
Sports Direct is to put a workers’ representative on the board following a critical report into working practices.
The announcement, in a video statement by founder and deputy chairman Mike Ashley, came on Tuesday hours after Sports Direct said it would bolish zero-hours contracts for its directly employed, casual retail staff.
It will now employ them for at least 12 guaranteed hours a week instead.
However almost all staff at the firm’s troubled Shirebrook warehouse are agency workers and are not eligible.
Sports Direct said the workers’ rep would “give workers a voice at the highest level and to help ensure that all staff are treated with dignity and respect”.
Ashley, said the board move will offer a “great benefit” and provide “input (that) is invaluable”.
“I think it will be the one no-brainer that Sports Direct should have been doing,” he said in the video released by Sports Direct on Tuesday night.
“I want to be the pioneer who gets it done… I am going to make it happen.”
Sports Direct’s announcement comes before the retailer’s annual meeting today at Shirebrook where it will be opening its doors to shareholders and the public.
The changes to working practices came after a critical review.
The company’s board has also requested the suspension of a “six strikes” policy at the Shirebrook warehouse, which penalised workers for minor infringements and left them fearful for their jobs.
The report said the practice was “potentially oppressive”.
Sports Direct promised to investigate its working practices after the Guardian’s undercover reports of conditions inside its warehouses.
The subsequent report by RPC, a City law firm, found “serious shortcomings” at the company’s Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire.
It said the board “deeply regrets and apologises for” the problems, which had been likened to a Victorian workhouse.
Last year an investigation by the Guardian newspaper revealed that the firm’s staff were subject to lengthy security searches which, in some cases, resulted in their pay falling below the legal minimum wage.
And a BBC investigation found ambulances were called out to Sports Direct’s complex at Shirebrook, in Derbyshire, 76 times in two years.
The firm, in the report, said its failure to pay some staff at its Shirebrook warehouse the minimum wage was “unacceptable but unintentional”, but said it had a new pay policy in place.
It also said it would suspend its “six strike system” for misdemeanours under which staff were given “a strike” for spending too long in the toilet, excessive chatting or taking a day off sick.
Once an employee had six strikes they were automatically dismissed.
The report said Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley “takes ultimate responsibility for any aspects of the working practices that were unsatisfactory”.
Shareholders have called on the firm’s billionaire founder to improve both corporate governance and working practices at the company.
The firm said it had already commissioned a second review of working practices to monitor progress.
Further to the Working Practices Report published by the company yesterday, they announced that Dr Keith Hellawell QPM has been asked by the Board, which includes the Company’s majority shareholder, Mike Ashley, to continue in his role as chairman.
Dr Hellawell had offered to step down over the weekend in the light of the shortcomings highlighted in the report, but he will stay in his role in order to assist with making further improvements.