Veering from penitent to petulant, the founder of Britain’s biggest sports goods retailer finally admitted that his company had indeed paid staff less than the minimum wage, as revealed by a Guardian investigation a year ago, and was now under investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.
Advertisement
Despite protestations from his PR adviser, Keith Bishop, who was flanking him at the committee, to not answer questions relating to the demise of BHS and Sports Direct’s interest Mr Ashley said he “couldn’t resist” answering.
The decision comes after a renewed threat that Mr Ashley may face charges of ‘contempt of parliament if he chose not to face an inquiry led by MPs, and committee chairman Iain Wright said the members were to discuss sanctions if he avoided the appointment.
He blamed some pay problems on “bottlenecking” at security which prevented staff clocking in and out on time.
Primarolo told the Committee that this system has created a “significant health and safety risk” in the warehouse and created a culture of “presenteeism” where workers come into work despite being unwell.
Now Ashley has said he has come to an arrangement with HM Revenue & Customs to give compensation to warehouse employees who has been paid less than the national minimum wage.
When asked whether it would be better for an independent organisation to carry out a review of working conditions at Shirebrook, he said: ‘I can agree that in some ways I am not the right person because I am not an expert on every area of employment, obviously’. And he conceded Sports Direct’s policy of docking 15 minutes pay if a worker was just one minute late for their shift was “unacceptable”.
On suggestions that he consulted with unions too infrequently on working conditions, he added: “I believe I can do a better job for employees at Sports Direct than Unite”.
The Newcastle United chair confessed his employees were not paid for the time they spent queueing to be searched as they left work for the day.
Sports Direct has been the subject of sustained criticism over the use of controversial “zero hours” contracts. I’m not sitting there saying I’m going to make the world wonderful.
A BBC investigation last year found ambulances were called out to Sports Direct’s complex at Shirebrook, in Derbyshire, 76 times in two years.
Asked about efforts to save collapsed department-store chain BHS at the end of the hearing, Ashley said he wanted to buy the business “100 percent”. He didn’t say how long this went on for.
Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite, had earlier told MPs that workers were being exploited and Shirebrook was more like a “gulag”.
Royal London holds 1,057,691 shares in Sports Direct worth £3.85m.
Advertisement
He also admitted the firm’s practice of rounding up the docking of workers’ pay to 15 minutes’ worth, even if they were only one minute late, was “unreasonable” and that too numerous firm’s workers were on zero-hours contracts – about 80 per cent of them overall.
