By Living Room Correspondent Bernie
The growth of the internet has seen gambling companies embrace the new technology with a zest possibly not seen since the clamour of the 19th century by rich and high-powered businessmen to make their fortune during the railway boom. It is difficult now to visit any website without seeing adverts for online casinos, free spins on virtual roulette wheels, or free games at a bingo hall the size of a microchip.
Of course, this online revolution in gambling comes at a cost in the physical world, as the big betting shop companies feel the pinch on the high street. A recent report in The Guardian reveals that Ladbrokes are planning to close as many as 1000 of its 3500 betting shops, as more and more customers move to online accounts. This will result in redundancies across the company as nearly a third of their shops close.
In a move that the most pejorative of employers would thing twice about instigating, Ladbrokes have created a system whereby employees must compete with each other to try and guarantee their jobs. They will do this by signing up customers in threatened betting shops to new, onnline accounts, and those who are able to sign up the most, will raise their chances of being able to keep their job.Not content with inflicting misery on the thousands of gambling addicts who walk through their doors, they now feel compelled to inflict that same misery on their staff by putting them into competition with each other for a job.
The gambling companies of course blame the upcoming (but already delayed by the Conservative Government) reduction in the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. No matter that these same companies already rake in huge levels of profit, often from the most vulnerable in society. And no matter that the new focus of their heartless attitude to people is their own staff, who for the most part earn the minimum wage or not much more, and who are themselves often amongst the more vulnerable members of society, the so-called JAMS, or just about managing. Nothing, but nothing, must come between these companies and their profit.
Perhaps equally shocking is that under current UK employment law, the weakest in Europe, this is completely legal. The Government are guilty of not just failing to protect gamblers, who through addictive illness that is often left undiagnosed and untreated, lose everything, but failing to protect the workers who through no fault of their own are complicit in this unholy mess.
Ladbrokes themselves of course blame the legislation to limit the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. A Ladbrokes spokesperson said shop closures were “an inevitable outcome of the changes to FOBT regulation”. This very conveniently forgets that Fixed Odds Betting Terminals are a relatively new addition to the Bookmaker's arsenal of tools to rid the vulnerable of their hard-earned cash, first appearing in the early 2000s. During the same period, the Association of British Bookmakers own figures reveal that the number of betting shops on the high street has remained relatively static, with a minor drop in the overall number. With this in mind, it becomes rather curious that Ladbrokes seek to blame the reduction of the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals as the reason it needs to close so many shops, and employ such Draconian measures towards its staff.