A telephone hotline set up by the TUC to expose bad bosses in the run-up to Christmas has received nearly five thousand calls in five days from employees sick of low pay and poor conditions.

In one northeastern firm, the boss simply cancelled Christmas. Other workers report hourly wages as low as £1 and long hours.

The TUC General Secretary, John Monks, said: "I think Scrooge is alive and well ... This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Monks: Wants to name and shame bad bosses

"Nothing makes the case better for effective employment rights and for giving staff the right to be heard through union recognition, than these cases."

One-third of callers said they worked in white collar jobs, while one in four was a manager.

Workplace bullying was the most common complaint from callers.

The TUC employment rights spokeswoman, Sarah, Veale, said the TUC expected that low wages and long hours would top the list.

She said that the complaints reflected a trend - especially in small and medium-sized companies - to equate tough management with good management.

The highest number of calls were made in London and the southeast.

But the TUC said a "workplace from hell" exists in every town and the complaints were typical.

The worst examples given by callers to the hotline included:

• Staff in a Lincolnshire factory who have to wait half an hour with their hand up before being given permission to go to the toilet
• Workers in a Northern Ireland firm who were forced to stand in a corner wearing a dunce's hat
• A store manager in Yorkshire and Humberside who threw objects at someone who spoke up for the staff
• A boss in the northwest who deliberately left pornography lying around the office
• A northeastern company that sacks its workers if they go off sick

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