Day 139 - 21 Jun 95 - Page 55
1 your cross-examination about matters in Puerto Rico to the
2 union dispute there which took place in the 70s.
3
4 The only reason any reference to earlier years came in in
5 Mr. Stein's evidence is the perfectly understandable one
6 that a few sentences have run into it, so that we did not
7 suddenly move from one part of the world to the union
8 dispute in the other, but you must restrict your
9 questioning on Puerto Rico to the union dispute. If
10 someone could give me the references in your Further and
11 Better Particulars?
12
13 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. It is two paragraphs, 43 and 107.
14 Either that is reference to a wholly different dispute
15 about which Mr. Stein knows nothing in the mid 1960s, or
16 else it is a misprint from mid 1970s.
17
18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: As I understand it, the nub of this
19 allegation is in item 107, the second two sentences, this
20 is your case: "After negotiated improvements in conditions
21 all the franchises were sold to a new franchiser" --
22 franchisee, I think it should be -- "who was hostile to the
23 union. A nine month strike then followed. McDonald's then
24 closed all the stores and pulled out of the island." The
25 way I had interpreted that was that McDonald's hostility
26 was such that when the union called a strike McDonald's
27 reaction was to shut up shop.
28
29 If that is your case, then I understand the relevance to a
30 possible justification of what appears in the leaflet. So
31 that is what you ought to be cross-examining about and
32 putting to Mr. Stein that that, in a sentence, is the nub
33 of your allegation.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: As pleaded, the real reason that the franchise was
36 sold by Mr. Gibson, as pleaded in the pleading, was because
37 of his agreement that he had entered into with, you have
38 called it the Gastronomical Workers' Union in your
39 statement.
40 A. I do not understand what you just said.
41
42 Q. You have said that Mr. Gibson entered into a collective
43 bargaining agreement with the Gastronomical Workers' Union,
44 and then you have said, "His operational standards were
45 very poor and this resulted in McDonald's terminating his
46 franchise for Puerto Rico". You stick by what you have
47 said, do you?
48 A. I stick by what I said in the statement that Mr. Gibson
49 ----
50
51 Q. I put it to you that Mr. Gibson's operational
52 standards ----
53 A. Let us get some timing.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause, because I think Mr. Morris is
56 actually now going to put what his real case is in relation
57 to this. Start again.
58
59 MR. MORRIS: I put it to you that Mr. Gibson, who was one of the
60 founders of McDonald's East Coast empire, and we can back
