it has suspended sailings "for the next few days" while Transport Secretary Roubert Courts warned passengers to expect up to 10 days of disruption.

The senior P&O manager told seafarers on Thursday: "The company has made the decision that its vessels going forward will be primarily crewed by a third-party crew provider."

The British company had received 10 million pounds from the UK government in furlough cash during the Covid-19 lockdown to make payments to 1,100 employees.

In December 2021, Garg laid off nearly 900 employees even after his company, which is a digital mortgage lender, had announced it received a cash infusion of about $750 million from Aurora Acquisition Corp and SoftBank.

Last week, the company started laying off thousands of employees in the US and India, in another round of mass layoffs, and they received severance cheques in the payroll app.

An estimated 3,000 of the company's 8,000 employees in the US and India were asked to go.