REAL LIVES UK jobs 2015
“And if they stand up for their rights and get the sack, where are they going to go? If Sports Direct is not employing them because they’ll be more compliant, why are they employing them?”
One permanent employee told
uniteWORKS that some locals apply for jobs at the warehouse but the agencies falsely tell them there are no vacancies.
Deserve better The people of Shirebrook are desperate for decent jobs and deserve better. “The town is a caricature of an ex-mining community that has been stitched up,” says Luke.
Scores of shops are closed and shuttered; the only thriving businesses are the ‘pound’ stores and pay day loan shops.
But the secretive Ashley won’t lose any sleep over the plight of his workers or the problems in the community. The Sunday Times Rich List puts his personal wealth at £3.75bn.
He refuses to engage with politicians over the goings-on at his warehouse. After a series of letters from Dennis Skinner, MP for Bolsover, Ashley said the only contact he would have with the veteran left- winger would be when he flies over his house in his private helicopter.
One frequent visitor to the warehouse said the staff are wary of him. “The temperature seems to drop whenever he appears.” Clearly the union has a battle on its hands.
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“When people talk to us, it is quite clear they’re scared,” says Luke. “We are desperate to help them but they are just too frightened to speak up. This is what law makers have to understand – we need ways for people to blow the whistle where they feel that they will be protected.”
Luke believes it would help many of the workforce if they had the opportunity to learn English. The union is hoping to run courses at the Shirebrook miners’ welfare – one of the few remaining signs of the town’s industrial history.
“Most of the people I end up representing are under severe strain suffering from depression, anxiety and stress. It occurs with frightening regularity. There are lots of stresses in our society, but I’ve never seen it so prevalent.
“It’s not just down to the precarious nature of the job, it’s about the way they impose targets and how they are managed. One Polish man said it was almost like a joke with supervisors shouting, ‘work harder, work faster’. He told me it was like being in a Gulag.”
Luke acknowledges the real solution to the behaviour of organisations like Sport Direct lies in political change.
Unite’s voluntary recognition agreement at the site only covers the 300 permanent staff so any industrial action would be ineffective. Union membership is frowned upon and less than two per cent are members.
“We want to prevent Sports Direct becoming the benchmark for other employers. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. There is no point in tackling zero hours’ contracts, if we don’t deal with agency workers’ employment issues. In the case of some employers it’s simply
about responsibilities.
“There has to be a change in legislation and we need a government with the appetite to do something about it.”
Zero pensions contracts?
Zero hours employment makes planning for the future virtually impossible. Sports Direct made one of the lowest contributions to its staff pensions of any FTSE 100 company last year, according to new research, reports The Independent. The retailer managed to avoid having to automatically enrol staff on to pensions following law changes because the vast majority of Sports Direct staff are on zero hours contracts.
Just £82 a year on average was paid to staff in pensions benefits, against a FTSE 100 average of £3,000, according to the trading firm Banc De Binary, which did the research.
Overall, Sports Direct was the third worst pensions contributor in the top tier stock market, behind the security firm G4S (£78 per employee).
shedding their
Shirebrook – people desperate for decent jobs
Mark Thomas
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