Day 302 - 18 Nov 96 - Page 10
1 in the paragraph in the fact sheet, is contrasted with the
2 previous sentence that they say they are providing jobs for
3 school leavers and take them on regardless of sex or race,
4 the point being that we are not saying, or the fact sheet
5 is not saying, that the only thing McDonald's are
6 interested in the whole world is recruiting cheap labour.
7 It is certainly one of the main things they are interested
8 in. But it is saying that when they say they are providing
9 jobs for school leavers and take them on regardless of sex
10 or race, what they really mean is they are looking for
11 cheap labour rather than they are doing anybody a favour.
12 They try to give the impression that they just have some
13 kind of boundless benevolent regard for the needs of school
14 leavers and women and black people when in fact what they
15 are doing is taking advantage of those people who have got
16 few, or fewer, job options in society. So that is on
17 that.
18
19 Moving on to the evidence of Mr. Beavers, who was
20 McDonald's, as we all know, the first Plaintiff's, lead
21 witness and extremely experienced, who had worked in the
22 field, and, in contrast to Stan Stein who was a lawyer,
23 taken on as a lawyer, who, in our opinion, was taken on by
24 McDonald's mainly as a union buster or union preventer and
25 general overseer of effectiveness of personnel policies but
26 without any grounding in what happens in reality at store
27 level beyond that, obviously, in contrast to Mr. Stein, who
28 was an extremely experienced advocate for McDonald's line
29 against unions and the related matters and obviously very
30 well briefed, Mr. Beavers was more open and more credible
31 in many ways because... I am not saying that he was very
32 credible in many ways, either, but more credible than Stan
33 Stein who -- well...
34
35 I mean, in the USA, really, we did not have the same level
36 of information that we had about the UK, but -- I think the
37 only actual, real live crew person who had been a crew
38 person in America was Mike Soriano, our witness. Although
39 he dealt with the union issue, it was clearly in response
40 to conditions of work. So that would be a particularly
41 relevant body of evidence. Obviously, we have also
42 documentation about turnover and wage levels and stuff
43 which I am going to refer to in a minute.
44
45 So Mr. Beavers on day 4, pages 50 and 51, admitted that
46 McDonald's workers started at the legal minimum wage of
47 $3.35 per hour.
48
49 In fact, I will digress there and go on to the chart which
50 had the average hourly rate in the States. The $3.35 was
51 actually the minimum wage up to April 1990, when it was
52 increased to $3.80, according to the McDonald's figures,
53 which always contain an element of unreality when we get
54 their statistics. The minimum wage on that chart, and I
55 don't know the reference, but I can -- I am not going to
56 refer to this in great detail but I will make some general
57 points. It is page 76 in one of the bundles I have. It is
58 called the 'average hourly rate'. It is McCopco Stores in
59 the States.
60
