Mike Ashley's sporting empire probed

Jan 31 2010 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

SENSATIONAL claims that clothes sold by Toon owner Mike Ashley’s company have been made in Third World sweatshops are to be uncovered in a shocking documentary tonight.

BBC’s Inside Out team lifts the lid on Sports Direct, the company that made Ashley his fortune, and discovers workers paid around £1 a day for a 12-hour shift making clothes to be sold in the business mogul’s stores.

Sports Direct – which raised a reported £2.2bn when it was floated in 2007 – commissions many of its own branded goods, including Donnay, Slazenger, Lonsdale, Karrimor and Everlast, from third party manufacturers in South East Asia through agents.

Inside Out presenter Chris Jackson flew to Thailand where he found many garments allegedly come at a high personal cost to the workers who make them.

In Bangkok, he was told that KH Textiles, a major supplier to Sports Direct, was raided by police for employing 162 illegal workers from Laos and Burma, who were all deported.

Sports Direct’s website makes claims of “corporate social responsibility”, stating it sources its merchandise from manufacturers who can show that they uphold “ethical employment and trading practices”.

The website also claims the company has a code of ethics which it requires every supplier to follow.

The code states: “Amongst other matters the code provides for fair treatment of workers and their wages, non-use of child labour, safe and healthy systems of work and no use of illegal means or materials in the production of goods.

Chris Jackson also went to neighbouring Laos, where he poses as a potential client at a factory that makes clothes which appear to be for the Lonsdale brand, and finds a building packed with rows of workers.

Only one part of the building is air-conditioned, apparently to keep the machinery cool.