Now show you mean it, Mrs May
OUR new Prime Minister Theresa May said in Downing Street that she would back those who are ‘working round the clock’, who can ‘just about manage’ – and now she has a chance to prove she means it.
MPs have been examining the leading high street firms Sports Direct and BHS. A report into the former, run by billionaire founder Mike Ashley, is now out and makes for devastating reading.
The company has been condemned for treating staff as ‘commodities rather than as human beings’ with working conditions akin to a Victorian workhouse. Some workers were said to have been promised permanent contracts in return for sexual favours. One employee gave birth in the company’s toilets because she feared losing her job if she called in sick.
Staff without bank accounts were given their wages on a prepaid debit card and were charged a £10 fee for the card, as well as a monthly management fee of £10, a 75p charge for each cash withdrawal and £1.50 for each paper statement. Ashley’s attitude throughout was: ‘It’s nothing to do with me, guv.’
He claims he knew nothing of the appalling practices going on all around him at the company’s warehouse base at Shirebrook, Derbyshire. This was despite him having an office there and visiting the place at least once a week.
A report into BHS – which was owned by billionaire Sir Philip Green before he sold it for £1 to the twice-bankrupt former racing driver Dominic Chappell who led it into total collapse – is due to be published this week. It is set to condemn Green for palming off BHS, causing 20,000 pensioners to face a cut in their income and 11,000 workers to lose their jobs.
The pension scheme has a £571million black hole and has had to be bailed out by the Pension Protection Fund. Green’s defence was to say everyone was being really mean to him and other people made mistakes, too.
Sports Direct is the perfect example of what Edward Heath called ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ and BHS will only avoid that label if Sir Philip Green follows through on his promise to ‘sort’ its pension mess.
For all of us who believe that capitalism is the best system for lifting people out of poverty, both cases are profoundly depressing.
May must ensure that minimum standards for working conditions are properly enforced and those who ignore them must face a range of penalties – including the threat of imprisonment.
As long as Ashley entertains himself with his football club and Green lounges on his £100million yacht while their workers labour in Dickensian conditions or face an old age of penury, May’s bright promise will be unfulfilled.