Day 181 - 01 Nov 95 - Page 31
1 this part of the industry, I am right in thinking, am
2 I not, that if your inspectors had reported to you or had
3 decided for themselves that McDonald's were habitually in
4 breach of their statutory obligations under the Wages Act
5 1986, they would have been visited with, I put it
6 colloquially, a ton of bricks by the Inspectorate, would
7 they not?
8 A. If they found out, yes, but the reporting method -- you
9 see, given the enormity of the task facing wages
10 inspectors, you know, 400,000 workplaces and 110 staff,
11 there were various methods employed to ensure the best
12 coverage. They went for an annual coverage of 10 per
13 cent. One in 10 workplaces approximately per year were
14 inspected. The various survey methods included telephone
15 enquiry, survey questionnaire and responding to letters
16 written in by predictably dissatisfied employees, sometimes
17 people like me supporting them.
18
19 So there were three methods of obtaining information that
20 the wages inspectors employed, and they would reckon on a
21 10 per cent sweep per year. So, with the big employers,
22 the national organisations, what they would tend to do
23 would be to cut it down to a simple exercise rather than
24 write to every McDonald's in Britain. They would assume
25 consistency of policy and probably -- and I cannot speak
26 for certainty on McDonald's, but I think it would be
27 reasonable to assume -- that they would have written to a
28 senior officer of McDonald's to establish certain things.
29 They want a copy of the contract of employment and they
30 would want to understand what the general awareness was of
31 the minimum rates. They might ask for confirmation of the
32 hourly rates strategy. You know, that would be that.
33
34 Of course, you know, if the Company responds: "We have a
35 39, we do not do overtime", and so forth -- I am only
36 saying "if" -- then, given the nature of the Company,
37 McDonald's, you know, it is not a two bit cafe round the
38 corner, they might well, the inspectors might well say:
39 "Fine, that covers 30,000 employees, you know, that covers
40 350 workplaces. We have only got 40 -- we have only got,
41 you know, 39,000 workplaces to go in a year". It is a
42 massive task and they would try to simplify it by these
43 various methods.
44
45 Q. Equally, Mr. Pearson, it is possible, is it not, that --
46 McDonald's has been in this country now for over 20 years
47 and it now quite employs a very large number of people,
48 even in the mid 1980s I dare say it was between, sort of,
49 15 and 20,000, I do not know -- the wages inspectorate
50 might have decided, as sometimes these bodies do, to have
51 an in depth investigation of just such a large employer to
52 see whether or not the reality held up with the fancy
53 words, might they not?
54 A. Yes, that is possible, just as the Health and Safety
55 Executive decided to go in closely.
56
57 Q. I am coming to that. Do not anticipate because you may not
58 have that quite right.
59 A. No, but, I mean, the transparency issue, of course, you
60 know, transparency in labour statistics; what we have
