The BBC Trust has rejected a complaint from Sports Direct about a BBC1 programme on working conditions at the company that included revealing that a staff member gave birth in a warehouse toilet.

In October last year an edition of BBC1’s Inside Out East Midlands aired an investigation of the working conditions at Sports Direct’s national distribution centre based at Shirebrook in Derbyshire.

The programme shed light on a so-called “six strikes” disciplinary policy with “offences” including excessive chatting, a period of reported sickness, long toilet breaks and using a mobile phone at work. More than six strikes in a six-month period led to being sacked.

Former workers alleged that this disciplinary policy meant that workers attended their shifts even when they were sick, because they feared losing their jobs.

It also included figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that 76 ambulances or paramedic cars were dispatched to the distribution centre’s post code between January 2013 and December 2014.

Sports Direct’s response in the programme was that there were only 24 calls specifically to the warehouse.

The programme also revealed that three of the calls were about women having pregnancy difficulties, including one who gave birth in toilets at the site.

Sports Direct, which a Guardian investigation exposed as paying workers less than the legal minimum, lodged a complaint with the BBC Trust about the toilet birth incident.

The company lodged a complaint with the BBC Trust arguing that there was “no proper basis” for including a reference to the warehouse toilet birth, and that the BBC misled the audience by implying that it was an example of someone turning up to work when they were unfit to do so.

The BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee agreed that some viewers may have made the connection between the birth incident and pressure to turn up at work but said that the incident was “factually accurate”.

“The programme went no further than the known facts and therefore the BBC had not knowingly and materially misled the audience,” said the BBC Trust. “The content was duly accurate.”

The company also complained that the programme-makers did not provide it with an opportunity to respond to the “serious allegation” about the birth incident.

The BBC Trust said that it “might have been preferable” for the programme-makers to have given Sports Direct “fuller detail” of the incident in their “right of reply” letter to the company sent a month before the show aired.

“On balance, the complainant had been provided with sufficient detail about the nature of the allegations being made in the programme … to give them a fair opportunity to respond,” said the BBC Trust. “Sports Direct had been afforded an adequate right of reply in the programme in that [the company] was able to say that it did not penalise workers for being unwell.”

The BBC Trust said the broadcast “did not breach the editorial guidelines on fairness” and rejected Sports Direct’s complaint.