Working conditions so poor...

Mistermeaner

I'm ill today. Probably going in as will guilty if I don't. Nb noone would even notice if I didn't as I work from home / travel alot and my boss is 1000 miles away

Why am I going in. I don't know

merrydance

Hi wotsthat

Because I have been applying for jobs for the last ten years. I have a job which I detest, but know I can't just jack it in as I need the money. If the state pension retirement age hadn't changed, meaning I'll have to wait another 6 years for my pension, I would be off like a shot. A lot of my friends haven't had this problem as they are a few years older.

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

Serious allegations/ insinuations have been made - of course it needs to be investigated.

Your confirmation bias is so strong that if/ when allegations of wrongdoing are considered unfounded you'll say that's evidence of the weakness of employment law anyway.

It's Sports Direct - they must be doing something wrong.

Well it appears sports direct are in the news again.

MPs are now involved with a parlimentary debate on the company, shareholders are looking nervous and even it's city supporters are turning on the business. Shares in the company are down 16%.

They must all have strong confirmation bias too....right?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/14/sports-direct-crisis-grows-as-mps-and-investors-question-business

Going back to the capitalism aspect of the thread, this is what a city hedge fund boss has to say about Sports Direct and Amazon...

“I think he should address these issues, I really do. It’s that old question of citizen versus subject. Do you have any obligation to your people and to the community in which you operate? In a strange way, Amazon are no different – they have more technology and use fewer people – but they don’t do anything for the greater good. They are all part and parcel of the new capitalism, which is quite cut-throat in the way it does business.”

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Well it appears sports direct are in the news again.

MPs are now involved with a parlimentary debate on the company, shareholders are looking nervous and even it's city supporters are turning on the business. Shares in the company are down 16%.

They must all have strong confirmation bias too....right?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/14/sports-direct-crisis-grows-as-mps-and-investors-question-business

Going back to the capitalism aspect of the thread, this is what a city hedge fund boss has to say about Sports Direct and Amazon...

It does look pretty bad for Sports Direct and this sort of thing is a risk at pretty much any retail or catering organisation.

When I worked in pubs and shops it was pretty normal only to be paid until 11pm and then be expected to clear up in your own time. Hotels were even worse (admittedly this was before the introduction of the minimum wage).

Shops used to do much the same thing. Pay you until 5.30pm and then expect anything else to be done in your own time. Staff theft from shops and restaurants is a huge problem and so I can see why Sports Direct would want to perform these sorts of checks.

It could be worse. In Aus, Seven Eleven has been accused of putting phantom workers on the books (normally franchise owner family members) and then getting a foreigner to work 60-80 hours a week while being paid for 20 hours. If the workers complained the franchise owners told them they would report them the immigration authorities. It is starting to look like this was all done with the connivance of Seven Eleven.

Part of the problem is that people are very price sensitive these days and retailers on wafer-thin margins are responding to that by squeezing their supply chain. Some (but not all) do that by resorting to illegal or immoral practices. If you buy cheap frozen prawns for example, it's highly likely that they were produced using slave labour whereas if you buy Scottish langoustines then the chances are that they were not.

However, decent Scottish langoustines will cost you in excess of £20/kg including shells and you can easily pay a lot more than that. Cheap prawns will cost you less than half for just the meat as long as you are happy eating prawns shelled by imprisoned children.

We get the products we are prepared to pay for in the end. If you want the very cheapest then you have to accept that you are directly supporting slavery and other abuses. It's time people took responsibility for their purchases.

Graham_Devon

Agree with most of that.

However, it's fairly easy to pick up the same sort of gear for the same sort of prices Sports Direct offer the stuff at without having to resort to using companies like Sports Direct.

Same can be said for Amazon....another company I detest. You'll find that Tesco often undercut amazon. Tesco isn't the best of companies out there but it's leagues above Amazon....not that that's all that hard.

As for wafer thin margins - I'm aware of the millions of items they sell, but they still came out this year with a £230m profit - that's no doubt after their accountants had worked their magic. So it doesn't appear to be that wafer thin.

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

As for wafer thin margins - I'm aware of the millions of items they sell, but they still came out this year with a £230m profit - that's no doubt after their accountants had worked their magic. So it doesn't appear to be that wafer thin.

I've had a quick squizz at the 2015 results and Sports Direct seem to play with a pretty straight bat. They paid £72.1 million in Corporation Tax in the last financial year on profits of £313.4 million.

http://www.sportsdirectplc.com/~/media/Files/S/Sports-Direct/annual-report/Annual%20Report%202015%20-%20FINAL.pdf

They make a lot of profit because they are very big. They have over 750 outlets across the world plus a large web presence.

martinsurrey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Well it appears sports direct are in the news again.

MPs are now involved with a parlimentary debate on the company, shareholders are looking nervous and even it's city supporters are turning on the business. Shares in the company are down 16%.

They must all have strong confirmation bias too....right?

Yeah, down 16% but still up 278% in 5 years (152p on 17 Dec 2010, 575p today.)

The city still knows a good thing (maybe not morally but financially).

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

However, it's fairly easy to pick up the same sort of gear for the same sort of prices Sports Direct offer the stuff at without having to resort to using companies like Sports Direct.

Over the years you've voiced your displeasure at the ethics of Sports Direct, Primark, Tesco, Amazon, Starbucks, Petrol retailers, utility providers, house builders, banks, landlords, Facebook, FTSE 100 companies, boomers, zero hours contracts, Greencore etc.

Just where does a paragon of virtue actually spend their money?

Generali

martinsurrey wrote: »

Yeah, down 16% but still up 278% in 5 years (152p on 17 Dec 2010, 575p today.)

The city still knows a good thing (maybe not morally but financially).

If what the company is accused of doing hasn't really changed (docking workers for turning up late and making workers stay unpaid to be searched to try to reduce theft losses) then I can see how that would be seen as okay within the culture of retail.

Clearly it isn't okay to break the law, especially when it comes at the expense of the lowest paid, but I can see how this happened.

mwpt

wotsthat wrote: »

Over the years you've voiced your displeasure at the ethics of Sports Direct, Primark, Tesco, Amazon, Starbucks, Petrol retailers, utility providers, house builders, banks, landlords, Facebook, FTSE 100 companies, boomers, zero hours contracts, Greencore etc.

Don't forget the too productive Germans.