Day 118 - 01 May 95 - Page 66


     
     1   Q.   What is the basis for wanting to limit overtime?  I can
     2        imagine all sorts of possible reasons; you might say people
     3        work more efficiently for the first 39 hours than they do
     4        for the next whatever, or you might say:  "The wages
     5        inspectors would accept our overall approach provided we
     6        were not paying a lot of overtime".  That is just
     7        speculation.  Do you know what the reason is?
     8        A.  No, I do not.  When I came into McDonald's, they had a
     9        policy then worldwide of discouraging people working
    10        overtime.  That policy came from the States.  We obviously
    11        adopted it in our early years.  It was in place when I came
    12        into the Company.  I have never challenged it.
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:  So when you brought in your special reporting
    15        system for crew members working over 96 hours in a
    16        fortnight, you did not actually know the reason why you
    17        were concerned to ----
    18        A.  Yes.
    19
    20   Q.   --- monitor or limit those numbers of hours?
    21        A.  Yes.
    22
    23   Q.   What was the reason you were concerned?
    24        A.  It is a tool for the operations department to help them
    25        control overtime.
    26
    27   Q.   But you did not know what the reasons were.  What was the
    28        reason though?
    29        A.  The reason was because I had been advised that there
    30        was overtime being worked in the restaurants by crew people
    31        and that we wanted to know how much, and that was the tool
    32        that we used to find out.
    33
    34   Q.   As Head of Personnel, the top person in the country
    35        concerned with, presumably, policy-making to do with
    36        personnel issues, you do not know the reason why the
    37        company was concerned to monitor or limit overtime?
    38        A.  I do not know why they set the policy of not working
    39        overtime.  I was never involved with it.
    40
    41   Q.   You just accepted it without question?
    42        A.  Yes, of course I did.  If they did not want to work
    43        overtime I accepted they did not want to work overtime.
    44        This was a tool to control overtime.
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you think it might have been because the
    47        more overtime a person works the greater is the risk that
    48        they will go over the maximum level under the Wages Council
    49        order?  That stands to reason, does it not?
    50        A.  It does.  It protects that. 
    51 
    52   Q.   Suppose you are being paid 10p an hour above the minimum 
    53        rate, then if you work one hour overtime you may well be
    54        within all the extra 10ps you have accumulated?
    55        A.  Yes.
    56
    57   Q.   If you work eight hours overtime you may well run into debt
    58        on the 10ps you have accumulated?
    59        A.  It certainly has the effect of keeping us within the
    60        meaning of the Wages Council order, but I am not sure that

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