Protesters surrounded Condor Ferries' Portsmouth offices yesterday over a shipping loophole the company exploits to pay crew members just £2.35 per hour.

Documents seen by the Star reveal that Condor pays Ukrainian crew members on its ships, which carry freight between Portsmouth, Gurney and Jersey, just £28.19 per 12-hour shift.

And the company is also facing an uprising across the channel from workers on its French fast ferry services.

Crews at St Malo walked out on February 6 over poor pay, union recognition and illegal contracts and have still not returned to deck, forcing the company to cancel voyages to the Channel Islands.

International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) representative Laure Talloneau has been with the workers during their 12-day action.

She said they would not back down until their demands had been met.

And members from the ITF and British affiliates RMT and Unite gathered outside Condor offices in Portsmouth yesterday in solidarity with the St Malo action and to express their disgust at the company's cynical exploitation of the lack of safeguards for international crew.

ITF British co-ordinator Ken Fleming said: "I've travelled these routes and spoken with these crews. There's no doubt they're being paid a pittance.

"The trade union movement wants no part of an operation that allows its operators to pay £2.35 per hour.

"The whole city of Portsmouth is invited to take a look at what is going on here and express its rejection of this discrimination."

Ukrainian workers, who replaced British crew in 2008, are expected to work seven days a week and receive just one month's leave for every three months they work onboard.

The normal rate of leave for British employees is one month on one month off.

The company are able to get away with flouting EU labour laws and British minimum wage laws because the Ukrainians are non-domiciled in Britain and are working in international waters.

This is despite the fact that the ships, registered under a flag of convenience to the Bahamas, only dock in British ports.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said Condor's practices amounted to "super-exploitation" and pledged to step up the fight.

He said: "The super-exploitation of foreign nationals in the British shipping industry is a massive scandal that the political elite want to keep quiet. That's no surprise as it's their wealthy mates running the shipping companies who benefit from this scam."

Condor CEO James Fulford said the protests were unrelated to the dispute in France and claimed the Ukrainian crew members were happy with their terms and conditions.

He said: "We take pride in the fact that all our standards, whether related to employment or health and safety standards, meet and exceed those required by international law."