Grinch Direct

Unite members sent cards to tight fisted Sports Direct bosses yesterday (17 December) telling them to “Stop being a Grinch and pay up.”

The company is the biggest sports retailer in the UK, however despite this they feel they can’t afford a pay rise or permanent contracts for its workers.

Earlier this month Unite branded Sports Direct the UK’s meanest employer as it refused a pay rise for staff, and yesterday Unite activists took their message to the companies vast Shirebrook facility, where they gave out Christmas cards from  Sports Direct workers to their ‘Grinch’ employer.

Unite is also asking the public to write to Sports Direct and tell them to pay their staff properly. 

Staff at its warehouse site in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, earn just nine pence above the minimum wage. Despite Unite being in pay talks with Sports Direct for the past 15 months regarding these workers, Sports Direct has refused to budge from its Scrooge-like stance and has said it will not offer them anything more.

Unite collected letters from members at the site, before handing them into management to collectively let them know a zero per cent pay rise is not good enough and that they must return to negotiations.

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The site has 4,500 workers but just 500 of these workers are on contracts and the rest are agency workers which puts them in a precarious situation.

These Unite members are paid just £12.30 an hour – nine pence more than the minimum wage of £12.21 per hour. Unite is calling for them to earn the real living wage, currently £12.60 an hour but set to rise to £13.45 per hour by this coming April.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The way Sports Direct has treated these workers has been nothing short of a disgrace. Such a profitable firm paying poverty wages then refusing to offer its staff a deserved pay rise after months of negotiations is intolerable.

“Our members at Sports Direct have Unite’s full backing in their fight for fair pay.”

Though rewarding hard working staff with poverty pay that would make Ebenezer Scrooge blush, Sports Direct is the biggest sports retailer in the UK. Earlier this month, its parent company Frasers Group reported its half year results, which showed revenues totalled £2.6 billion for the six months to October 26, up by five per cent compared with the year before.

It is also expecting to make a full-year profit of between £550m and £600m, while Sports Direct itself had a £3.20bn turnover last year.

Unite regional secretary Paresh Patel said: “All our members at Sports Direct want for Christmas is a fair wage, instead their employer is the Grinch who planned poverty pay.

“Upping our members wages to the real living wage would barely make a dent in Sports Direct’s huge fortunes. It’s time for their hardworking staff to also be rewarded for their role in their employer’s financial success.

“Unite will continue to fight every step of the way until our members at Sports Direct are paid a liveable wage.”

Unite is asking members of the public to show support for workers at the company by sending an email to the Directors at Sports Direct and letting them know workers should not be treated this way.

By Keith Hatch

Photos by Unite East Midlands