Unite’s campaign for urgent action to remedy ‘industrial scale abuse’ at Sport Direct has been given added impetus after a committee of MPs identified a disregard for health and safety law among a catalogue of exploitative practices at the company’s vast Shirebrook warehouse. The 22 July report, published by the influential House of Common’s Business Select Committee, follows months of campaigning by Unite and others to shine a spotlight on the endemic bad practices at the retail warehouse. Unite said there was a ‘culture of fear’ at the Derbyshire warehouse, with workers scared to report the frequent calls to the emergency service to deal with unwell workers. One woman worker, terrified of losing her job, gave birth in the toilets because she was too afraid to take time off. Reacting to the select committee report, which found the company treated staff as ‘commodities’, Unite said that this was “absolutely not the last word, this can only be the beginning” in the fight against the mistreatment of working people. Steve Turner, Unite’s assistant general secretary, said: “This has been a long and difficult journey but finally we are getting closer to justice and decent treatment for the Sports Direct workers. The scale of the abuse we found was shocking, even to this union.” He said “the way to put things right at Shirebrook is simple – put the workers on fixed hour, permanent contracts. Give them some security and the dignity they deserve.” He said Shirebrook was not an isolated case. “The sad truth of the matter is that where people can be hired and fired at whim, bad bosses are never far away. If the prime minister is serious about tackling corporate abuse, then she should start in our workplaces by restoring security, decency and fairness to working life.