Day 247 - 10 May 96 - Page 24
1 said you were not sure.
2
3 MS. STEEL: I do not know whether it is an outer London or a
4 general figure you gave, but you said the starting rate was
5 £3.10 an hour. Currently, for outer London stores, it is
6 £3.15 an hour; is it not?
7 A. I am not sure but it is going to be somewhere round
8 there, yes.
9
10 Q. During your evidence-in-chief you said that wages have
11 steadily risen over time. Would you accept that five pence
12 in 2 years is not much of a rise?
13 A. That is five per cent of the entire story. The people
14 employed in McDonald's have regular pay reviews, normally 3
15 times a year, as I remember the system, and the average
16 hourly rate for the starters and the veterans, those who
17 have been around a while, is something approaching £3.80,
18 certainly country-wide, and I would be surprised if in
19 London it was not nearer £4.00.
20
21 Q. Is that the median?
22 A. That is the average.
23
24 Q. Yes. What sort of average is it?
25 A. Numerical average.
26
27 Q. Is it a median or a mode?
28 A. It is just a numerical average, adding them up,
29 dividing the total by the number of people, and coming up
30 with an hourly rate.
31
32 Q. That is not true, is it, that the average is £3.80 an hour?
33 A. The average rate for the numbers my HR people give me
34 are, for the country, somewhere around £3.80 is my last
35 recollection per hour. Certainly, people's wages ----
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What do you mean "your HR people"?
38 A. Human resources.
39
40 MS. STEEL: I think for the Heathrow store we were told that the
41 average there was about £3.45 an hour.
42
43 MR. MORRIS: That was in the official print out?
44 A. It could be.
45
46 MS. STEEL: Heathrow would not be untypical, would it?
47 A. Well, it is only a couple of years old compared to
48 Woolwich, and store No. 100 and store No. 200 with much
49 longer serving people, people who have had a chance to have
50 not just the, you know, the second and third rise, but the
51 fifth and the sixth and the seventh. It is a matter of
52 tenure as well.
53
54 Q. But in terms of the majority of people who work for
55 McDonald's who are not there for those lengths of time, the
56 basic rate has only risen something like five pence in 2
57 years. Would you agree that that is not much of a rise?
58 A. No, I would not agree with that actually, not given the
59 market, the conditions, the fact that they remain at a
60 starting rate a few days and then they are off to something
