Embattled Sports Direct finally lowers its drawbridge – Telegraph.co.uk

The language is damning at times, and it adds new details, such as the finding that management adopted a “siege mentality”, and refused to meet with unions because “it was not perceived that the problems that have since been identified actually existed”.

There are two significant concessions to mollify those who are concerned about how Sports Direct runs its business – and both come with caveats.

First, Sports Direct will offer its shop staff the chance to swap their zero-hour contracts for ones that guarantee 12 hours’ work a week – a welcome move, to be sure. But agency staff, who make up the majority of workers at Shirebrook, won’t be eligible.

Secondly, it will ditch the hated “six strikes and you’re out” penalty system imposed on warehouse workers. RPC – and here you can hear Sports Direct’s own words – found the policy was a “blunt instrument”, which, combined with the precarious nature of the contracts they work, meant that staff felt they could not appeal against the sometimes trivial charges laid against them. RPC recommends the agencies in question suspend the system immediately. But at time of writing, only one of these firms has committed to axing the six strikes rule. Sports Direct has also pledged to pay staff above the national minimum wage to avoid further embarrassing scandals like the revelation that it owed workers back pay because it had made them wait for security checks. But this pay rise was announced with some fanfare on New Year’s Eve.

Ashley’s chief interrogator at the BIS committee, Iain Wright MP, said the report showed Sports Direct “had gone a long way, but not far enough”. I’d say it gives an impression of a company doing the bare minimum of what was expected of it, in the face of unbelievable public scrutiny – and slowly, at that.