JD Sports criticised by former employees

Aerial image of JD Sports, Kingsway

JD Sports has been criticised by former employees and a Rochdale councillor for its treatment of staff at its warehouse on Kingsway Business Park, Rochdale. Issues have arisen about shift patterns, employment length and general treatment of staff.

The warehouse, which is a 600,000sq foot industrial space, is a distribution location for the sports chain.

One former employee said he was "let go" after shifts became low only to find that the shifts were offered to a new employee who was recruited through Assist Recruitment Agency. The former employee believes that “they don’t want agency staff to have employee rights.”

Assist Recruitment Agency is a company which supply workforces to some of the UK’s best known companies and aims to provide a flexible workforce for JD.

Another former employee was told after only two days of work that there were “no more shifts for him” but it is understood that the company are still recruiting through the local job centre.

The job centre has said it is aware of the problem but can’t do anything about the matter.

Complaints about bullying in the work place have also been made with accusations of threats of job loss.

Councillor Dale Mulgrew said: “I am acutely aware of some of the antics going on at JD Sports. In fact, I have received details of several similar cases. I am sorry this continues. This is not how I envisaged businesses on Kingsway Park would operate.

“JD Sports hide behind the contract they have with Assist Recruitment; and when I personally met at the Town Hall with Assist's Chief Executive and Area Manager they took shelter behind the contract they have with JD Sports. In fact, they kept stating they were compliant with national regulations governing temporary workers rights.”

A spokesman for JD Sports said: "JD and its agency partner, Assist, currently employs around 550 staff at its Rochdale warehouse, of which over 400 are full time equivalents.

"The site operates 24 hours a day on a variety of shift patterns.

"As with every retail business JD experiences fluctuations in demand and, like any employer of this scale, utilises a mixture of full time and part time employees either directly employed or through agency contracts to ensure the necessary flexibility required to run an operation of this size.

"In order to accommodate future growth at the site, Assist are currently continuing to advertise vacancies.

"Currently 89% of agency staff employed at the site have attained a ‘gold standard’ status, meaning they have achieved a number of performance standards, have worked at the site for over two months and receive a number of benefits also afforded to those directly employed.

"All staff are required to wear uniforms for safety and security reasons. Employees of Assist currently pay for their uniforms, a practice which is not unusual, but we intend to carry out a review of this arrangement.

"We also take all work place grievances extremely seriously and have stringent procedures and processes in place to thoroughly investigate any allegations that arise."