Day 102 - 13 Mar 95 - Page 27
1 amount of work that catching teams do. This amount of work
2 is arrived at, agreed at, by the people doing the job.
3 I do not specifically get into the details of that myself.
4
5 Q. You said when you were giving evidence-in-chief that the
6 people doing the catching used to be under pressure of
7 time, but that now, the way that the work-load is designed,
8 there is no reason for excessive speed to be used to
9 complete the operation. How has the work-load design
10 changed?
11 A. The requirement now is to do the job in an eight hour
12 day. In other words, it is not piecework related. The
13 specific amount of work that has to be completed in an
14 eight hour day, there is no particular benefit from rushing
15 that work, and there is nothing to be gained by trying to
16 do more work than allocated in that particular time.
17
18 Q. When did piecework stop?
19 A. I think this was stopped a few years ago; I do not know
20 exactly when.
21
22 Q. Was that around the same time you switched to contract
23 catching?
24 A. No, it was before then.
25
26 Q. It was before that. You said that the specific amount of
27 work that has to be completed in an eight hour day, and
28 there is no particular benefit from rushing that work, but
29 you do not know what the specific amount of work is that
30 has to be done in that eight hour period?
31 A. No, I could make enquiries and find out exactly how
32 many loads and so on have to be completed in that time.
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: When you were talking of a load, what do you
35 mean by that, on the flat bed lorry and trailer?
36 A. Yes, a load is 4,000 to 6,000 birds, and the amount of
37 work done in a day or a shift will depend enormously on how
38 far the people have to travel. I mean, if a farm is 10
39 minutes down the road they can obviously do more loading
40 than if it is two hours down the road.
41
42 Q. That is included in their eight hours?
43 A. Yes, it is all included. So, the actual work volume is
44 designed according to the geographical requirements.
45
46 MS. STEEL: Are you in a position to be able to give us an
47 average of the number of loads if the farms are within a
48 few miles of the plant?
49 A. No, I do not have that detail.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: Just a couple of questions: When you said the
52 piecework system ended a few years ago, are we talking
53 about early 90s or something like that?
54 A. I should think it was probably three or four years ago,
55 yes.
56
57 Q. When you said that you are below the industry level in
58 terms of, I presume it is, the amount of birds -- I do not
59 know, could you just explain -----
60
