Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 41
1 cards. There was reference during the course of some
2 of... I do not know whether it is Mr. Nicholson's
3 evidence, or who, about one of the things that made up for
4 the low wages at McDonald's was the meal, that people could
5 have as much as they wanted to eat, which obviously we
6 would say does not make up for low wages, anyway,
7 particularly not bearing in mind that it is not good for
8 people to be eating that type of food on a frequent basis.
9 So, if they are at work every day, or five or six days a
10 week, it would be an extremely bad idea.
11
12 Also, the point in relation to that is that it was clear
13 from evidence of our witnesses and also from the crew
14 training programme on page 412 that there was a meal
15 allocation, and it was not as much as people wanted, there
16 was a certain amount per hour worked that people could have
17 towards the cost of food. It is not a particularly
18 important part, but in case it is harped on about in the
19 closing speech from the Plaintiffs I mention it.
20
21 One other point on Denise Pearce, which is that I recollect
22 that she said that she accepted that her department were
23 reliant on complaints by the crew members in order to
24 discover whether there were faults in the amount that had
25 been paid to the workers. Clearly, that is an
26 unsatisfactory way of paying people, particularly in
27 relation to the point about overtime pay; you know, that
28 the crew members would have to point it out themselves if
29 they worked excessive hours and had not been paid
30 overtime. They would have to work out for themselves
31 whether or not the legal requirements have been met
32 according to McDonald's interpretation.
33
34 But a general point is the reality is that most people do
35 not really check their wage slips, they trust the Company
36 to; not just McDonald's, but most employees generally trust
37 the Company to be getting it right. But even if they do
38 check unless they have been making a careful note of all
39 the hours they have been working they are not going to be
40 able to tell whether or not they have been paid the right
41 amount anyway.
42
43 I have not had time to go through all of Mr. Alimi's wage
44 slips recently, and I cannot actually remember all of the
45 things I worked out before, but there are two examples that
46 I can see where even by McDonald's own standards Mr. Alimi
47 was not paid enough. One of those is for 22nd February
48 1986 where Mr. Alimi worked 98.94 hours in a fortnight and
49 his gross pay was 207.42. The basic rate was 1.88, which,
50 as far as I can tell, was the minimum wage although,
51 because this is before the first Wages Council Act -- that
52 we have got a copy of -- I do not know for sure that that
53 was the minimum rate.
54
55 But if you work it out on the basis that -- well, no,
56 actually, this is the one that is really confusing because
57 Mr. Alimi is getting £1.93 an hour but according to the
58 crew salary history, which is page 672 of one of the pink
59 volumes -- it might be pink 15 I can check in a minute --
60 but the minimum rate should have been £1.99. So I do not
