@reluctantjumper @nixie based on what grounds do you boycott Mike Ashley owned stores .
I knew some of the staff at a few Sports Direct stores through my old job and not one of them had a good thing to say about the way the company was/is run.
From the same job I knew the staff at the local House Of Fraser when he took over that, went from a decent place to work to the same as the above. Staff leaving that had been there 20+ years thanks to the cost cutting and changes to worker’s contracts.
Any decent brand that falls under his control drops massively in quality and trades on it’s name as long as it can.
The local Evans lost all it’s decent staff for similar reasons. The ‘delivery charge’ for stuff already in-store if done by click and collect is just a complete pisstake.
Then there is all of this (from Frasers Group wiki):
Between 2013 and 2014, ambulances were dispatched to Sports Direct HQ’s facilities more than 80 times, including one concerning a woman who gave birth in the facility’s bathroom.[33] In October 2015, the chief executive of Sports Direct, David Forsey, was charged with a criminal offence for consultation failures over USC staff who only had 15 minutes notice of redundancy.[34][35] In December 2015, an investigation by The Guardian found that the company fines staff for late clocking on, does not award overtime for late clocking off, relies on zero hour contracts, and regularly makes staff wait unpaid for a security check at the end of shifts. A union official suggested that these practices were illegal as they brought workers’ earnings below the minimum wage. The company responded by saying there were unspecified inaccuracies in the reports.[36] A representative from the charity ShareAction claimed that workers are “jeopardising their health” for fear of being dismissed while another shareholder said the company’s reputation as an employer was “atrocious”.[37]
Late in December 2015 Sports Direct announced a 15 pence per hour increase for staff currently receiving less than minimum wage, taking them above minimum wage,[38] the annual cost of this was said in the announcement to be ~£10 Million (GBP); however it was immediately noted that £0.15p × 37.5 hours × 19,000 staff × 52 weeks = 5,557,500 (~£5.5 million), this and other factors resulted in many (including Unite) calling it a “PR Stunt”.[39] Workers on zero-hours contracts are not included in the rise and neither are those already paid more than minimum wage (management/supervisors etc.) therefore the 19,000 staff above is actually substantially fewer.[40]
A Sports World store in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, 2007
In August 2016, Sports Direct admitted breaking the law and agreed to disburse unlawfully withheld wages totalling about £1m to the affected workers.[41][42] As of March 2017, some Sports Direct workers were yet to receive backpay for their time worked, because of a disagreement regarding how contracts changing between employment agencies should be handled.[43] In November 2016, six MPs from the Business and Skills Committee visited Sports Direct, and reported that while there, Sports Direct attempted to place them under surveillance.[44] In February 2017, it was reported that Sports Direct had failed to inform its workforce of a data breach of their personal information after an attacker gained access to its internal systems in September 2016. The Information Commissioner’s Office stated it was aware of “an incident from 2016 involving Sports Direct” and would “be making enquiries.”[45]
Are you happy to support a company that screws it’s staff over constantly?
