Last Friday we published a news item relating to Delaware North, match day caterers at Arsenal Football Club. The news was that they were not paying their ‘casual’ staff during the Covid-19 crisis.
Arsenal are paying their casual staff, people who do the same job, but are employed by the club.
The imbalance of empathy was infuriating employees, and Arsenal fans across North London and beyond.
Who employs you to do the job, and their business culture, clearly makes a huge difference in the way you are treated.
We were glad to report that in the same article, that Compass Group were praised by the staff making the complaints against Delaware North. Some work for both, and said that like Arsenal, Compass were paying their staff. So we headlined with – Arsenal & Compass 2 Delaware North 0.
The full story can be seen here.
Social Media Speed and Reach
The news story reached far and wide, and social media aided both speed of travel and reach. Through Google Analytics we can see that tens of thousands of people have already read it. The social spreading of the news is ongoing.
What we didn’t expect was… for the article to niggle with people’s consciences, but it certainly did.
emails from employees, disappointed with the treatment of colleagues
A flurry in whistleblowing inspired by a lack of empathy.
We received a number of emails over the weekend, from people whistleblowing that they believe their employers similarly lack empathy, in the treatment of their colleagues.
Most of the emails received included forwarded internal emails from employers to employees.
Zero hour contracts = Zero empathy
Some not only lacked empathy, they stipulate clearly that employees on zero hours contracts are, as company policy, being treated differently.
Some companies are not even communicating with workers on zero hours contracts. They just leave them with no money and even less information. Delegating the news to managers to disseminate.
The term ‘zero hours’ like the term ‘casual workers’ are both used in internal communications we have seen, to people who have worked in the businesses for years. They do 40, 50, 60 hours a week, every week, but are treated as second class citizens.
We are not rushing into publishing any allegations until we can fully substantiate, they are legitimate and accurate.
We are having phone conversations with the people whistleblowing. In most instances the whistleblower is not directly impacted. They are senior and middle management that see how their company behaves as wrong. So, they are trying to apply some empathy where they see a gap.
In most instances no laws are being broken.
But no laws were broken at Wetherspoons. That didn’t stop the outcry at the way Wetherspoons treated their workers. And suppliers.
Once we have fully checked the allegations, and are happy that they are accurate and fair we will publish full details.