Some fairly big accusations being flung around

 

A culture of fear leading to

 

76 ambulance call outs where staff don't want to ring in sick

4 women going into labour, one giving birth

staff being offered full time contracts for sexual favours

staff being docked 15 mins wages for being 2 mins late

staff getting in bother for a toilet break, 6 strikes in 6 months and they are sacked

Female staff being referred to as "New meat"..

 

Reckon Mike Ashley managed to hold his own in the enquiry

Clearly things are not right but I don't buy into the magnitude of what's being alleged. Fuck all wrong with 6 strikes and your out. The numbers need to be looked in comparison to the total hours worked which will be tens of thousands.

Mate of mine works as a store manager. Crap hours. Not many days off. But....... A big but they get paid and rewarded very well. I think he's done 10 years and has collected bonuses to pay his mortgage off from what he tells me

Followed a bit of this on the live updates, pretty entertaining! As far as being grilled by MP's sat in an office can be entertaining...

Followed a bit of this on the live updates, pretty entertaining! As far as being grilled by MP's sat in an office can be entertaining...

 

same, had a year 12 btec group and the bbc feed up.. it was a bit popcorn esque seeing the allegations fly...and Astleys reactions

Once spent an afternoon in the old JJB factory in Wigan. After seeing the state of the place (along with similar security checks to those cited yesterday), the whole thing really doesn't surprise me. Stay in school, kids.

Saw some footage on TV from a hidden camera.

Shocking treatment of people. Fair enough to have means to prevent taking the piss, but this is well over the top.

Fair enough to have means to prevent taking the piss, but this is well over the top.

Aye, there's a difference between taking the piss and taking a piss.

I have worked at a few places with clocking in machines years back, they also start paying from 00, 15, 30, 45 not in between

 

If your clocking in at .02 then your unluckily to be productive until .15 anyroad

 

Think that bits fair enough

 

Sexual favours for perm jobs is of course crazy

Edited June 8, 201610 yr by birch-chorley

Is this really just Sports Direct? The bloke is hardly a gang master.

I saw some of this yesterday, I thought he actually came across quite well. I'm sure his place is no worse/different than somewhere like Amazon and those whopping warehouses they have 

They are doing a decent job of employing people on the high street, otherwise it would be another boarded up unit and people would order direct from China on eBay, surely?

Is this really just Sports Direct? The bloke is hardly a gang master.

 

no

 

read this article that suggest the DWP is worse

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sports-direct-docked-15-minutes-of-workers-pay-for-turning-up-one-minute-late-but-the-dwp-will-a7070501.html

I watched all 3 sessions of the committee hearing on this interweb thingy.

The first session was with the Unite reps, who were grandstanding, and I think 3 of the committee declared an interest in that their elections were cash supported by Unite (including the chairman).

The second session was with two agencies who supply between them 3,000 staff to Sports Direct, starting on 7-week contracts. When asked how much the contracts were worth the FD woman said that was sensitive. Then she was asked what proportion of her firm's business that represented and she replied "£20M", which she then changed to 10% (and her company accounts for about half of the SD agency staff).

The session was Ashley, plus a PR adviser who hardly got a word in and was over-ridden when he did.

At first Ashley's open, honest answers were surprisingly impressive. But as it wore on I came to realise that He was failing to impose his (seemingly reasonable) views on his line managers, and in consequence made a great deal of money.

The ambulance thing was110 call-outs to the Shirebrook warehouse in three and a half years. That's about one every 10 days, so clearly any competent management would have taken action themselves. As he said himself, some of them just merited sitting the staff member down and giving them a drink of water. Seemingly this was beyond the culture in which the place operates.

He disagreed with the quartering (but it's his company!), whereby being late by even one minute leads to a 15 minute pay deduction. I am so old that I remember that as the norm. If you are late there are administrative consequences, but that seems to be in the past now. [At the time I started there was an old soldier on every entry point who booked latecomers, and collected signed pass-outs for dental appointments and such like].

The overall impression was that he simply reacts as late as possible to improve anything which impacts on his profits. No wonder the City has a low regard for him. He said that many of his best staff had started on agency work, and yet the conversion rate seems very, very low.