Sports Direct

It appears the lovely Mike Ashley's Sports Direct PR department could be busy in the coming days. It seems his company are using a nice employment loophole to effectively impose slave labour and give zero benefits to staff. That explains the low cost of goods in their stores and the high profit margins.

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/sports-direct-stop-unfair-zero-hour-contracts

If you fancy signing the petition, go ahead. This thread isn't politically motivated although it does conveniently detract from all the GB crap we've had to read in the papers for the past few weeks!

P.S. This is not an anti-Newcastle United thread either. If any club chairman was up to this including our own, I'd still post this.

 

Awkward. I purchase a lot of equipment from there.

 

Can you explain what a zero hours contract is FLA?

 

If a company states that an employee is actually contracted to zero hours per week, the employer doesn't have to give statutory benefits such as holidays, certain minimum wage levels, sick pay.... in other words, Sports Direct can hire them, fire them and screw them at will with no recourse.

It's legal slave labour.

 

I have one at my job,you are not garanteed work,only when you are needed,the plus side is,you can turn down work ,with no come back,however ,i do get paid holidays

 

They have staff? I can't find any at the Croydon branch, so usually have to grab a pair of trainers from the bottom of a precarious pile and head for the checkout.

 

So in other words no contract, no protection, just exploitation.

It just get's worse. It's time for young people to start refusing these so called 'jobs'. As you say Slavery is back, but this time Slavery for all.

 

The issue may well be that they can't, because if they did their benefits would be cut off, so they "have" to accept **** like this.

 

we are a bit better off over here because they have to pay the minimum wage.

 

Then it's time to protest in an organised way. I can't believe people are just accepting this as if it's ok. Petitions to companys ok, but this is enabled by the politicians it is to them that the protests should be directed. The employment laws enacted since the 1980's have engineered this situation. It's only through law changes that it will stop.

 

The main reason I felt compelled to post this is because I see slave labour as being perfectly accepted and legal over here in the US. And I'm damned if I am going to see that kind of corporate exploitation get installed into our society. I plan to return sometime soon but if corporations are running the roost like the "land of the fee, home of the slave" I may have to think twice about it.

It's very normal in the US for people to have 2, sometimes 3 part time jobs which they do EVERY day, sometimes at less than minimum wage. These sorts of jobs are typically at restaurants where the staff earn a derisory $4.00 with change per hour and have to suck up to customers to get 15-20% tips to supplement their pathetic wages. So who wins? The employers!

Add to that the car crash called Obamacare which demands all companies, regardless of size give highly expensive healthcare insurance to full-time employees as mandatory.... it is simply going to lead to people being fired and replaced only with part timers who get; you guessed it.... zero benefits! So when I see Sports Direct basically doing the same thing, you can see that the generations to come are literally going to be slaves to these fascist b******s!

No wI know why the Geordies hate Ashley! As the issues was sport/football related, I decided to vent here. <ENDOFRANT>

 

This surprises me, didn't Sports Direct recently issue a record amount of shares to their staff as a bonus? I recall reading that this was principally to avoid their high staff turnover continuing. Dealing them a bad hand employment wise seems counterintuative to the recent bonus, no?

 

Whenever I have worked abroad it's generally always been a zero hours contract. The one exception was a three month contract that changed to zero hours after 3 months. It lasted 2 years, 7 days a week. I could have time off whenever I wanted provided I gave the a couple of weeks notice. The client provided board and lodgings and vehicle and fuel FOC. I loved it, I got a dam site more than the minimum wage but it suited both me and my employer. I understand that the system can be abused, but it can be a valid way to work if it suits all parties.

 

I think you would be surprised how many companies do this.

All the staff where I work are on 0 hours apart from a handful and MOST of the other shops in the outlet where I work (McArthur Glen Designer Outlet, York) employ people on 0 hour contracts.

Sad fact is so few jobs are available right now that if you stand your ground and fight / turn down the contract they will be able to replace you within a matter of days.

 

Seems odd then that 38 Degrees have decided to target Sports Direct if this goes on industry wide... trying to make an example of them perhaps?

 

I think it depends on the company that you work for, I did a lot of work for AMEC Environmental, and they were absolutely superb to work for. Everything was done by gentlemen's agreement and it worked fine. Occasionally I had to wait a couple of months to get paid but the always looked after you. I guess Mike Ashley isn't quite the gentleman.

 

You don't need employment law for the gentlemen and women who look after their employees, you need them for the 'people' who don't like MacDonalds, Asda, Poundland and so on.

 

Then perhaps there needs to be a different minimum wage for zero hours contracts, say £20 an hour, that would go someway towards the loss of benefits and steamroller the 'dodgy bosses'.

 

goverment would never agree to that,it would spoil there unemployment down figures

 

Why not, it would remove the abuse of the lower paid but those of us the want to work 85 hours a week can do so without some EEC maximum hours directive removing our right to work. I like to work long hours when the work is there a then have 4 or 5 months off to become a lazy git when work is short. I hate two weeks on the costas, it's more like work than work itself. The time you get there, a couple of hangovers and it's time to come back.