I STARTED working for Clarks in the shoe shop’s busiest period – ‘back to school’. At the same time two 16 year-old girls started and from the off I was dismayed at Clarks’ employment policies.
Jack Youd, Salford and Central Manchester Socialist Party
I asked how much we would get paid. Because I was 18 I would receive £1.39 an hour more than the girls, even though we both began on the same day!
We were introduced to the ‘shoe care line’; the products that we were encouraged to sell with the shoes such as polishes.
We were told that 2.75% of our sales must be from ‘shoe care’, one out of every three pairs of shoes we sold.
We were expected to sell £110-worth of shoes an hour, when I was getting paid £5.79 an hour! The manager could see on his computer in real time how workers were performing.
If he saw someone not meeting these requirements he would make sure you knew about it.
After the month and a half ‘back to school’ period it was announced that we were to get bonuses. Some full timers managed extraordinary sales figures such as £2,500 in a day.
Even so, the highest bonus was £97! I wonder how much the Clark’s bosses get.
I left Clarks, along with one of the girls who began the same day as me. She left because of the pressure, working nine days in a row one time.
This shows the need to have a universal minimum wage of £8 an hour to reach £10 eventually and also to end all legal discrimination against young people.
