KJ, Chris and Fee discuss the Sports Direct "gulag"...
SOURCE GUARDIAN: A day at 'the gulag' - what it's like to work at Sports Direct's warehouse
Warehouse staff at the group, the booming retail chain
controlled by the billionaire Mike Ashley, are required to go through searches
at the end of each shift, for which their time is unpaid, while they also
suffer harsh deductions from their wage packets for clocking in for a shift
just one minute late. The practices contribute to many staff being paid an
effective rate of about £6.50 an hour against the statutory rate of £6.70 –
potentially saving the FTSE 100 firm millions of pounds a year at the expense
of some of the poorest workers in the UK. The discovery of the low pay being
received by Sports Direct workers comes on top of a string of criticisms of the
working conditions within the retailer’s warehouse in Shirebrook, Derbyshire,
where more than 80% of staff are on zero hours contracts. Workers are also:
Harangued by tannoy for not working fast enough; Warned they will be sacked if
they receive six black marks – or “strikes” (see document below) – over a
six-month period for offences including a period of reported sickness,
“errors,” excessive/long toilet breaks, using a mobile phone in the warehouse,
“time wasting” and “excessive chatting” and “horseplay”; Banned from wearing
802 separate clothing brands at work; The rigorous searches – down to the last
layer of clothing, asked to roll up trouser legs and show top of underwear
–typically takes 15 minutes, because management is so concerned about potential
theft. Meanwhile, local primary schoolteachers have told the Guardian that
pupils can remain in school while ill – and return home to empty houses – as
parents working at Sports Direct are too frightened to take time off work.
Union officers say the strict culture in the warehouse has resulted in workers
being afraid to speak out over low pay and conditions as they fear immediately
losing their jobs. The criticisms of Sports Direct – which have also included
questions about whether its pricing policies are misleading, as well as the
influence Ashley has on a company whose shares are held by many UK pension
funds – come as the public company continues to dominate the UK sports
retailing market and its trading performance flourishes. The retailer’s success
story is almost entirely credited to the unconventional retailing nous of
Ashley, a self-made man whose fortune amounts to £3.5bn. Zoe Lagadec, a
solicitor at Mulberry’s Employment Law Solicitors, said that docking 15 minutes
of pay for clocking in slightly late is “arguably a breach of the national
minimum wage, which carries both criminal and civil sanctions”.
