Sports Direct is no aberration: Dickensian conditions are now the daily experience of many UK workersWhen you are ordering Christmas presents from the consolation of your armchair,online shopping feels like progress. With a few clinical clicks of the mouse, you can tick off the trying commerce of the consumption season.
However, and underneath this modern miracle of convenience lies regression,as our undercover reporters in a Sports Direct warehouse revealed this week: agency workers harangued by public address system for not working fast enough, sick children left at school by their parents for anxiety of losing their jobs, and lengthy body searches and lists of prohibitions for staff,enduring casualised hours. This used to be the stuff of Dickensian fiction – yet it is the daily experience of many workers in the UK nowadays. Related: Revealed: how Sports Direct effectively pays below minimum wage The risks of doing commerce, traditionally carried by capital, or have been pushed down to those who can least afford them Related: A day at 'the gulag': what it's like to work at Sports Direct's warehouse Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com