Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 70
1 Q. Under "Alan Charlesworth", the last part, it says, "sends
2 people home without a good reason". Do you recall that as
3 something that Mr. Charlesworth did or not? If you cannot
4 remember, then just say so?
5 A. No, I cannot remember. I cannot even read it here.
6 I do not remember him sending people home. This may mean
7 when it is, sometimes when it was very quiet, if we were
8 unexpectedly slow or something had happened in the store,
9 like once we had a -- there was a leak in the roof and some
10 of the tiles came down and he tried to make sure that
11 everybody, you know, had got as many people to go home as
12 he possibly could ---
13
14 Q. Why?
15 A. -- you know, even if people did not want to. He wanted
16 to save on labour because he was not going to be able to
17 open the store, and it was considered that it would blow
18 labour. You know, if he had a whole day where people were
19 just cleaning and people were being paid and they were not
20 doing anything, there was no money coming in the store, it
21 would blow labour for that month. So, you know, most
22 people were asked to go home.
23
24 Q. Right. Did most of them want to go home?
25 A. I do not know. On this one incident, when the roof
26 leaked and some tiles came down, it was -- I would say half
27 of them wanted to go home and I had to coerce some of
28 them. He, Alan Charlesworth, coerced some of them.
29 Because all you had to do was say: "Look, if you are not
30 going to go home, you are going to have to go and detail
31 the trash room" and they would soon go home.
32
33 Q. Right, OK.
34 A. But sending people home, I do not know if that might
35 relate to disciplinary things, but if it was not a
36 disciplinary thing, if people wanted to go -- if people --
37 if we needed to get rid of people, it normally was not a
38 problem. If you said: "Who wants to go home?" you would
39 normally have a few people, you know, putting their hand up
40 saying: "Yes, I want to go home". But sometimes if it
41 was, like you say, with sewage in the store, when we
42 eventually had to shut, it was people do not want to go
43 home, yes, because they are earning money. They are -- you
44 know, why should they go home? It is their eight hour
45 shift. They are going to miss out on the money. They are
46 not going to make it any other way. But you used to, you
47 know, then they think, "Oh, excellent, you know, I will do
48 a bit of cleaning, a bit of this", but then you try and,
49 you know, used to make a point of -- as long as -- once the
50 store was confirmed that it was definitely shutting for the
51 night, you know, you try and get rid of everybody you can,
52 just because the labour is going to go through the roof
53 otherwise. That used to be the perception of it.
54
55 Q. OK. If you turn to page 199, I will not deal with the
56 break points on here, but just under "Payroll" it says:
57 "Crew would like a payroll surgery". What do you know
58 about when payroll surgeries were held at the Bath store?
59 A. I saw one notice once saying that there was a payroll
60 surgery on a certain day, but I know it never happened on
