Day 180 - 31 Oct 95 - Page 63
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but I think you are really being prodded
2 to see if you have any criticism of them, you see?
3 A. Yes. You see, the point is that the performance
4 related pay systems which measure -- which directly measure
5 an employee's contribution and which are normally paid on
6 top of basic rates, the measurement of performance is
7 usually undertaken by line managers and attracts the
8 primary criticism of the subjective nature of that
9 assessment rather than its intended objective nature.
10
11 Secondly, when you judge the individual, it is difficult to
12 include the team aspect of that contribution. So the
13 subjective -- the subjectivity and the difficulty of
14 measuring team contribution are two weaknesses of the
15 system.
16
17 MR. MORRIS: A simple question can be, is performance related
18 pay of increases of five, ten or 15 pence possibly after
19 some months on top of the basic rate, or whatever it is,
20 £3.30, or whatever, £3.05 or £3.20, what have you got to
21 say about that?
22 A. A significant problem with performance related pay
23 systems in low wage companies is the difficulty of
24 establishing an incentive margin for good performance.
25 That is the problem.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not sure I understand what you mean by
28 that.
29 A. Well, if your basic hourly rate is fairly high and you
30 are rewarded five per cent on £10 an hour, you, you know,
31 gain 50 pence, do you not?
32
33 Q. What you are saying five, ten or 15 pence is not much of an
34 incentive? Is that what you are saying?
35 A. Yes, I am trying to say that in, amongst low wage, in
36 low wage companies like McDonald's the incentive margins
37 are very slim, and I think what I have just said is a
38 fairly widely recognised weakness of performance related
39 pay systems; particularly, of course, in a company with a
40 very high labour turnover where, perhaps, by the time the
41 first or second performance measurement comes in the staff
42 has gone anyway. That is the trouble with it.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: We are just checking the Crew Handbook for
45 something.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
48
49 MS. STEEL: If you could get pink Volume XI, please. If you
50 turn to tab 1, bundle page 19, there is the performance
51 guidelines on that page.
52 A. Page 19?
53
54 Q. Yes, which give the categories of grades that crew members
55 can get, and then the rating increases are on bundle page
56 21. Two-thirds of the way down the page there are the
57 rating, there is the percentage mark in the middle which is
58 actually under increases for some reason, percentage mark
59 being 97.5 to 100 per cent for excellent in order to get a
60 15 pence increase; if you just look at those, the
