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feature
 Monday December 19, 2005 19:48 by Anonymous
From the Newswire:
Related Links: Having worked in a Bodyshop in Dublin for almost 5 weeks during the year, I was disgusted and appalled at how they treat their staff and mislead the public into thinking that they are environmentally friendly, their products not tested on animals and are for fair trade. Working there was a real eye-opener. The head office would mentally harrass my manager if the UPT was not at least an average of 2 per day. UPT stands for units per transaction and was the number of items sold per customer. Therefore staff were continuously pressurised into selling at least two items per customer. This would require you to hassle people coming into the shop into buying products they probably didnt even need. If you go into any Bodyshop, you will notice that the layout of the shop is so that accessories will be on a shelf below the main products so as to help in selling. One thing that really disgusted me was that at the tills, 'Make Poverty History' bracelets were sold, and if a person came to the till with only one item, we had to encourage them to buy a bracelet too. This wasn't in the name of helping people in poverty (although I personally don't agree with the Make Poverty History campaign), but was to increase the UPT average. If on a day the UPT was well over 2 staff would be allowed take a product at a certain price home. These incentives were used to manipulate staff into selling as much as possible. At the beginning of everyday there would be a UPT target set for staff to meet, sometimes 2 or 2.1 or 2.2. No one ever seemed to question why head office were pressurising us into raising the UPT, but it obviously was to increase profit. If other branches had a high UPT, this would add even more pressure onto us to raise our UPT. So it was all about competition and selling as much as possible. Another fact I found out was that there used to be a label on Bodyshop products saying 'not tested on animals', but now if you check out any product it will say 'Against animal testing' which I believe is the Bodyshop trying to cover itself, because it has been found that some of the ingredients in their products have been tested on animals, although not directly by the Bodyshop. If you go into the Bodyshop you will see signs on the walls with words such as Fair Trade, Human Rights, Activism, but only a small number of ingredients of their products are actually bought through fair trade. Its also very vague how much the Bodyshop is paying these farmers from Third World countries for their ingredients. And if the Bodyshop is so much into human rights, why do they violate the rights of their workers in Ireland?? Another point is the environmental friendly image the Bodyshop gives. Most Bodyshop products are made from plastic that will never degrade only if continuously recycled. But how many people who buy Bodyshop products are going to recycle the plastic packaging? Claiming to be environmentally friendly is just a way of attracting more business. Overall, I would never step into a Bodyshop ever again and I would encourage people who believe in people before profit and the environment before profit not to either.
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Comments (47 of 47)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47That's Capitalism!
Newspaper tour guide: A certain percentage of our newspaper is made from recycled paper.
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quote: "And if the Bodyshop is so much into human rights, why do they violate the rights of their workers in Ireland?"
How do they violate workers rights? The story does not say. Can we have more info on this claim please as it would be interesting to follow up.
Also, how come you didn't quit the job on day one if you are so oppossed to their practices?
Finally, did u leave, or were you dismissed?
Sometimes, the notion of workers rights can disguise practices of expoitation that do not fall within the remit of employment legislation. The above writer, may have giddily come on and used a rethorical flourish about the Bodyshops lack of respect for workers rights and in a legal scenario that doesn't really carry much wash at all.
That doesn't however undermine any of her claims, as the situation she is pointing to is a direct experience of being forced to increase her performance to increase the takings of a store. I've looked around the bodyshop website to see if its rethotic on corporate responsibility was matched by rethoric on the rights of staff, the only thing i could find was a report on maximising the performance/productivity of staff, so thats very much in line with what the poster is saying.
This pressure foisted on the author may entail the creation of levels of stress and pressure, which probably recieve no mention under the standard health and safety regulations mentioned in legislation, these have been termed the hidden injuries of class in the past.
Again, the notion of rights sidelines power relations such as, well access to libel lawyers such as yourself who when an employee such as the above steps out of line and criticises corporate practice you leap down their throat and try to silence their claims because they lack the economic recourse to the sort of legal understanding and reasoning that can give the Bodyshops approach to its staff a clean bill of health under law.
Equally, while a store may say and do one thing its internal culture may create very different value systems and modes of operation which create husge difficulties for staff in defending/expanding their wage/standards in the store. This would seem to be the case again in the Bodyshop, where employees are allowed form a union, the head of mcdonalds claimed the same in the mclibel trial, but the store then refuses to negotiate with the union instead diverting compliants into its own internal review system. People have generally placed the idea of performance incentives in stores at the base of a strategy to undermine group solidarity amonst workers. Not surprising that the Bodyshop is engaged in such practices, it is after all operating on the same terrain as most businesses, its just far more cleverer at the sort of PR it engages in.
http://www.thebodyshopinternational.com/web/tbsgl/emp_how_are_we_doing.jsp
http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/bs_reply.html
http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/bodyshop.html
I'm not even going to bother attempting to read this "article". No format, or paragraphs. No point in straining my eyes.
Could you provide any evidence that the treatment you recieved was unjust, or against legislation? Or is this just your opinion, and you were too lazy to meet the demands of a business environment?
It was around the fourth week of working there that the UPT practice began.
I left the job.
I think the bullying and harrassment of employees is a form of exploitation. The mental stress employees were under, was I believe totally unacceptable. Using such unethical practices I think is very misleading to the people who shop in the Bodyshop because they think it is an ethical business.
I am sorry that my academic ability at writing does not reach the expectations of some people but I thought Indymedia was an open publishing newswire for people to write on, regardless of their academic background...
Annon - on an open publishing service like this, there will always be the detractors. I've heard it said by many of my own mates, that they feel intimidated sticking stuff up because there is a tendency from some quarters to tear people down immediately through the "add comment" function. Unfortunately, that fear destorys a great pool of collective talent and creativity out there which would contribute greatly to the Indymedia newswire here. Fair play on sticking your experiences up, in fact I think it would be wonderful if people stuck up more stories and accounts focused on their own experiences in crap jobs. It makes for very interesting reading, far more interesting than another bout of the same protest reports with a different date at the top, and cuts right through the prevalent idea that we are all well groomed, smiling, obedient little worker bees blind to the obvious machinations of our corporate overlords.
All the detracting comments on this newswire are posted by the same two eejits under many different names.
I love when someone takes the trolling on here as a serious attack on them from the entire left.
Wealthy liberal goon and founder of the body shop Anita Roddick plans to give away all of her money before she dies, any chance of the workers getting some? Not a hope!
http://www.anitaroddick.com/readmore.php?sid=512
I've worked in several stores (although Bodyshop was not one of them) and they all have some sort of daily target for staff. It's not a form of harrassment, it's just an inconvenience for floor staff and customers.
yeah. theres nothing worse than having a staff member coming up to you when you are just trying to browse. imagine if this happened in bookshops: " sir might like this new biography of kit marlowe, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was secret agent, a good accompaniment would be the new shakespeare bio".
its counterproductive, a strain on staff, and can well drive people out of stores.
back in 1998 london greenpeace did a leaflet thing on them and got a reply. Here's excerpts from that leaflet "The Body Shop have successfully manufactured an image of being a caring company that is helping to protect the environment [1] and indigenous peoples [2], and preventing the suffering of animals [3] - whilst selling 'natural' products [4]. But behind the green and cuddly image lies the reality - the Body Shop's operations, like those of all multinationals, have a detrimental effect on the environment [5] and the world's poor [6]. They do not help the plight of animals [7] or indigenous peoples [8] (and may be having a harmful effect), and their products are far from what they're cracked up to be [9]. They have put themselves on a pedestal in order to exploit people's idealism [10] - so this leaflet has been written as a necessary response.
Companies like the Body Shop continually hype their products through advertising and marketing, often creating a demand for something where a real need for it does not exist [11]. The message pushed is that the route to happiness is through buying more and more of their products. The increasing domination of multinationals and their standardised products is leading to global cultural conformity [12]. The world's problems will only be tackled by curbing such consumerism - one of the fundamental causes of world poverty, environmental destruction and social alienation [13]. "
read it here
http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/bs_ref.html
reply
http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/bs_reply.html
body shop "exploiting good will for profit"
libel lawyer wrote "quote: "And if the Bodyshop is so much into human rights, why do they violate the rights of their workers in Ireland?"
How do they violate workers rights? The story does not say. Can we have more info on this claim please as it would be interesting to follow up.
Also, how come you didn't quit the job on day one if you are so oppossed to their practices?
Finally, did u leave, or were you dismissed?"
No mention of academic ability, no criticism of the writing, just a simple question:
How are Bodyshop violating workers rights?
Well, how ? given that we have a mountain(should it be a raft?) of labour legislation which Bodyshop could be in violation of , it is a reasonable question........
Oh, and yes, to publish unfounded allegations of wrongdoing would of course be libel.
Did you make a complaint anonymous? given that we do have anti bullying legislation.
Did you take it up with your trade union? are you in one?
Or are you picketing the store? planning to?
Or did you just use the oul open wire buzz to have an oul whinge for yourself, given that doing something would actually require some time and effort on your part, more time that is than the minute and a half it took to write your article.
Seems to me that if you take a job as a sales assistant, well, it is reasonable to assume you will be expected to actually sell things!!!!
You have still not fully answered my questions. As the previous poster pointed out, there are many courses of action you could have taken, but you instead decided to come and "whinge" here.
I'm all for free speech, but you haven't produced a shread of hard evidence to support your claims.
Regardless of Academic level, I would expect you would be able to write in paragraphs...basic English for god's sake.
To those mentioning Trolls, I am not a troll. I am a regular reader of Indymedia, and agree with many viewpoints expressed here, but some are plain silly.
You are the people making foolish comments
1 this is direct expierience therefore a more trustworthy source than most if not all articles we read in newspapers
2 Just because something is not 'illegal" does not mean that the practice does not exploit/oppress people
For example here in this country homosexuality was a"crime" until recently.
3 and finally just because someone does not write in perfect punctuation it does not give you a write to have a go you snob
i'm a regular reader of indymedia and is it any wonder it's the same clique of people that use the open-publishing mechanism constantly? there appears to be a culture of people putting up stories and getting torn apart because they haven't the ould lefty-lingo to back it up like the rest of yis. this seems to be a post from some ordinary randomer who had a bad experience in a shop that is well documented for saying one thing and doing another. it should be taken for what it is.
look at the comments which are attacking the article, they come from right wingers. i think this is a good exposé of bodyshop which pretends to be different but is just as exploitative as anyother employer.
well yeah i know those ones were from right wingers. i think i said it wrong. its not just this post but it seems to happen on alot of the articles, that people post up their experiences and because theyre not used to the way it works their piece is torn asunder.
anyway getting back to the topic. whats the rate of pay in the body shop? because dunnes stores have changed theirs....you start on minimum wage and you can work your way up to the grand old sum of €12 per hour but it will take you four years to get there.
and all the shops where i live (and the company i work for) are doing the same thing.
This is something thats a huge timebomb waiting to explode in Ireland, IMHO. The Irish Ferries dispute put it in the spotlight, but a huge amount of businesses are starting to let people leave through the normal channels like retiring, moving away, quitting (or in some cases pissing them off so much that they just pack it in), and then take on - and I hope this doesnt come across as being racist - mostly eastern european workers who will happily work at the minimum wage. If you need any of the business pages in the papers or capitalist mags like Business & Finance, they're harping on at the moment about how the Latvians, Lithuanians etc are willing to do a "fair days work at a fair days pay" (I dont have the exact source of this quote to hand but I can find it if pressed), i.e. you can pay them the lowest legal required amount and they wont say anything about it.
This is going to cause HUGE problems in the near future. The expansion of the EU was done without safeguarding employees rights anywhere, it was all about the expansion of the marketplace and not ensuring conditions and pay fought for by unions over years were copperfastened. So, as idealistic I would like to be in saying that Latvians, Poles etc should join unions and demand the same rates of pay that the Celtic cubs are on, it doesnt seem realistic. Why? Because of the cultural and language divides, because they're earning more than they would have back home and they're happy with that, because a lot of them are here temporarily/travelling and happy (relatively speaking) to stay in cramped apartments, sharing rooms, etc.
Looking on the experiences of other countries, fuck pretty much every other western country in Europe that has a history of immigration (in that we dont), regrettably I think this 'race to the bottom' is going to turn racist. Because, looking through a distorted lens, they are (I shudder to say this) coming over here and taking the jobs that Irish people used to be paid more money for. Now I know that's a horrible thing to say, and of course its not true - the labour market is buoyant at the moment and there are positions to be filled, but when it all goes belly up (because the nature of capitalism is boom-bust-boom-bust cycle - it happens in every capitalist society and will happen here too with our house of cards economy) people are going to look on the new arrivals into the workforce as skewing wages downwards.
People need to be asking now how this can be stopped, how do we ensure that new people being taken on are given the same wages as existing workers and not the minimum wage... I dont have any answers I'm afraid. Maybe someone else does.
i totally agree but its not even a case now that you have a completely two tier workforce with irish (on decent money) vs. non-nationals (on shit money). where i work anyone that was taken on after a certain date got paid minimum wage. these are all irish and mostly students. during the summer more students get taken on and do the same work as managers for minimum wage. now when a manager leaves the company they are apppearing to close the managerial position in that shop and have an "MTA" instead which is a managing assistant, who does the same work for minimum wage. or maybe 20c more. the minimum wage is meant to be a safeguard for employees but unfortunately has become a legitimate excuse for employers to pay peanuts. 7.65 is peanuts if you work a 37hr week and have rent to pay, food to buy etc.
this has already begun to get racist. i'm sick of listening to stories in work of "i'm paying my taxes to keep all them foreigners in luxury".it seems to be a good plan of divide and conquer with the employers and the state. if you pit immigrent workers and native workers against each other, leading each to believe that one has more than the other, be it jobs or wages, you'll never have any element of solidarity.
Hi Anonymous,
I sympathise with you and would like to help you to answer libel lawyer. He seems very put out that you've chosen to speak your mind about the Body Shop.
Why not photocopy your copy of your terms and conditions of employment, that the Body Shop supplied you with when you first started working for them. And reprint it here for libel lawyer's perusal. Amongst other things it should explain UPT and whatever responsibilities it entailed for you.
I'm guessing here that you have no such document. If this is the case then your rights have indeed been violated, and maybe libel lawyer might decide to champion your cause.
I'm not having a go at libel lawyer here, I agree with him to a degree. It's dangerous to put an accusation into print, especially if it tends to libel or defame somebody or some entity.
But since the Body Shop is a multinational scum sucking parasite and a particularly brainless one that thinks the public is blind to their fraudulent advertising and ethos, it would be very hard for you to libel them.
Anyway, this is a place where you can speak your mind, and I'm of the opinion that you were speaking your opinion and not making a legal pronouncement. Or at least that's the way I read it.
Besides there's all kinds of rights violations and many of them have no legal merit, especially in an Irish court. For example you were undoubtedly exploited, proper causes are regularly exploited, and the public at large are exploited by the Body Shop.
But that's the nature of business, that's foreign "investment," as encouraged and sponsered by the state.
What I'd love to know, is where does the right to make a profit arise, and why does this right supercede all other rights. More importantly, where in our constitution is this absurdity recognised?
Don't be put off by critics. Your opinion and experiences are as valid as anybody else's, and your piece was an enjoyable, if familar, read. It serves as a good cautionary tail for others.
Sláinte,
Seán Ryan
I have seen no reason to think that the Body Shop have reformed ethically or changed radically since then leaflets I linked to above were distributed.
At end being a worker in precarity for a global retail chain is a pretty similar experience whatever the "logo". But for a variety of reasons (some historical) I think there are more suitable targets for future campaigning on deeper issues than precarity (in Europe or the US) such as minimum wage and insecurity. And when a target company is not actively being campaigned, the whole range of issues ought be kept alive. I like the "stand up!" campaign which started in ireland recently. i'd recommend getting hold of their leaflets which are aimed at workers rather than franchise or chain retail employers.
This is just silly. It's not a question of academic ability or right - wing snobbery, this article is just very poor.
I am neither right - wing nor a snob. But, like libel lawyer, I read this article and found several references to workers' rights being violated. However I didn't find any actual examples of these violations.
Quote d'other: "libel lawyers such as yourself who when an employee such as the above steps out of line and criticises corporate practice you leap down their throat and try to silence their claims because they lack the economic recourse to the sort of legal understanding and reasoning that can give the Bodyshops approach to its staff a clean bill of health under law."
Hello? LL just asked for more info on how exactly the Body shop violates workers' rights. No throat jumping whatsoever.
Quote d'other: "the situation she is pointing to is a direct experience of being forced to increase her performance to increase the takings of a store."
Wait a second. Are you and Anon seriously claiming that her rights have been violated because the Body Shop tried to get her to sell stuff?
Quote d'other: "This pressure foisted on the author may entail the creation of levels of stress and pressure, which probably recieve no mention under the standard health and safety regulations mentioned in legislation, these have been termed the hidden injuries of class in the past"
So what I understand from this paragraph is that 'The pressure Anon was under to sell stuff *might* cause stress. This probably isn't mentioned in health and safety legislation. This is a 'hidden injury of class''. I'm sorry, but this makes no sense at all.
Quote d'other: "I've heard it said by many of my own mates, that they feel intimidated sticking stuff up because there is a tendency from some quarters to tear people down immediately through the "add comment" function."
First of all, nobody tore Anon down, they just asked for clarification because her article makes no sense. If your mates were also going to post nonsense then perhaps knowing that other people will comment will give them the incentive to write clearly and maybe back up their assertions with a bit of research. Otherwise what's the point of posting here at all? If they just want to rant they should get blogs or something. The rest of us didn't necessarily come here to read about how "OMG tha body shop totally sux and they were mean to me don't ever shop there!!!!!!"
Poorly written nonsense like the initial article is a waste of everybody's time. There are valid concerns over the ethics practiced by the Body Shop (as seen in some of the resources other posters have linked to) but that doesn't change the fact that Anon's article makes no sense.
Thanks to Solomon, you're a great laugh:
Quote Solomon: "You are the people making foolish comments
1 this is direct expierience therefore a more trustworthy source than most if not all articles we read in newspapers"
Yeah, the newspapers are all lying media bastards, but a personal, subjective rant written anonymously by what sounds like an excitable teenager with her first summer job, well, that's a trustworthy source. That's why I get all my news from kids on the bus. Did you know that green M&M's give you cancer? No? That's cause you're being lied to by the evil overlord media, fool!
Seriously though, independent media are very important, and poorly written crap like this is detrimental to the whole cause of open publishing.
"2 Just because something is not 'illegal" does not mean that the practice does not exploit/oppress people
For example here in this country homosexuality was a"crime" until recently."
Huh?
"3 and finally just because someone does not write in perfect punctuation it does not give you a write to have a go you snob"
A gem of a pun there Sol. But if you're going to publish in a public forum, expect to have others comment on it. And if you and Anon want people to take you seriously, here's a tip: when someone asks you to explain what you are actually trying to say, have another go at making something approaching a point, rather than getting all defensive and accusing them of being a "right - wing snob " or whatever.
As are many of these Indymedia contributers...
And worse again are people, who come on and seemingly blind read what ever they feel like into other people's comments, and ask questions that would clearly have bene answered if they had read this thread properly instead of running off like a giddy child to hit "add comment."
Sean said "I'm not even going to bother attempting to read this "article". No format, or paragraphs. No point in straining my eyes." God only knows what sort of violent spasmodic reaction to the original story fits your definition of tearing somebody down, if that doesn't. I suppose somebody would have to hack the site and graphically red pen all over the article like an old school teacher for you to consider them going over board with the criticism? Not that I've any problem with criticism, it just comes across a bit better if there is a considerate tone taken rather than the "booo...haaa.." this article was greeted with.
"This is a 'hidden injury of class''. I'm sorry, but this makes no sense at all"
Does it not? Jaysus, not really surprised there to be honest, you don't seem to have much of a grasp of what it is like to work in jobs with low pay and low expectations if you can't understand that the consequences of working on the lower end of the economy can manigest themselves in more than just a shitty wage packed or in injuries traditionally associated with the workplace like back pain etc. Feelings of stress and pressure are not generally not given a class expression, but if some fucktoid floor manager is harassing you day in day out to shift more items of a product then the stress associated with it can be considered a hidden injury of class. Equally, beyond that rising rates of depression can be understood as a hidden injury of class. Hidden because these things are generally seen as the consequence of failings in the indivdual and generally never related back to the wider socio-economic activity within which they take place. The Samaritans describe how "rates of self-harm in the UK are much higher in lower social class groups than in upper ones, especially in younger age groups (under 35).*"
"Are you and Anon seriously claiming that her rights have been violated because the Body Shop tried to get her to sell stuff?"
No of course not, unfortunately the legal system in Ireland doesn't negate the commodity form so her rights of course weren't violated As I said "the notion of rights sidelines power relations," economic and political disparaties which really lie at the centre of the problem in situations like the above replicated through workplaces globally. The rights system, while maintaining a bare minimum floor beyond which workers are meant to be pushed, doesn't really provide us with much of a base for a critique of the practices of emotional labour, or the effects of increased performatativity on those in these jobs.
* see http://www.samaritans.org/know/informationsheets/selfharm/selfharm_sheet.shtm
I'm an active trades unionist, and activist in areas other than workers rights, and secondly I regularly contribute both content and comment on imc.
So right wing snob i am not. However this story makes accusations but does not back them up with any evidence whatsoever. If every disgruntled teenager who felt like it could come on imc and publish libelous material I have no doubt that imc would be in danger from legal action.My own experience is that imc editors have sought to check factrs before. Also unfounded stories where the writer doesnt bother to research the facts damage the credibility of imc and those who publish correctly researched stories.
My questions remain unanswered.
1. how did the bodyshop violate either any part of workers rights legislation or the health and safety act?
2. What trades union were you a member of while you worked there. In fact have you ever been a member of any trades union?
3. what action(other than publishing this story) do you intend to take, e.g are you intending to picket bodyshop?
apparently asking these questions is considered unreasonable by the author of this story. apparently we are supposed to gobble up any old bu****it blindly simply because it is published on imc.
Wake up anonymous, this is the real world. If you have a genuine grievance lets have it, tell us how you had your rights violated and i'm not talking about some notional right you seem to think you have that you can get paid and not work, i'm talking about any of the numerous rights granted to workers through legislation. I would point out that Ireland has more protections for workers than almost any other E.U country., if you ever bother to join a trades union you might find that out!!!
Franly this looks like nothing more than personal grievance masquerading as a legitimate workers rights story.
In all fairness, it's hardly surprising that working in a shop entails selling things. Presumably the writer of the article envisaged working as nothing more than a cashier and shelf-stacker, but it's a little rich to be astonished at the idea that your transactions might be measured; most jobs involved being measured at some level in terms of your effectiveness as an employee.
If part of your job is to act as a salesperson instead of simply being a cashier, then it's not unreasonable for a company to measure your success as a salesperson, in the same way that employees working the phones on a helpdesk are evaluated on their speed and effectiveness in answering calls. I would imagine that measuring units per transaction is the simplest and most effective way of maximising sales that a shop like the Body Shop can manage. Claiming that it's somehow a fundamentally unethical practice cheapens serious complaints about the Body Shop.
There are problems with the Body Shop, and a number of people have detailed these problems. However, complaints about being expected to sell two items per transaction are not to be placed on the same footing as serious unethical behaviour on the part of a business. It's utterly unrealistic to excoriate a company for measuring the effectiveness of its staff in doing what the staff are being paid to do.
To be honest what I really think is going on in this thread is a rather funny serperation of how antagonisms in the workplace are expressing themselves. Its clear that the original poster isn' unionised, if they aren't can that really be considered their own fault given the complete lack of an organisation drive within the private sector on behalf of mainstream trade unionism in the past few years. But by coming on to Indymedia they have clearly latched on to it as a vehicle to excercise their concerns, the fact they didnt go to unions clearly illustrates a failing on both sides. The author ha sa rather simplistic notion of fair trade and through experience is realising that wage labour remaining is an obvious flaw in the idea. Equally, this consumer focus on their behalf is an obvious conclusion of years of dialogue which the unions have succombed to in describing workers as consumers, and moving away from focusing on what they produce as they measure of the wage and using their consumer power as a gauge. The ATGWU seem to have moved towards a unionising drive, trying to build self active, fighting work place committees that are self-sustaining within their own workplaces. Outside of that, there is the IWU which so far remains a political expression of a desire to break with partnership and return to miltitant unionism. Then there was the Get Up Stand Up campaign.
Libel Lawyer, its seriously telling that as a trade unionist you come on here and completely undermine somebody who is grapling with their experiences of the lower end of the services sector. These are exactly the sort of people, that you, need to get out there and organise. Now, I don't subscribe to the idea that people need to wait around for a beardy auld unionist to come in and organise them, people should take their own iniative and seek a union and organise. Unfortunately, I don't think you are presenting the best side of unionism by focusing on concepts of workers rights, which it is blatently obvious are being furter and further eroded as neo-liberalism exerts the agenda of creating a flexible and highly mobile workforce. This expresses itself outside of the workforce as well, in the increased dependency of people to survive in the private rented sector which is being wholly used by the state as the main provider of upwards of 40,000 social houses in Ireland. These are the sort of issues trade unionists need to address, equally people like yourself need to realise that there is a systematic effort to exclude people from knowledge of their basic workers rights in cloudy contracts that mystify the terms of work, and often violate employment law, the most manifest evidence of this is in the experiences of migrant workers such as in GAMA, where knowledge of employment legislation operates entirely in favour of the employing class - because as I said early, they are the ones with the resources to hire lawyers to interpret the law in their favour.
Employment rights are all fine and good, but accessing them requires often an individual confidence that is often entirely lacking in the workplace due to the lack of concrete organisation. The Labour Relations Commision recently descibed recently the complete difficulties faced by individual migrant workers going in to this process, large elements of what they describe are equally applicable to irish workers too. The original article has gotten people who read Indymedia, but never contribute, discussing the issues they experience on their job - if you can't see the value in that, then seriously you have to do some sort of looking into your politics. After all, one is put in mind of the tradition of radical working class papers that formed a common identity that lead to the charterist movement. Now if Indymedia, can palyt some role in allowing people in the lower end of the service sector to express their experiences, then from such expression can come organisation and the formunalation of rights that reflect the nature of neo-liberalism today.
Study on access to workers rights
http://www.lrc.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=457&m=f
Article on work with links
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68665
Whoever wrote the article surely has the copon to realise that there are such things as trades unions. If there is a genuine grievance then maybe they would be assisted, or a desire to join a trades union would certaintly be met with info and support. Look at the questions. Are they unreasonable?
There are serious breaches of employment legislation happening every day. The trades union movement appear to be acting to fight these breaches. It is irrelevant what the proclaimed philosophy of the employer is, be it environmentalit,religious or just plain capitalist. Those arguments are nothing to do with workers rights and their protection.
The trades union movement in Ireland is made up of people of varying beliefs. It is it's job to organise workers in order to protect and better their rights. Larger political issues are a secondary concern.
If you don't know what your rights are how then do you know they have been violated?
try google!
Let me start by paying my compliments to d'other, right on the mark.
What strikes me as being funny and ironic, is that our poor old misused and misunderstood Constitution, addressess the experiences of our anonymous author, directly. And it does so many times.
Here's some quotes from only one of the articles that addresses the rights of people, I'm not going to comment on them, for that would be presumptious of me. Besides I think they more than comment on our behalf.
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Article 45
Section 2
i. That the citizens (all of whom, men and women
equally, have the right to an adequate means of
livelihood) may through their occupations find the
means of making reasonable provision for their
domestic needs.
Section 4
2° The State shall endeavour to ensure that the
strength and health of workers, men and women, and
the tender age of children shall not be abused and that
citizens shall not be forced by economic necessity to
enter avocations unsuited to their sex, age or strength.
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Here's a few of beauties from what constitutes the Body Shop's Constitution or rather their "mission" statement.
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* To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change.
* To creatively balance the financial and human needs of our stakeholders: employees, customers, franchisees, suppliers and shareholders.
* To courageously ensure that our business is ecologically sustainable: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future.
* To meaningfully contribute to local, national and international communities in which we trade, by adopting a code of conduct which ensures care, honesty, fairness and respect.
* To passionately campaign for the protection of the environment, human and civil rights, and against animal testing within the cosmetics and toiletries industry.
* To tirelessly work to narrow the gap between principle and practice, whilst making fun, passion and care part of our daily lives.
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Check out the second "article." I guess "creative" is the term that describes the treatment of our anonymous author.
Our state was founded because Irish people do not thrive in an atmosphere of hatred.
We cannot practice sovereignty, if we must exist in a state that we hate being in.
If a worker or any other life form must exist in a place that they hate, just that they may eat or not be considered a burden, then they have no say in their destiny, and form no part of a sovereign nation.
It's a great pity and may it be to our lasting shame, that we, Irish men and Irish women, do not consider ourselves family, despite everything, and that our anonymous sister's or brother's claims of abuse are met with derision or skepticism rather than familial concern.
Divided and close to conquered.
Merry Christmas,
Seán Ryan
It is a fairly awful piece. It sounds like their first job to be honest. And it could be any shop in Ireland. I 've worked in many retail stores (5) and they all encourage us to sell more products and every manager got harassed for not meeting sales targets. And like oh my god, stock is arranged in a certain way to encourage more sales.
It is just a whinge about a christmas temp job.
I have just worked over xmas for a store in leamington spa. I was due to finish my (signed) contract at the end of January 06 but a week before xmas I was told that they were cutting my contract at the end of dec.
Fair enough, i thought at the time, we had done virtualy no business over the holiday period and profits were low. It was the old 'last in, first out' policy...
I am still waiting to be paid in full for work done between the 4th dec and 29th dec. every payday has been a drama, never the full amount of money, always a 4 week wait for 2 weeks worth of pay!
They treat their staff with contempt and as a consumer I am shocked at how bad the Body Shop are for mis-selling products. I will not be buying anything from them again (not that i bought a lot before).
Also, the training is crap, especially the make-up training, it consists of 3 half hour videos. Which are also crap.
If you are owed pay you should contact a union.
See this leaflet for some basic info on your employment rights and contact details for unions.
http://www.ucdsu.net/attachments/may2005/lealfett.pdf
U.K legislation is different to irish labour law. But heres a site that might be of help.
http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/regs.htm
asmight this
http://www.tuc.org.uk/
i have worked for the Bodyshop in the past and have had mixed feelings. I worked there for a year and was surprised at how badly the company was run.
The man who owns the Bodyshop in Ireland is no doubt an extremely wealthy man who travels widely and visits some of the areas with which the shop attain their ingredients. He is however extremely rude and ignorant to all staff members. I'm sure this is no crime but it certainly pisses off staff members who work their asses off for him.
I didn't find any of the managers or senior sales particularly enthusiastic about the products which was very offputting. I think that for a business like this to work, it's employees need encouragement, clear job roles and motivators. I don't think any of the managers were properly trained and many had poor public relations skills. Pay for managers wasn't great but then it's retail isn't it? I'm a firm believer in "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".
The hourly rate of pay last year for a sales assistant was 7 euros and 85 cent.The minimum wage was 7.50. Again, no crime there but I do recall one girl who had worked for almost five years and hadn;t received a pay increase that wasn't enforced by law.
The Bodyshop is still a business and is a HUGE amount more environmentally aware than a lot of companies. Yes it could be doing better for it's staff, yes it could be doing more for the environment but isn't it a start? Isn't it better that people in general are becoming more aware of these issues. Sure some people are blinded but don't mistake the general public for fools. There are do gooders out there, there are also people who shop in the Bodyshop because they like the products and like the idea of helping communities worldwide at the same time.
People make their own minds up. I would definatley work for them again. If they do me wrong,I'll quit. Every staff member gets a handbook advising them how to report bullying, unfair treatment and how to advance in the company. A job's a job at the end of the day isn't it?
i worked for the body shop for about 2months and of all the lagre companies i have worked for(of which there are many) the body shop was by far the worst. everything in the above article is true. we were forced to "up-sell" and each sale had to adverage at least 2 products if one went below this,we were told, they could lose their job. and of this fact we were reminded ALOT. it should also be noted that anita roddick sold the company several years ago and according to the assistant manager of the shop i was in thats when all the corporate bull shit came in. i worked for another skin care shop that called L'occitane if you wish to buy skincare products that ARE organic, fair trade and actuall work this is where i would recommend you shop. staff here dont have any sales targets whatsoever and generally will recommend a product that suits you best whether its in the shop or not
i worked for the body shop for about 2months and of all the lagre companies i have worked for(of which there are many) the body shop was by far the worst. everything in the above article is true. we were forced to "up-sell" and each sale had to adverage at least 2 products if one went below this,we were told, they could lose their job. and of this fact we were reminded ALOT. it should also be noted that anita roddick sold the company several years ago and according to the assistant manager of the shop i was in thats when all the corporate bull shit came in. i worked for another skin care shop that called L'occitane if you wish to buy skincare products that ARE organic, fair trade and actuall work this is where i would recommend you shop. staff here dont have any sales targets whatsoever and generally will recommend a product that suits you best whether its in the shop or not
I have worked for the bodyshop for 5 months now and I get paid eur 9 an hour, which is above the minimum wages, but not much.. Obviously, my job is to sell as much stuff as possible. However, my employer has emphasized we are not supposed to "push" anything for people, but we should offer anyway without creating unnecessary pressure.
I am not a native Irish person and after talking to many irish managers I have found out that Irish people really don't even want to work because not working pays better.. This is the reason why all shops are full with immigrated customer servants. Frankly, I am not surprised. I pay the same rent in the middle of nowhere for a moulded flat of 25 square meters as my friend who lives in Paris one hour walk from Eiffel tower in a ten 10sq. metres bigger apartment. Food is expensive and I would get paid the same in a form of unemploymency benefit as I do now with my current non-full time hours. A girl in our shop got herself sacked after christmas for showing up drunk at work and now she is going to get her tattoo removed for free with a medical card. If you can afford to live with free money, why not do it? (all people don't have self respect), With this free money you seem to live better than if you were working. I am in Ireland to study, had I known all this I would've gone somewhere else. After the semester ends I'm off to UK where I lived a while before. Not great wages there either, but at least you can see where the tax money is going and you can even afford to get ill every once in a while.
hi just got directed here form google been reading about the upt business im afraid to say its not just the body shop most companies now use this practice due to the economy being so rubbish. I work for superdrug and we are encouraged to sell top up and stamps we have to offer these to every customer at the till point and yes it does work! none of us like doing it however if we dont we are threatened with disciplinary action!
I worked for the body shop in dublin town and have to agree they treat there staff so bad! they make you force products onto customers and if they don't buy them you get in sh*t for it! the pay is terrible and the store i worked in has so no organisation what so ever they leave cash lying around the office and management just sit on there asses all day looking at cameras and pointing the finger. I would not recommend working there to anyone!
L'oreal now own the Body Shop. It's therefore hardly surprising that profit comes before ethics or before people.....not to mind the torture they inflict on animals despit their "no testing" phallacy. Like L'real will ever stop testing their crap by sticking it in bunnies eyes, unless they are forced to ( laws they vehemently oppose on a european level).
They really do treat their staff like rubbish and its so pressured that you can feel all the tension in the store sometimes i believe its worse in London. I am one of the staff their but I only work their because I need the pay even thou its not good. They pay you so little and expect you to sell to the world also the 2 upt went up to 3 at one point and its not just about UPT its bout LYB,ATV. You have to up sell all the time. I think the incentives are wrong and their are not much, they say that they are all about fair trade but they really do not care its all about scoring top points on audits and making out as if every thing is perfect when in reality the regional manager is shouting at store managers all over the region. You cannot help if one day your store is full of people and the next its not.
The body shop now has two mystery shops a week which is ridiculous just so the company can make sure that we are saying everything they want us to say. there's also something that they do which theater.......this means that when they want lots of theater is when a corporate person is coming to visit the store they are nice but us as staff have to be theatrical about the products and this usually means being fake all the time. We are usually in competition with each other but do not want to be all we want to do most of the time is go in do our work and go home happy.
And i can say that every single time i go their i have to put myself into a different place in order to work their and when i go home i am not tired but happy...I am tired and stressed which is usually because one of the managers has had a bad day with either a worker or the money they took compared to last year or something not to do with work. When i started I loved it, I still do like one aspect of my job..the fact that I know enough about the products and have tried most to be helpful to people when ever they need it and I do like most of my customers because they are friendly, the other aspects as in some people i work with and management and the up selling is what I hate and it needs to stop.
I have been looking around on the internet about the body shop and how badly their doing this is due to pressuring customers, one is to say hello to every customer within 30 seconds of them coming in, now realistically the economic downturn has hit all of us which means that there will not be much staff on the floor to help which means that there's going to be more staff versus customers. Everyone in the store I know hates doing this and knows that its not possible for every customer to be greeted in a day. i have traveled to lots of different stores and have been told by all staff that they do not like the pressured selling. It does not say in our job description that we should be stressed, depressed or at all annoyed. The company needs to be more caring about its staff then they will improve themselves to customers and more people would like to shop in a relaxed atmosphere rather than it being intense all the time.
As for fair trading.. none of us can be totally sure that every single product we use is fairly traded so lets do the bet we can to support it.
I have read most of your comments and to be honest, I do think that the Body Shop is a big scam treating most of their staff like shit. I have been working in one of their stores recently for nearly two months, got really fed up at one stage and decided this is it. The pay is absolutely crap and the expectations are absolutely ridiculous. They still have their UPT, ATV and LYB crap that you HAVE to make in order for your managers to be happy and to treat you respectfully. I totally believe that the management is not fully trained and capable of managing a shop, since I've been there they have changed the shop about 6 times in two weeks. There is so much part-time staff that people do one thing, don't come back for days and weeks and when they do someone else takes over the job they did and of course it won't make sense what they were trying to do, as in merchandising or whatever. Everyone is constantly reminded to push up the UPT and they are encouraging their staff to push sales especially at Christmas time. I thought I was going to choke when I heard the manager say: "try and start selling the most expensive products to men when they come in as they don't know much and they are like silly kids, they buy whatever you show them", now that was ridiculous, thinking your customers are stupid people and that you are smart when you try and sell them the entire shop. I also was very upset when they were promoting a big AIDS campaign and told us we HAD to ask every single customer at the till if they wanted to buy an AIDS PIN. The pin costed 2 euro. I thought all the money went to AIDS campaign and that's what we were encouraged in telling our customers however that all the money goes to the campaign when 80 cents went to the campaign, and the rest of 1.20 euro went in their own pockets.. I am sick and tired of them!
Yes I want to have an old whinge for myself.
Worked in the body shop for a good while and all that has been said is true.
No training, no thank you, no nothing. The pressure is unbearable.
I don't mind selling (although when I once heard someone very high up in the company saying "well it's child benefit day make sure the women spend it in your store - i solemnly wear this is true - I was really embarrassed by the ignorance they force on all their staff) clearly selling is part of the job but there is no reward whatsoever for doing good, just public shame in the morning if you did bad the previous day. And by reward I don't mean a "well done" - I don't know about you but I don't work to hear patronizing remarks about some kind of "performance" based on pure luck like the UPT stuff. Because it is based on pure luck.
All in all I am extremely happy I've left the company as it was really wearing me out day after day, I would not recommend any of the products to anybody as I always bought real organic and vegan products from health stores.
Yes, it is all about the profit and there's nothing wrong with that, just the hypocrisy of the management of the company in Ireland is unreal. I've still yet to find someone who's happy about the management of the body shop ireland and I don't mean the managers of the shops.
I worked for the Body Shop in Australia and I can tell you EVERYTHING in this article is TRUE.
I understand it has not been mentioned what the violations of staff were but, this may well be there are too many to mention.
This company is a disgrace, the things they say and do to propmote business should be stopped.
There should be consumer laws in place that state, no company should be allowed to trade on the basis of lying about being environmentaly heathy etc.
I really appppreciate that you have bothered to sit down and write this critique.
Ever Since the original founder of the Body Shop passed away [ I think it was 2005] the company has piggy backed on her good name.
In Anita Rodicks name they have traded under the premise of being a humanitarian retailer.
The Body Shop is in fact now owned by Loriel Paris who do NOTHING in the name of the environment nor our Planet in general.
It's all just rubbish and, by the way the staff ARE treated so badly it is should be investigated internationaly.
This is an International Organization making millions by the day whilst lying their way to the bank.
They do so little for the causes they pretend to help all who read this should wake up like the original writer and pledge never to walk into their stores again.
.
What a joke. OMG they made me try to sell more than 1 thing to a customer. It's called sales love. Are you telling me that no business in sales puts this kind of pressure on their staff. Grow up. It's called targets. All sales people get them. Managers have targets too and have to push their staff to hit them. Companies have massive costs to run their business and don't exist without sales. Tesco, Spar, Clothing, you name it all have targets to reach.
I'm sure you could pick any business and get a staff member who had a bad experience with their employees at some stage. Maybe they do bend the truth with their animal testing and fair trade statements, I don't really know and it's not for me to say. If what she's saying is true then that's one thing. Out them. Bring it to an authority.
But stop whinging about having to actually,,,you know....work for a wage. Yes sell. That's the job. If you don't like it then leave...which you actual did. So you see it works. Free will. Free movement. Irish rights being abused????
I'd love to know where this girl is now....Probably sitting on her lazy arse bitching about not having a job and the state of the country....Grow up child..........
Hi
This is my first time leaving a comment on a forum (excuse the spelling in advance)- But I just wanted to say that I couldnt disagree more with the original statement made. Iv worked in the body shop for over 4 years and I can honestly say I love it - maybe it was the shop the person was working in or maybe they got unlucky with the manager - or maybe things have calmed down since they left, but my experience couldn't be any more different!
My manager is soo hard working and couldn't treat the staff any better! of course there are targets and figures but it's a real team effort and everyone pulls together and works as a team - everyone has an off day and the pressure is on for what ever reason but I can tell you Iv worked in plenty of other store, River Island, A-Wear and a newagents and the Bitchyness and mismanagement of staff was so bad I had to leave!
Don't judge The Bodyshop by this forum - It really is a fabulous Place to work!!