Day 001 - 28 Jun 94 - Page 47
1 fairly minor, over a period of about ten years out of a
world base of 840,000 people roughly.
2
The next question, my Lord: Are the plaintiffs hostile to
3 Trade Unions? I ask this rhetorical question: Would it
matter if they were? I go on to answer that indirectly by
4 saying that a contented workforce does not need Trade
Unions. In fact, of course, the plaintiffs are not
5 hostile to Trade Unions. The plaintiffs are, in fact,
quite happy that their workers should be represented by
6 Trade Unions, provided always -- this is the key to it --
that is what the employees themselves want. In most cases
7 it is not what the employees, want.
8 As your Lordship knows, the defendants allege a number of
disputes between the plaintiffs and unions throughout the
9 world during the last 30 years. The evidence of
Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Stein and others will show that most
10 of these allegations are simply distortions (in some
rather ghastly distortions) of what actually happened in
11 the individual cases. But again, my Lord, I ask the
question: So what?
12
My Lord, it is the business of Trade Unions to try and
13 invade the workplace in search of members. It is the
business of responsible employers like McDonald's to repel
14 those invasions so long as the workers wish them to do
so. My Lord, that really is the beginning and the end of
15 the history of McDonald's relationship with Trade Unions.
16 Nevertheless, there is one particularly unpleasant
allegation made by the defendants which I ought to deal
17 with now, because they have continued to repeat it in some
of the material they have disseminated since this action
18 began. I will give your Lordship the reference later.
19 This unpleasant allegation is as follows, that in
San Francisco in the early 1970s McDonald's forced their
20 employees to take lie detector tests in order to discover
whether they had pro-union sympathies.
21
This, my Lord, is a wicked falsehood and the defendants
22 know very well that it is. The lie detector tests (or
polygraph tests, as they are sometimes called) which were
23 used by the first plaintiffs in San Francisco in the early
1970s were used for one purpose and one purpose alone;
24 that was to try to find out whether employees had been
stealing money from the company.
25
Finally, my Lord, there is this question; whether, as the
26 defendants repeatedly assert, the plaintiffs have ever
sacked anyone for wanting to join a Trade Unions or having
27 union sympathies. Again the answer to this question is
emphatically, never.
28
The next question under "employment" is this: Are
29 opportunities for promotion in McDonald's minimal? Again
the answer is, no. On the contrary, they are excellent
30 and the proportions for people promoted from within the
company in this country will be given to your Lordship in
