The news that Sports Direct's till workers, stockroom assistants and shopfloor staff were handed bonuses of up to £100,000 is a real Cinderella story. A usual £20,000 salary increased to something not far off what a City banker earns, giving 2,000 full-time employees the chance to live the high life. Who wouldn't want to work at Sports Direct?
Or rather, who wouldn't want to work there full-time? As one of the 20,000 people employed part-time on a zero-hour contract, it's not quite the fairytale ending you imagine.
When 90% of Sports Direct's employees are part-time staff on zero-hour contracts, it must be obvious that they contribute to the company's success. So what do we get as a thank you of the £200m profit that Sports Direct racked up? Not an awful lot.
During my first few months at the job, before the news of the bonuses, long-term part-timers expressed animosity towards those with full-time contracts. Compared to them, we "casual assistants", or "cast members" as we're referred to, get next to no benefits; "the company won't even fund a Christmas party", I've been told. As you may imagine, this animosity has not improved following the headlines praising Sports Direct as a model employer.
A colleague also told me that Sports Direct will use the figures from what us shopfloor staff have sold to determine how much they should put towards the managers' annual ski trip.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a trip to Val d'Isère when I work on average 15 hours a week, but when co-workers get banned from using a staff discount because they use it on shoes for their young daughter, it makes many question our motivation.
Many part-time staff are currently on the minimum wage for their age bracket, with very little opportunity of a pay rise and an even slimmer chance of our hours being increased to full-time, unless we secure a promotion to a supervisor position.
While I don't dislike the work, the zero-hour contract isn't ideal. Recently, I spent almost two weeks with no shifts at all and with no idea when I'd next be earning. The store I work for, contrary to the news that profits are soaring, is actually taking less money than expected, causing hours to be cut at short notice. In some cases people are sent home after only an hour or two of work. I never know how much I'm going to earn because I never know when or how much I'm going to be working, making monthly expenses like bills and rent hard to manage.
It's easy to say "well, why don't you just find another job?" but when all you know and all you have ever known is retail, it's difficult to find any work at the moment. The high street is slowly dying, with SportsDirect.com being one of the few stores that are succeeding in the current economical climate, so even the big retailers aren't hiring often.
That said, it's not all bad. I'm a student, and transferring from my hometown store to my university town store is a simple and smooth transaction. The people I work with are brilliant – even (most of) the managers are great people to be around.
There just seems to be a vast difference in the treatment of staff higher up the food chain. It's a shame that executives don't recognise that while we don't work as often, the majority of part-timers work just as hard. It would just be nice for that to be appreciated.
