Today MPs draw back the curtain to reveal a deeply unpleasant picture of working life in 21st-century Britain. The report by the business select committee on Sports Direct, the UK’s largest sporting retailer, describes a working culture where people are systematically treated without respect, underpaid, bullied and exploited, and where the founder and owner of the company, Mike Ashley, admitted that he wouldn’t want his children working.
We found that workers at Sports Direct were not being paid the legal national minimum wage, and were penalised for taking a short break to drink water or for taking time off work when ill. Some female workers said they were promised permanent contracts in exchange for sexual favours.
We also heard disturbing evidence of workers at the company’s Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire being scared to take time off when unwell. Freedom of information requests brought to light details of ambulances or paramedics being repeatedly dispatched to Shirebrook, on many occasions responding to life-threatening cases and, in one instance, a woman giving birth in the warehouse toilet.
When employment protection legislation should protect all in work, but particularly vulnerable and low-paid workers, the very existence of cases such as Sports Direct are a matter of deep concern. However, the publication of our report today shows a modern democracy holding power to account in the interests of its citizens.
Trade unions were unable to play their normal role at Sports Direct – they do not represent the agency workers who form the bulk of the workforce at the Shirebrook warehouse. But the trade union Unite was able to assemble information from workers, and submitted a dossier to our committee with valuable evidence and vivid testimony on the conditions both at Shirebrook and at Sports Direct stores.
Parliament has played its part too. We on the business committee have used the powers at our disposal to force Ashley to explain publicly what was going on at his company. The press – whose undercover investigations shone a light on appalling working conditions – Unite and parliament worked together to hold Ashley to account, on behalf of the public, in a way that shareholders of the company could not because Ashley owns 55% of the shares.
But what has changed? Have we achieved anything for the workers? Ashley had to be dragged kicking and screaming to our committee against his wishes and those of his advisers. But when he did appear, he was an open, talkative and engaging witness, apparently happy to concede that Sports Direct might have got too big for him. We welcomed his openness. However, people will form their own opinion of his principal defence that, as the owner of Sports Direct and a regular visitor to the warehouse, he was unaware of the Shirebrook horror stories that had featured in the press and in evidence to us.
He had announced a review into working practices in December 2015. It was clear that was hot air, a PR stunt designed to get over some damaging headlines. But for all the theatre of his appearance in front of our committee last month, Ashley, to his credit, made a very public promise to take action. He has now established a review of working practices – conducted by independent lawyers – which will report by early September. He has now begun a dialogue with Unite. He is now paying all workers a little over the national minimum wage. And he has undertaken to look into the accusations of bullying and sexual harassment and report back.
Of course, it isn’t over yet. We will be holding Ashley’s feet to the fire to check on progress and will be visiting Shirebrook later this year to check the reported improvements have been implemented.
I find the fact that the majority of workers at Shirebrook are agency staff troubling. It breaks the important and healthy link between the company and its workers: a link that can provide security to those employed and benefit the company’s bottom line because of improved staff morale, reduced absenteeism and rising productivity and competitiveness. The agency model allows the company to cut costs and removes its responsibilities. Agencies have no sense of responsibility to the workers they provide, and certainly the evidence we heard in our Sports Direct inquiry from employment agencies The Best Connection and Transline was deeply unconvincing, indeed woeful and, we fear, misleading.
If the current trend continues towards every worker for themselves – the so-called “gig economy” – then government will need to look again at the UK’s employment laws to ensure they provide sufficient support for the individual against the dominant position of the hirer. This includes companies such as Uber, which this week has been taken to an employment tribunal by a group of drivers who argue they should be recognised officially as workers at the company and entitled to a range of benefits; parcel delivery giant Hermes, whose self-employed couriers complain of low pay, no employment rights and the threat of losing their work at short notice; and employment agencies specialising in recruiting cheap labour from abroad.
With cameras on every phone, any company cutting corners and abusing workers can quickly find itself in front of the court of public opinion and the judgment of the stock market. It is up to consumers and shareholders to make poor working practices as socially unacceptable for companies as drink-driving is for individuals, and for government then to make them illegal.
